Closing the period without the spreadsheet

A lease close is not hard because of the arithmetic. It is hard because the team cannot be sure the inputs are final, the judgements are current and the journals match the latest schedules. A good close process turns those doubts into a list.

A readiness list, lease by lease

Before a reporting-book period closes, check each lease in scope for five things: the contract approval is current; the accounting judgement is current; the calculation links to the latest approved snapshot and judgement; current journals are approved; and journals from superseded calculations have been reversed.

Lock what you close

Closing should do more than set a status. Leasecount serializes close against judgement, calculation, journal and reversal writes on the same reporting book, so nothing can slip in between the check and the lock.

Reopen on the record

Sometimes a late invoice or a missed amendment means reopening a period. That should be possible, require a reason, and leave an audit event, never a silent edit to a closed month.

Hand over a package

Once closed, roll-forwards, maturity analyses and disclosure working papers can be frozen into a reporting package with input and output hashes and exported as CSV. The review starts from evidence rather than from a folder of spreadsheets.