The Month-End That Tells You What Is Left
A month-end close answers three questions: did we do what we planned, is anything left undone, and where did the cash go. Each now has its own screen — GL budgets with budget against actual, a close checklist that works out most of itself, and a cash-flow statement rebuilt from the ledger for any dates you choose.
The finance manager of a hardware chain with branches in Thika, Nakuru and Eldoret closes September on the tenth of October. She knows the routine: reconcile the banks, chase two petty cash vouchers, check depreciation ran, and then build the board pack in a spreadsheet — a budget column typed in from last November’s plan, an actual column copied from the income statement, and a cash-flow page nobody fully trusts. The close takes four days. Three of them are the spreadsheet.
The plan, in the books it is measured against
Under Accounting → GL Budgets, a budget is a twelve-month plan per account. Give it a name and a first month — a July start covers a July-to-June year — and type a figure for each revenue and expense account you want to plan. Type an annual amount and leave the months blank, and it is spread evenly, with any rounding on the last month; type each month where the year is seasonal, as school-term sales or the long rains usually make it.
A budget can be scoped to one department, branch or project. Actuals are then read only from postings tagged with it, so the hardware chain keeps one budget per branch and compares Nakuru with Nakuru’s plan, not with the company’s.
| Nakuru, through September | Budget to date | Actual to date | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 14,400,000 | 15,120,000 | +720,000 favourable |
| Branch wages | 2,700,000 | 2,764,000 | +64,000 against |
| Transport and delivery | 960,000 | 1,212,000 | +252,000 against |
Variance is actual minus budget. It is favourable when revenue beats the plan or an expense comes in under it, and marked when it runs against you. Actuals come from posted journal entries on the same basis as the income statement, so the budget screen and the income statement never disagree about what happened in a month. Pick the month to compare through — by default the current month while the budget is running — and the months after it still show their budget, without an actual. More in the GL Budgets guide and on the GL budgets page.
A budget kept in a spreadsheet is measured against whatever was pasted beside it. A budget kept in the ledger is measured against the ledger.
A checklist that ticks most of itself
Accounting → Month-end Close shows one month at a time, in two parts. The first is a set of automatic checks, worked out again every time the page loads, so a check turns green the moment the work is done rather than when someone remembers to tick it:
Automatic checks
- No manual journals dated in the month left in draft, rejected or awaiting approval.
- Every bank account reconciled to the month end or later.
- Depreciation posted through the month for every active asset.
- No petty cash vouchers from the month waiting for approval.
- The trial balance balances to the end of the month.
- Every account with a balance is classified, so it appears on a statement.
- The month before is closed.
A check that does not apply — no bank accounts set up, no assets being depreciated — reads not applicable rather than passing, so nobody mistakes “nothing to check” for “checked”. The second part is your own steps. They start as five: accruals and prepayments, receivables and doubtful debts, payroll and statutory liabilities, the VAT and withholding position, and a review of the income statement. Edit them, add your own, switch one off, and each month mark each one done or skipped with a note.
It informs the close; it never blocks it
Closing stays one action for the person allowed to close, from the bottom of the same page. They may know something the list does not — a bank statement that arrives late every month, an asset whose depreciation is being reviewed. The checklist makes sure they close knowingly. See the Month-End Close guide and the month-end close page.
Where the cash went, for any dates
The cash-flow statement has been rebuilt from the ledger by the direct method. It used to add up whole account balances for three fixed lists of system accounts: it had no date range, counted the cash accounts themselves as operating, and left out every account an organization had created — so a second bank account or a vehicle loan simply was not on it.
Now it runs for any from and to date, opens on the cash held the day before and closes on the cash held at the end. Cash means the cash, bank and M-Pesa accounts, petty cash floats, any account a bank account posts to, and anything you have marked as cash. For every journal that moves cash, the other side of the journal decides where the money belongs: a receipt against Sales is operating, a cheque for a delivery truck is investing, a loan drawdown is financing — whoever created the account. A transfer between two of your own cash accounts nets to nothing and is left off.
September, Nakuru and the rest
Illustrative figures. Opening cash plus every line equals closing cash.
Two details keep the statement honest. Each account carries a Cash flow setting, automatic by default: if a till account is wrongly placed, mark it as cash; if a liability is really a loan, mark it as financing. And cash posted with no other side — a one-sided entry, or one with no reference to pair it with — cannot be placed in an activity, so it gets its own line, Cash postings with no other side, rather than being quietly folded into operating. A number there is a posting worth looking at.
Our position
Load the board-approved budget once, per branch if you report by branch, and compare through the last month you have closed rather than the current one. Work the checklist until the automatic checks are green or knowingly not, then close. And read the cash-flow statement for the month before the board does: if the line for cash postings with no other side is not zero, find out why first.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- GL budgets of twelve months from any first month, optionally for one department, branch or project, with even spreading or month-by-month figures.
- Budget against actual by account and month from posted entries, with variance, favourable or against, and totals for revenue, expenses and net.
- A month-end close checklist of seven automatic checks and your own steps, marked done or skipped with a note, that informs the close and never blocks it.
- A direct-method cash-flow statement for any date range, with opening and closing cash, a per-account Cash flow setting, and a line for cash postings with no other side.
- GL budgets and the close checklist in the mobile app.
More we can add to your workspace
- Encumbrance on GL budgets, so approved purchase orders count against the plan before the bill arrives.
- A cash-flow statement for one branch, department or project.
- A revised forecast kept beside the original budget, so the year can be re-planned without losing what the board approved.
Where we point you to a specialist
- How a budget is set, and whether a month is ready to close, are management decisions. The screens show the numbers and what is unfinished; they do not decide either.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsThree questions for your month-end
Where does the actual column in your budget report come from?
A good answer sounds like
The posted ledger, on the same basis as the income statement.
What it tells you
A pasted column is a second version of the truth.
How do you know every bank account is reconciled before you close?
A good answer sounds like
A check that reads the reconciliations, not a tick someone made.
What it tells you
A manual tick records memory, not the books.
Does your cash-flow statement add up from opening cash to closing cash?
A good answer sounds like
Yes, including a line for anything it could not place.
What it tells you
A statement that does not reconcile hides its own errors.
Set up your first GL budget
Twelve-month plans, scoping by branch, and reading budget against actual.
GL Budgets guideFrequently asked questions
What is a GL budget in AWRA?
A twelve-month plan per revenue and expense account, starting in any month, optionally for one department, branch or project, compared month by month with what was actually posted.
Where do the actuals in budget against actual come from?
From posted journal entries on each account, on the same basis as the income statement. Drafts and journals awaiting approval are not counted until they post.
Does the month-end checklist stop me closing a month?
No. It shows what is unfinished and never blocks the close. The person allowed to close the month decides.
Which cash-flow method does AWRA use?
The direct method, built from the ledger for any date range, with opening and closing cash and each journal placed in operating, investing or financing by the account on its other side.
What is the line for cash postings with no other side?
Cash entries whose journal has no balancing line, so they cannot be placed in an activity. They are shown on their own line so the statement still adds up to closing cash.
