Month-end close calendar: A day-by-day schedule with owners, cutoff times, and 2026–2027 dates

A month-end close calendar is the schedule that assigns each close task to a business day after month end, names who prepares and reviews it, sets a cutoff time, and lists what has to finish first.

• Close dayThe task's position relative to month end, such as BD2, so the schedule repeats every month while the dates change.
• Owner and reviewerOne person prepares the task and a different person approves it.
• Depends onThe task or input that must be done before this one can start.

You'll also see it called a month-end close schedule, financial close calendar, or monthly close calendar.

The calendar is one of three views of the same work. Most teams keep all three in one sheet or close tool.

Universities such as the University of Arizona also publish "close calendars," but theirs list the date each month's ledger closes for campus departments. This page covers the finance team's working schedule for the month-end close.

A five-business-day close calendar runs pre-close from BD-3 to BD-1, posts transactions on BD1, reconciles on BD2, books accruals and adjustments on BD3, reviews the trial balance and flux on BD4, and signs off and locks on BD5. This example closes December 2026 in five business days with a five-person team: controller, accounting manager, senior accountant, AP accountant, and staff accountant. Each row is one handoff, so a miss is visible by its cutoff time, not at review.

Cash and subledger reconciliations come before accruals and adjusting entries, and the lock comes after review, never before it. The order matters more than the exact clock times, which you set to fit your team. Your month-end close checklist template holds the full task list; add a close day, cutoff time, and depends-on column to turn it into this calendar.

Day 0 is the last calendar day of the month, even when it falls on a weekend. Business day 1 is the first working day after Day 0. Every later close day counts working days only, skipping weekends and the holidays your company observes.

• BD1, WD1, T+1Three names for the same day. "Workday" here means working day, not the Workday ERP.
• BD-1The last business day of the month. When the month ends on a weekday, BD-1 and Day 0 are the same date. BD-2 and BD-3 count back from there on working days.
• Weekend month endTransactions dated that Saturday or Sunday still belong to the month. October 2026 ends on a Saturday, so BD1 is Monday, November 2.
• Holiday on BD1Business day 1 moves to the next working day, and every later deadline moves with it. The close keeps all five business days, so the sign-off date moves, not the workload.

The close starts with pre-close on BD-3 and ends when the controller signs off and locks the period. A five-business-day close is a common target, which for the November 2026 close means Monday, December 7. "Three business days" means three working days, not three calendar days. Store each month's period end once and let a formula turn close days into dates in Excel or Google Sheets, where WORKDAY.INTL works the same way.

The weekend code 1 means Saturday and Sunday off, and Holidays is a range listing every day your company is closed, including next January's. The "+ 1" in the pre-close formula makes BD-1 land on Day 0 when Day 0 is a working day.

From November 2026 to December 2027, business day 5 falls between the 5th and the 8th of the following month. Holidays push it to the 8th for the December 2026, June 2027, and August 2027 closes. Dates below use the observed US federal holidays published by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), checked November 7, 2026. Columbus Day, Veterans Day, and Juneteenth don't change any date below, so the table holds if your company works them.

What moves each close's dates:

Three patterns matter when you plan. Holidays inside BD1 to BD5 move your sign-off date, so tell report readers in advance. Holidays just before month end, like Thanksgiving week and Christmas week, squeeze pre-close work instead, so send deadline notices before the holiday. A Sunday month end gives you all five business days in only five calendar days (a Saturday month end leaves six), so expect weekend bank and card activity to land in BD1.

Add your company's own closures, such as the Friday after Thanksgiving or December 24, to the Holidays range and recompute. A multi-country group needs one holiday list per country, so BD3 in Germany and BD3 in the US can fall on different dates. Companies on a 4-4-5 fiscal calendar use their own period-end dates as Day 0 and count from there.

Give every team that feeds the close a submission deadline: expense reports and department accrual confirmations by BD-2, sales and payroll inputs by noon on BD1, and vendor invoices by 5 PM on BD1.

Send the dated deadlines on BD-7, a reminder on the morning of BD-3, and a chase list of missing items at 9 AM on BD1. In December, BD-7 is Tuesday, December 22, so the notice goes out before Christmas week.

A submission deadline decides when accounting gets the information, not which month the cost belongs to. The reporting period ends December 31, and you record transactions in the proper period under your cutoff, recognition, and materiality policies. An invoice that arrives after the AP cutoff for work done in December is usually still a December expense, so you book an accrual for it. Moving it into January to keep the calendar on time understates December.

The entry reverses on January 1, and the invoice posts to accounts payable in January, so the cost is recorded once, in December. The guide to accrued expenses covers how to estimate items when no invoice exists yet. Add a line to the next confirmation form asking department heads about contractors.

Split the work by area, not by day: each preparer owns a set of accounts across BD1 to BD3, and the reviewer checks each handoff the same day. Here's the same calendar staffed three ways.

