Findings
A ranked teardown of where your close loses days, in board-ready language.
Reduce month-end close time
Common first automation
Scored by Close Health Score v1
Cut days off your month-end close — and prove it.
A slow close is rarely one big problem; it's a dozen manual steps — reconciliations, accruals, inter-company entries, reporting — stacked on top of each other. FlyCFO scores your close, finds the steps that cost the most, deploys one automation and measures the days saved.
Finance-automation practice by BetterWrk · No logins or ledger data in the score
Is this worth automating
This is usually worth a teardown when…
…versus when your close is already fast and calmly repeatable.
Worth a teardown
- The close takes longer than you'd like and slips most months
- Reconciliations and accruals are built by hand in spreadsheets
- Inter-company or multi-entity consolidation is manual
- One person effectively "owns" the close and its tribal knowledge
- Board and management reporting is rebuilt from scratch each month
Probably fine as-is
- You already close fast and predictably
- Core systems are connected and reconciliations are largely automated
- Manual journal volume is low and well controlled
- Reporting is templated and refreshes itself
- There's no clear payback from automating further yet
Start with the close, not a guess
What the score and assessment look at
The free score uses ranges and structure. The paid assessment observes a real close cycle — never asking for passwords or ledger exports up front.
- Days-to-close and where the time actually goes
- Manual journal entries: accruals, reclasses, allocations
- Bank, card and payment reconciliations
- Inter-company and multi-entity consolidation steps
- Revenue and deferred-revenue schedules
- Accrual and prepaid schedules maintained in spreadsheets
- Flux / variance analysis effort each month
- Management and board reporting assembly
- Systems in the close and how they hand off
- Who owns each step, and what breaks when they're out
Every close step gets a classification
What gets automated, what changes, what stays manual
These are common close patterns after review. They illustrate how classification usually works — never a universal promise. Your assessment determines the actual approach for each step.
Automate
Assist
Redesign
Retire
Resolve
Swipe to see more →
| Close step | Automation approach | Classification | Typical condition | Verified by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bank & card reconciliation | Rules-based matching + exception queue | Automate | Feeds are reliable and mappable | Match rate + exceptions reconciled |
| Recurring accruals & prepaids | Scheduled journal generation from a source | Automate | Schedule and basis are well-defined | Entry-by-entry comparison to baseline |
| Flux / variance analysis | AI finance skill drafts, human reviews | Assist | Thresholds and commentary style agreed | Cited draft vs. reviewer sign-off |
| Inter-company eliminations | Structured consolidation workflow | Redesign | Entity structure and rules formalised | Balanced eliminations, tie-out check |
| Management & board pack | Templated assembly from source data | Assist | Definitions and layout agreed | Figures traced to source |
| Duplicate reconciliation spreadsheet | — | Retire | Superseded by a connected source | Owner sign-off to decommission |
| Niche system with no clean API | Reviewed before any promise | Resolve | Integration path unverified until reviewed | Integration parity check first |
One price, credited to your build
The $1,500 Finance Operations Assessment
Board-ready findings on your close, a cited AI finance skill, one deployed automation targeting your biggest close bottleneck, and verified days saved. The fee is credited in full to your automation build.
One automation
Your highest-payback close step, deployed, tested and managed.
Verified days saved
Measured against your baseline close — not a projection.
Illustrative launch pricing pending commercial validation.
A green run is not the finish line
What "done" means for a close automation
Before any close automation is trusted, its acceptance is agreed and tested. At minimum it covers:
- Output matches the manual baseline for representative periods
- Edge cases and period-end timing behave correctly
- Exceptions are surfaced, not silently dropped
- Retry and failure behaviour is safe for the ledger
- An audit trail exists for every generated entry
- Monitoring and alerting are live before reliance
- Explicit finance-owner sign-off before it's in the close
Illustrative acceptance case
PASS
Automated accruals match the manual schedule for the period
Manual baselineAutomated runReconciled
- Entry amounts
- Match
- Account coding
- Match
- Period timing
- Pass
- Audit trail
- Recorded
- Exception handling
- Pass
- Owner sign-off
- Pass
Illustrative evidence record — not a customer result.
Questions about the close
What finance leaders ask about closing faster
Will automation change our accounting policy?
No. Automation executes your policy faster and more consistently — it doesn't set it. Accounting treatment, thresholds and controls stay yours; we automate the mechanics around them.
How many days could we realistically save?
It depends on where your time actually goes. The Close Health Score gives a directional estimate; the assessment quantifies it on your real close, and we measure the days actually saved after the automation is live rather than promising a number up front.
Do you replace our ERP or close-management tool?
No. FlyCFO works with the systems you already have — QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage Intacct and others — automating the manual steps between them rather than asking you to rip and replace.
What about audit and controls?
Every automated entry carries an audit trail, and acceptance testing is signed off by your finance owner before anything runs in the close. We design for auditability, not around it.
Next step
Talk to a finance-ops specialist
Prefer to talk it through first? Tell us about your close and a specialist will follow up — or start with the free Close Health Score.
Start with a number
Find out how much of your close is automatable.
Score your close in three minutes, then decide whether the assessment is worth it.