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Close Cycle Benchmark

Where do your close days go?

See where your close days go, and which step to redesign first. Lay out your month-end phases on a business-day timeline, find the chain that sets your close date, and test what happens if one step got faster.

  • About 5 minutes
  • Critical path, live
  • Private to your browser

Step 1 · Your close

Set the target and the context

Days are business days after month-end. We filled in a sample close. Change any number and the timeline updates as you type.

Why the target day matters
The target is a promise to the business: the day leadership gets numbers they can act on. Every day after month-end is a day decisions run on last month's view. Pick the day you commit to, not the day you hope for.

Step 2 · Phases

Lay out the close, step by step

Each phase starts at the later of its planned day and the day its dependencies finish. Half days are fine.

Why "depends on" matters most
Dependencies decide the critical path. Consolidation can't start until intercompany is agreed, however early you plan it. Tick only real hand-offs: work that truly cannot begin until the earlier step is done.
How to estimate manual share
Of the hours in this phase, what share is a person keying, copying, matching or chasing by hand? Reviewing and approving count as judgment, not manual work. A rough number is fine: the ranking only needs the order to be right.

Close timeline

Business-day Gantt, critical path highlighted

  • Critical path
  • Has slack
  • Waiting on a dependency
  • Target day
How to read the critical path
The highlighted bars form the longest chain of hand-offs from day one to the last step. Any delay on that chain moves your close day. Bars with slack can slip a little without moving the date, so speeding them up saves effort, not days.

Scenario

What if one step got faster?

Effort

Hours by phase

Darker share is manual work. The longest bar is where people spend time, which is not always where the date is set.

  • Manual hours
  • System or judgment hours

Redesign first

Where an agent moves the date

Score = critical-path days × manual share. Steps off the path rank by manual hours: they save effort, not days.

Why this score
Days on the critical path are the only days that move your close. Manual share tells you how much of that time is work an agent could take on. Multiply them and you get the step where automation is most likely to pull the date in. A person still approves the result, every time.

    What this means

    Email me this
    Myth

    Put more people on the slowest team and the close gets shorter.

    Reality

    Only work on the critical path moves the date. Extra hands on a step with slack cut effort, not days. And a step that is waiting on a hand-off won't go faster however many people you add.

    Field note

    In our experience the close rarely slips because one team is slow. It slips because one hand-off waits: an intercompany balance nobody agreed, a mapping fixed on day four. Map the waits before you automate the work, and keep a person on every approval.

    Field guide

    Three lessons on a faster close

    What controllers and CFOs need to know before they try to take days out of month-end.

    .01

    Critical path, explained

    Your close is a set of steps joined by hand-offs. The critical path is the longest chain of them, start to finish. Its length is your close date. Shorten a step on that chain and the date moves. Shorten anything else and it doesn't. Shorten the chain enough and a different chain becomes the longest one.

    Rule of thumbOnly shorten what is on the path, and recheck the path after every change.

    .02

    Why intercompany so often sets the date

    Intercompany needs two sides to agree: two entities, two ledgers, sometimes two ERPs and two currencies. You can't run eliminations until both sides match, and disputes surface late, when someone finally compares. Consolidation and reporting wait behind it.

    Rule of thumbAgree intercompany balances before the close starts, not during it.

    .03

    Continuous close versus month-end crunch

    A crunch close does everything after month-end. A continuous close moves work that doesn't need the final number into the month: bank matching daily, accrual prep weekly, intercompany confirmations before cut-off. Agents suit this rhythm because they work every day. People keep the judgment and the sign-off.

    Rule of thumbIf a task doesn't need the final number, it doesn't belong after month-end.

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