Month-End Close: From 3 Weeks to 5 Days

At a glance

A manufacturer was spending three weeks every month closing the books. By the time leadership saw final numbers, the next month was half over. We automated the data pulls, reconciliations, and reporting behind the close in Tableau, and the finance team now closes in five days. That is 70% faster.

Challenges

• Manual ERP exportsFinance pulled GL, inventory, and cost data out of the ERP by hand every month, then stitched it together in Excel.
• Reconciliation bottlenecksInventory, work-in-process, and cost of goods sold took days to tie out, and each correction meant starting the spreadsheet chain over.
• Stale numbersLeadership made production and purchasing decisions on results that were already three weeks old.
• Key-person riskThe close lived in a handful of workbooks that only one or two people fully understood.

Solution

We rebuilt the close around a single source of truth:

• Automated daily data pulls from the ERP into a governed reporting layer
• Rule-based reconciliations that flag exceptions instead of rechecking every line
• Standardized close checklist with clear owners and due dates
• Automated Tableau dashboards for P&L, margin, and variance that refresh as soon as the books close

Benefits

1. Time back for analysisTwo weeks a month that used to go to exporting and reconciling now goes to explaining variances and advising operations.
2. Decisions on current numbersPlant and executive leadership see final results within days of month end, while there is still time to act on them.
3. Fewer surprisesReconciliation runs continuously during the month, so issues surface early instead of on day 15 of the close.
4. A repeatable processThe close no longer depends on one person's workbook. New team members follow the same checklist and the same dashboards.