A part-time bookkeeper's calendar runs on their working days, not company business days. If they work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and BD1 is a Monday, their three days of BD1 to BD3 work run through BD5, so the CPA review moves to BD6. On a three-person team, the controller is the bottleneck on BD2 to BD5, so schedule reviews in the afternoon of the day the work is due. Every team should name a backup for each BD2 and BD3 task, so one person out in close week doesn't stop the close. At a SaaS company or startup, give the BD-1 billing run and the BD2 deferred revenue tie-out to the same person each month, since usage, upgrades, and contract changes all flow through them.

A multi-entity group adds one layer: each entity closes locally by BD3, intercompany balances are matched on BD3, and group finance consolidates on BD4. Publish month-end exchange rates on BD-1. The guide to intercompany accounting covers the matching and elimination entries.

Start from the day leadership needs the statements, work backward through review, entries, and reconciliations, and give every task one close day, owner, reviewer, and dependency.

1. 1Set the sign-off dayPick the business day your report readers need, such as BD5, and put the controller's review on the day before
2. 2List the real workPull every task from your last three closes, including the ones nobody wrote down
3. 3Assign one owner and one reviewerNo one reviews their own work, and every task has a named backup
4. 4Map dependenciesNote what each task waits for, and put reconciliations before the entries that rely on them
5. 5Add close days and cutoff timesUse business-day offsets, not dates, so the calendar repeats
6. 6Publish dates a month aheadConvert close days to dates with your holiday list and send them with the department deadlines

The controller owns the calendar. Update statuses daily during the close, keep planned dates visible next to actual ones, and change next month's version only after a 15-minute review of what ran late. The month-end close process explains each step the calendar schedules.

When a task on the critical path is late, mark every task that depends on it as blocked, move their dates by the length of the delay, and keep working on tasks off the path. Never shorten review to win the time back.

The critical path is the chain that sets your earliest sign-off: subledger posting, reconciliations, adjusting entries, trial balance review, sign-off, and lock. Bank reconciliations, fixed assets, and prepaids usually run alongside it. Revenue and controller review are where most five-day calendars slip.

The entry on BD5 recognizes the revenue earned in December:

A two-day delay on one reconciliation moved sign-off two business days, from Friday, January 8 to Tuesday, January 12. The controller told the CFO the new date on BD2, the day the gap appeared. If waiting isn't an option, the controller can approve an estimate with documented support and a true-up the next month, but only when the estimate is reliable. Lock evidence and the full review stay in place either way.

Run a 15-minute check each close morning that covers only four things: tasks due today, blocked tasks, reviews waiting, and any change to the sign-off date. How long your close should take overall is a separate question, covered in the guide to month-end close time.

Keep one master calendar and switch on extra task groups at quarter-end and year-end, rather than running three separate calendars. Tag each task monthly, quarterly, or annual, and filter by the period you're closing.

The example sign-off days are planning placeholders, not benchmarks. Set yours from how long these task groups took last time.

Many accounting systems lock a period without scheduling the people who close it, so the calendar often lives in a spreadsheet or close tool next to the ledger.

• QuickBooks OnlineIntuit's help on closing the books covers the closing date, not task scheduling, so keep the calendar in a sheet. On sign-off day, set the closing date with the password option under Settings › Account and settings › Advanced › Accounting › Close the books (Intuit, "Lock your books in QuickBooks Online," updated September 2026).
• NetSuiteThe Period Close Checklist runs the system steps, from Lock A/R and Lock A/P to closing the period. If Intelligent Close Manager is enabled and your role has the right permissions, Close Manager task records let you assign work, set due dates, and update status (Oracle NetSuite Help, "Close Manager Task Record Overview" and "Enabling the Intelligent Close Manager Feature," accessed November 7, 2026). The help page doesn't describe business-day offsets or holiday calendars, so compute due dates with the formulas above and load them each month.
• Excel or Google SheetsThe sheet is the calendar. Add a status column (not started, in progress, blocked, in review, approved) so a filter shows blocked tasks and waiting reviews each morning.

A spreadsheet with formula dates covers a team of one to three people. Close management tools add business-day due dates, holiday calendars, dependencies, reminders, and reviewer sign-off.

Those features track the work. When you compare tools, ask which tasks the tool completes itself, such as the BD2 reconciliations or BD3 accruals, and which it only reminds someone to do. Moving work out of the close window entirely is covered in the guide to the zero-day close.

Our Close Agent works the BD1 to BD4 rows of your calendar: it reconciles accounts, investigates exceptions, and proposes accruals and adjusting entries with support, then sends each task to a named reviewer. It posts approved entries to NetSuite, Oracle, SAP S/4HANA, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Business Central, and QuickBooks, and the period can't lock until every task is signed off. To see how it fits your close days, explore our Close Agent.