I Have Never Met a CFO Who Was Proud of Their Close

The article that I published this week was not the one that I had set out to write.

My aim was to write about how slow month-end closes harm companies. When you ask a CFO how long their close takes, you receive a figure, followed by a qualification, and then a narrative concerning the one entity that always submits late. The truth emerges gradually, and no one brings it up first. Therefore, I anticipated the research to focus on speed.

Therefore, I searched for some figures to support that statement. The first thing I came across had nothing to do with speed; it concerned decisions that were never made at all, since the figures appeared too late to make them.

A survey by Intuit of 2,000 CFOs, controllers, and VPs of finance at US companies with revenue exceeding $2.5 million found that 57% had failed to take a time-sensitive strategic action in the past six months because the figures came in too late. The last time these individuals had made a major decision, only 14% had had financial data available to them on the same day. CFO.com published the results in July.

Read it again; it's not the case that 57% of finance leaders are making bad decisions. Rather, 57% of them didn't have the opportunity to make the decision at least once. The figures came out after the input window had closed.

That is a distinct issue from a slow closing, and it requires a different solution.

The number that has barely moved in eight years

APQC is a nonprofit organization that has for many years collected cycle time data from thousands of companies. The figure it collects is straightforward: the number of calendar days that elapse between running the trial balance and finishing the financial statements.

At the time CFO.com covered the subject in 2018, 2,300 organizations had responded. The average duration was 6.4 days, and the quickest quarter took 4.8 days or fewer. The slowest quarter, on the other hand, required 10 days or more.

You can see where it stands today for yourself. The number is published by APQC and is listed as measure 100162. It currently includes 11,223 companies, and the average position is six days.

The quartiles are behind APQC's paywall, but in June 2026 Rand Group, an ERP consultancy, published them. The quickest still manage to complete the task in five days or fewer, while the slowest still require 10 or more days.

Over eight years, the median changed by less than half a day.

Before anyone gets in touch with me about this, please note that the two figures are not exact snapshots. Since APQC's database is continually expanding, the 2,300 companies from 2018 are very likely still included in the total of 11,223 today. As a result, the comparison is worse than I would prefer. Nevertheless, it remains the largest collection of closely comparable data that anyone publishes, and I have not come across any source indicating that the median has decreased.

It's this point that keeps bothering me. If software had been the complete solution, this project would have required eight years and a considerable budget. Many finance teams did end up purchasing the tools. Yet it just remained there.

What is it that actually causes a shutdown to be slowed down?

In 2025, Ledge, a software company, questioned 100 finance professionals about what obstructs their work. The responses had almost nothing to do with the amount of effort put in. The most frequently mentioned problem was waiting for other departments, cited by 56%. Half of them blamed Excel. Another 40% cited outdated systems that do not communicate with one another, and 37% said they simply lack sufficient staff.

If you add them up, three out of the four concerns involve handoffs, either between teams or between systems, and only one refers to there being too few hands.

None of them are accountants working too slowly; that's where most executives begin their search. I did, during the first few instances.

Nothing a single person does can overcome a situation in which three departments submit late, and four systems differ on what actually took place. Someone must be responsible for the sequence; you have to follow up with the department that is late, decide which system is correct, and then get the process going. In most companies, that person is the Controller, and by the time the handoffs go wrong, she is already deeply involved in reconciliations. Therefore, she just sits there until the deadline compels her to act.

The split most closers get wrong

Each close contains two types of work, and it was never intended for the same person to have both.

The left column has a deadline attached. The right column does not, so it slides. Nobody escalates a forecast.

You most likely already know the reason why yours fails. If you don't, then your Controller does, in which case you should ask her. It's generally due to one or two factors: the bank reconciliation, which can't be completed until someone from another office sends over a statement, or the region that submits on day four regardless of what the calendar states. Deal with that single issue. There's no need to redesign the closing process in order to give her back a week of her month.

Two from our own work

A major US insurance network approached us with a financial manager who spent about 40 hours per month manually checking spreadsheets. Forty hours, an entire workweek every month on a task that no one would ever include in a job description. We appointed a senior accountant, Ronalyn, who took over reconciliations, schedule preparation, and reporting. She created a detailed calendar and recorded exactly what a review entails, then established a system that allows any dollar to be traced back to its source. The manager has now gotten back that week and is using it for analysis and when meeting with leadership. Read how Ronalyn reclaimed more than 40 hours per month for a U.S. finance team

The one I'm referring to was a travel and transportation company that generated thousands of sales each month, whose reports were always sent out 10 days late in every cycle, until, after 2 years, no one regarded it as a problem worth solving. When Mary Grace joined the company, she was appointed senior accountant and revenue supervisor. In her first period, she simply traced how the work moved around the department, a job as boring as it sounds. Then she clarified ownership of each task and automated checks for the highest-volume revenue categories. As a result, close time was reduced by 40 percent, and they met the reporting deadline for the first time in two years. Read how Mary Grace reduced month-end close time by 40%

It wasn't that people were working longer hours; that's the general assumption, and it wasn't the case in either situation. The change was that the left column had an owner. When the person responsible for carrying out the reconciliations and preparing the schedules worked on them from start to finish, the Controller was then able to complete the work in the right column, and a delay appeared one week after the due date rather than on it.

What piles on top of the close

Used to be, ten days made no difference at all; for one organization and a few decisions, you generally knew the answer before the figures had verified it.

The situation remains the same, but the pile on top of it has changed. Since this is an acquisition, the two companies must now consolidate. There is an investor who requires the reports to be produced by the 5th. There is a product line whose margin no one can explain. There is a loan covenant which has a test date. Although the team is the same and the time frame is still ten days, the people in leadership are deciding on figures that are three weeks out of date, and each month the Controller spends the first week tying out the reconciliations rather than addressing the margin question.

What I would write down during your next close

A project isn't necessary in this case; just select one, keep a note open, and record six things:

1. Days between period end and the moment your executives have something they can act on
2. Hours your team spends on reconciliations
3. Accounts that still need someone to check them by hand
4. Every time data came in late from another team, and which team it was
5. Rework caused by documentation that was missing or wrong
6. Anything that sat waiting on the close, and who was waiting

When you get to the end of it, make sure you write down that final point on the day it occurs, as long as you still remember the details. There was a price rise which came after nine days. You delayed your decision to approve the hire until you had looked at the margin. You continued to pay the vendor since you had not yet pulled the numbers. By the end of the month, you no longer argue about the close and simply hand someone a list.

The test is now underway. The final stage has been reached. Is there still anybody on your finance team who has time to look at next quarter, or has it already reached the 20th? Will the next close begin in eight days?

If it is your month, the close calendar is in charge of the company; no one decided that; it just came about, which is why I have never met a CFO who was proud of the close. The speed isn't really what bothers them; it's the month they lose as a result.

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