Day 18. The books still aren’t closed.
Your controller is “almost there.” The bank reconciliation has a $14,000 variance nobody can explain. Three vendor invoices are sitting in someone’s inbox, unapproved. The revenue recognition spreadsheet has a circular reference that keeps crashing Excel.
Meanwhile, the board meeting is in six days. The cash forecast is based on last month’s actuals—which don’t exist yet. You’re making decisions about Q1 hiring using mental math and hope.
This is what a 20-day close costs you. Not in accounting hours. In blind spots.
Most CEOs think a slow close is a finance problem. It’s not. It’s a decision-making problem.
Every day your books stay open is a day you’re flying blind. You think you know your cash position, but you don’t. You think you know your margins, but you’re guessing. You think you’re profitable, but the actuals might tell a different story.
A 20-day close means you’re making decisions on Day 21 with information from Day -20. In a business moving fast, that’s not a lag. That’s a liability.
Day 1-20: Books open. No actuals. Decisions based on forecasts and gut feel.
Day 21: Books close. Surprises emerge. That project lost money. That customer churned. That expense line exploded.
Day 22: Fire drill. Explain to board. Revise forecast. Scramble to recover.
Day 1-20: Repeat.
Companies stuck in this cycle aren’t bad at finance. They’re structurally unable to see problems until it’s too late to prevent them.
A 10-day close isn’t about working faster. It’s about knowing sooner.
At 10 days, you get:
By the 10th of every month, you know exactly what happened last month. Real revenue. Real expenses. Real margins. Real cash flow. No estimates. No “we’re still reconciling.” No surprises three weeks later.
What that unlocks:
The difference between a 10-day close and a 20-day close isn’t 10 days. It’s the difference between managing and reacting.
Before we fix it, let’s diagnose it. Slow closes almost always have the same root causes:
1. The Reconciliation Bottleneck
Bank recs, credit card recs, intercompany recs—each one waiting on something else. One missing statement holds up everything downstream. The work isn’t hard. The sequencing is broken.
2. The Approval Black Hole
Invoices sitting in inboxes. Expense reports awaiting sign-off. Journal entries pending review. None of this is complex. It’s just stuck.
3. The Revenue Recognition Puzzle
Especially in services and SaaS: what counts this month? What’s deferred? What’s recognized? Without clear rules and clean data, this becomes a multi-day negotiation every single month.
4. The Spreadsheet Dependency
The close lives in 14 spreadsheets that Sarah maintains. Some have manual inputs. Some have formulas pointing to other spreadsheets. One has a macro that only works on Sarah’s laptop. When Sarah’s on vacation, the close takes 25 days.
5. The “One More Thing” Syndrome
Books are almost closed. Then someone finds a missing invoice. Then an accrual needs adjusting. Then the CEO asks a question that requires re-cutting the data. The close date keeps sliding because there’s no hard stop.
Sound familiar? Most companies have all five.
Foundation Rhythm is the first of three rhythms in the Financial Rhythm System. It solves the “getting ambushed” problem by creating visibility—fast.
Here’s what gets installed:
A hard schedule with hard deadlines. Not “we try to close by day 15.” Specific tasks assigned to specific people on specific days.
| Day | What Happens |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Bank and credit card reconciliations complete |
| 3-4 | AP/AR cutoff, accruals posted |
| 5-6 | Revenue recognition finalized |
| 7-8 | Department review and variance analysis |
| 9-10 | Final review, books locked, reporting distributed |
The calendar isn’t optional. It’s the rhythm. Miss your day, you’ve broken the chain.
You shouldn’t have to ask “what’s our cash position?” You should know before you ask.
Daily cash visibility means:
This isn’t a dashboard project. It’s a 30-minute daily process that eliminates the “let me check and get back to you” response.
Monthly P&L reviews are autopsies. Weekly margin tracking is a health monitor.
Every week, before the books close, you see:
By the time the close happens, there are no surprises. You’ve been watching the story develop in real-time.
“What’s our cash position?” “Let me check with accounting and get back to you this afternoon.”
“How did we do last month?” “We’re still closing. Should have numbers by end of week.”
“Are we on track for the quarter?” “I think so? The forecast is a little stale but directionally right.”
“What’s our cash position?” ”$847K operating, $2.1M total. AR is heavier than usual—I’m watching two invoices.”
“How did we do last month?” “Closed yesterday. Revenue at 103% of plan, margins held at 34%. Full report’s in your inbox.”
“Are we on track for the quarter?” “Yes. Here’s the weekly tracker—we’re at 67% with five weeks left.”
Same questions. Different answers. Different company.
Foundation Rhythm doesn’t take 90 days. The close acceleration happens in the first 30.
Week 1: Diagnose the Bottlenecks
Map your current close process. Every step, every dependency, every handoff. Find the three things that consistently hold you up. Usually: reconciliations, approvals, and revenue recognition.
Week 2: Build the Close Calendar
Assign every task to a day and an owner. No shared ownership. No “whenever we get to it.” Hard deadlines, hard accountability.
Week 3: Install Daily Cash
Set up the daily cash process. Usually this means: bank feeds consolidated, AR/AP visibility created, 15-minute morning review implemented. Not a dashboard. A habit.
Week 4: Execute First 10-Day Close
Run the new process. It won’t be perfect. Some things will break. That’s fine. You’ll find the remaining bottlenecks and fix them for Month 2.
By Day 30, you’ve closed books in 10 days at least once. By Day 60, it’s the new normal. By Day 90, your team can’t imagine going back.
“We’re too complex for a 10-day close.”
Complexity is an explanation, not an excuse. Multi-entity companies with international operations close in 10 days. The question isn’t complexity—it’s process. If your close takes 20+ days, the process is broken, not the business.
“Our accounting team is already stretched.”
A 10-day close takes less total effort than a 20-day close. Here’s why: when the close drags, everything drags. Questions pile up. Rework compounds. People context-switch. A compressed close with clear deadlines is actually less work because it eliminates the drag.
“We don’t have the systems.”
You don’t need new systems. You need new processes. The 10-day close is achievable with QuickBooks, Xero, or NetSuite. The constraint isn’t software—it’s discipline.
“Our controller says it’s not possible.”
Controllers who’ve never done a 10-day close often think it’s impossible. Controllers who’ve done it can’t imagine going back. Sometimes the constraint is imagination, not reality.
Here’s a partial list of disasters I’ve seen at companies with 20+-day closes:
Every one of these was preventable. Not with better people. With better rhythm.
Foundation Rhythm is the first rhythm we install because nothing else works without it.
You can’t build a 13-week cash forecast if your actuals are three weeks stale. You can’t create real-time intelligence if the underlying data is unreliable. You can’t stop growing broke if you can’t see margins until the month is already over.
Visibility first. Then foresight. Then intelligence.
That’s why Foundation Rhythm comes first.
How long does your close take today?
If the answer is more than 10 days, you’re making decisions in the dark. Not because you lack intelligence. Because you lack visibility.
The fix isn’t heroic effort from your accounting team. It’s rhythm. Process. Discipline. A system that runs the same way every month, whether Sarah’s on vacation or not.
That’s Foundation Rhythm.
See Foundation Rhythm in action
Book your diagnosis call — Let’s map your path to a 10-day close