15 Things to Check in QuickBooks Online Before You Close the Month

Most errors in a set of books are ordinary: a bill entered twice, a vendor in the wrong account, a charge nobody classified. They're easy to fix before the close and expensive to find after it.

Closing the month means more than reconciling the bank. The reports you send to a board, a lender or an owner are only as good as the data under them, and small errors compound. Below are fifteen checks, grouped by what kind of problem they catch, with a way to run each by hand in QuickBooks Online.

Doing all fifteen by hand every month is real work, which is why they tend to get skipped. Start with the ones that cost you the most.

The report names below are the standard QuickBooks Online ones. If a report is laid out differently in your version, a custom report with the same columns does the same job.

Entry errors: things that were recorded wrong

1. Duplicate invoices

The same vendor, the same amount, booked twice. It overstates expense and invites a double payment.

By hand: run Transaction List by Vendor, export it, and count combinations of vendor, number and amount. The full walkthrough.

2. Vendor coding drift

A vendor lands in a different account than usual, which moves dollars between lines of your P&L.

By hand: pivot Transaction List by Vendor with accounts as columns and look for vendors in two or more accounts. The full walkthrough.

3. Vendor name duplication

A new vendor is a near-match for an existing one. Spend splits across two records and duplicate payments slip past the warning.

By hand: sort the vendor list alphabetically and look for near-matches, then merge them.

4. Suspense account dumping

Charges parked in catch-all accounts such as Uncategorized Expense or Ask My Accountant.

By hand: open each holding account in the chart of accounts and run its report. The balance should be zero at close. The cleanup guide.

5. Unmapped accounts

Spend landed in an account your budget structure doesn't cover yet, so it shows as actuals with no budget.

By hand: run the P&L and check every account with activity against the accounts your budget includes, paying attention to anything created since last month.

6. Missing class or location

A transaction posted without the tag your reporting depends on.

By hand: run the P&L by Class (or by Location) and open the "Not specified" column.

Things that changed: patterns worth a second look

7. Missing recurring vendors

A bill that shows up every month didn't this time. It may be missing, or it may be sitting unrecorded.

By hand: run Expenses by Vendor Summary for this month and the last few, and look for recurring names that dropped out.

8. Expense deviation spikes

An account moved far from its own history.

By hand: run the P&L with monthly columns, then compare each account against its recent average. Decide on a multiple and a dollar floor so small accounts don't drown the review.

9. Unusual transaction frequency

A vendor billed more times this month than it ever has before.

By hand: count each vendor's transactions this month against prior months in Transaction List by Vendor.

10. New or rare vendors

Money went somewhere it has never gone, or almost never.

By hand: compare this month's Expenses by Vendor Summary with the prior twelve months and note first-time names.

11. Inventory adjustment outliers

A write-off or adjustment well outside the normal range.

By hand: list inventory adjustment transactions for the period and compare them with prior periods.

Cash and judgment calls

12. Slow-paying customers

An invoice was paid well after its due date. It's a collections signal that the aging report can't show once the invoice is paid.

By hand: compare invoice due dates with payment dates (the Invoices and Received Payments report is a starting point). It also feeds your DSO.

13. Early-paid vendors

A bill was paid well before it was due, which is cash that could have stayed in the bank longer.

By hand: compare bill due dates with payment dates (the Bills and Applied Payments report is a starting point). It feeds your DPO.

14. Capitalization threshold

A large line item hit an expense account that may need to be capitalized as an asset instead.

By hand: run Transaction Detail by Account on repairs, supplies and equipment-type accounts, sort by amount, and test the large ones against your capitalization policy.

15. Personal expense leakage

Consumer-style vendors showing up in the P&L.

By hand: scan the vendor list for consumer merchants and review catch-all accounts. The full walkthrough.

A sensible order

1. Holding accounts and duplicates first. They're quick to check and the most likely to hide real dollars.
2. Then vendor drift and look-alike vendors, because they distort margins.
3. Then the pattern checks, where a human decides what's normal.
4. Finally the cash and judgment items, monthly or quarterly depending on your size.

Where a checkup comes in

DrillFi's Financial Check Up runs all fifteen on your QuickBooks Online file and ranks what it finds by dollars, with each finding tied to the exact transactions. Several settings are yours to choose, such as which keywords mark a personal expense and which accounts might need capitalizing, so it flags what matters to your business. In the ongoing product, the same checks re-run on every sync, and the open issues can go on the last page of your monthly package. See a sample finding.

DrillFi Financial Check Up is an advisory service. It is not an audit, review or compilation, and it is not tax preparation or legal advice. QuickBooks menus, report names and plan features change over time, so check each step against your version.