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Close Management is DualEntry’s toolkit for running a structured, repeatable period close. It brings together the tasks, reconciliations, and variance reviews that happen between “books are open” and “period is locked” into a single workflow your team can track and collaborate on.

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Why a structured close matters

A clean close produces financials you can trust. Without a defined process, tasks get missed, reconciliations slip, and variance explanations live in email threads that no one can find six months later. DualEntry’s Close Management module gives you a shared workspace where every step is assigned, tracked, and documented, so the close runs the same way every month regardless of who’s working on it. A repeatable close also shortens your close timeline over time. When tasks have clear owners and dependencies, bottlenecks become visible early. Teams that adopt Close Management typically reduce their close cycle by identifying the steps that block downstream work (for example, waiting on bank data before starting reconciliations) and restructuring the sequence to run tasks in parallel where possible. The audit trail built into each close period also reduces the time spent gathering evidence during year-end fieldwork, since reconciliations, commentary, and sign-offs are already captured in one place.

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What Close Management includes

Close Management has two parts in the product: the Close Checklist, where you define and assign the tasks your team runs each period, and Close Workflows, the set of tools those tasks point you to.
  • Month-End Close Checklist: A configurable task list that tracks every step of your close. Assign tasks to team members, set due dates, and monitor completion in real time. Templates let you spin up a consistent checklist each period without rebuilding from scratch.
Close Workflows covers:
  • Bank Match: DualEntry’s matching engine for bank and credit-card accounts. Rules and Bank Match AI pair bank feed transactions to GL entries so reconciliation is mostly a review of exceptions instead of a line-by-line match. Start with Your First Bank Match.
  • Reconciliation: Reconcile any balance-sheet account to supporting detail and carry forward unreconciled items period to period. Bank and credit-card accounts pull in Bank Match’s pre-matched transactions; every other account is matched manually.
  • Currency Revaluation: Restate open foreign-currency balances at period-end exchange rates and post the unrealized gain or loss to the GL, with automatic reversal the next day. This only applies to a company that transacts in a currency other than its Base Currency.
  • Consolidated Exchange Rates: Manage the current, average, and historical exchange rates used when consolidating a subsidiary’s financials into its parent, for each company pair and period.
  • Period Locking: Lock a period once it’s reconciled and reviewed to block new postings to it, with a soft lock for controllers to handle late adjustments and a hard lock, admin-only, once the period is final. Every lock and unlock event is recorded in the audit trail.
These tools are interconnected; for example, completing a reconciliation can automatically mark the corresponding checklist task as done. A common next step once your checklist and workflows are done is reviewing flux analysis: comparing period balances and flagging variances that need an explanation before you lock the period. Flux analysis itself runs in Reports → Report Center, not inside Close Management, but see How to Run Flux Analysis for how it fits into your close.

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How a typical close flows

A standard month-end close in DualEntry follows this sequence:
  1. Post final transactions (accruals, adjusting entries, payroll, depreciation).
  2. Work through the close checklist; each task is checked off as it’s completed.
  3. Reconcile balance-sheet accounts using the reconciliation workspace.
  4. Review flux analysis in Reports → Report Center and add commentary to material variances.
  5. Review the checklist dashboard to confirm all tasks are complete.
  6. Lock the period to protect the closed books.
The checklist and reconciliation tools feed into each other at each stage. Locking the period is gated behind a “ready to close” status on the checklist, and the checklist won’t reach that status until reconciliations and flux commentary are complete. If you’re setting up Close Management for the first time, begin with the Month-End Close Checklist to define your standard tasks, then create your first reconciliation for each balance-sheet account in Reconciliation. Flux analysis thresholds are configured from the flux report itself, not from Report Center at large, and require at least two periods of data before a comparison is possible. For the underlying ledger mechanics, see General Ledger. For the reports generated from your closed books, see Reporting & Analytics.
Last modified on October 8, 2026