Month-end close for a small architecture firm: a checklist, and how receipts reach each project

Most small firms do not skip the close. They do it late, from memory, and without the project on each receipt. The cost shows up later: you cannot say what a project has spent against its budget, and the ratios in the financial scorecard guide are calculated from numbers nobody trusts. The AIA notes that the net and payroll multipliers are "typically monitored only once each month or billing cycle", so a clean monthly close is what makes them usable.

Download the checklist as a plain text file. It prints cleanly from this page too.

What "closed" means

Use one definition for the whole firm, and write it down:

• Every statement line, for every bank and card account, has a source document and one project code (or OVERHEAD).
• Every invoice you issued, and every supplier invoice you received, is on the invoice log.
• Payroll is posted.
• Whatever you could not resolve is on a list with an owner and a date.
• One pack has gone to your accountant, after you read it.

The IRS says only that you may choose any recordkeeping system that "clearly shows your income and expenses", and that you must keep records as long as they are needed to prove income or deductions on a return. Your accountant knows what your country and your tax situation require. Ask them which format they want before you build anything.

The checklist

In the last week of the month

• Ask everyone to drop each receipt into its project folder as it happens, and clear anything left over from earlier in the month.
• Confirm the list of active projects and their project codes. Add new ones and retire finished ones, so every cost has somewhere to land.
• If you track time, check that every timesheet is complete. Direct and indirect hours by person feed utilization (see the scorecard guide).

First working days of the new month

• Download the month's statements for every bank and card account, as CSV where you can.
• Add each statement line to the Receipts sheet, one row per line.
• Match each line to a document: a receipt, a supplier invoice or a payroll record. Paste the link to the file in the row.
• Tag each line with a project code, or OVERHEAD, and one category.
• Mark costs you will pass on to a client as reimbursable, so they are billed and kept out of your own overhead.
• List the exceptions: lines with no document, documents with no line, possible duplicates and amounts that look wrong.
• Give every exception an owner and a date. Resolve it, or park it on the open-items list.

Invoices and payroll

• Check that every invoice you issued is in the invoice log with its due date, and every supplier invoice you received is recorded.
• List the invoices still unpaid, with days overdue, and start the reminder schedule for any that need it.
• Post payroll and payroll-related costs. Compare headcount with the timesheets.

Review

• Total spending by project and by category. Compare each project's spending with its budget.
• If you use firm-level ratios (utilization, net multiplier, overhead rate), calculate them from the closed numbers.

Hand-off and lock

• Assemble one pack for your accountant: the summary sheet, the receipts folder, bank statements, the payroll report and the open-items list. Ask your accountant which format they want.
• Read the pack yourself before it goes out. Nothing should reach your accountant unreviewed.
• Lock the month's rows. Record any later correction as a new dated entry rather than editing the old one.

How receipts reach each project

The part that breaks most often is the first step: a receipt exists, but nothing says which project it belongs to. The fix is a short chain that needs no special software, only Google Drive (or Dropbox) and a Google Sheet (or Excel).

1. One folder per project, named with the project code. For example P-014 Casa Laureles. Add one folder called OVERHEAD.
2. Every receipt goes into a folder the moment it exists. Photograph it on site, or forward the email, into the right folder. Name files 2026-09-04_supplier_310.00 (date, supplier, amount), so a file name alone is enough to find it later.
3. One row per receipt in a Receipts sheet. Columns: Date, Supplier, Description, Amount, Project, Category, Source (bank, receipt or payroll), Link to file, Status.
4. Bank lines meet receipts. Paste each statement line as a row. Match it to a receipt row by date, supplier and amount, and record the link. A line with no match is an exception.
5. Exceptions are listed, not hidden. A receipt with no bank line, a bank line with no receipt, a possible duplicate and a payment with no invoice each get a status and an owner.
6. A summary tab reads the sheet. Spending by project and category comes from formulas, so it updates as rows are added.

Two formulas that do most of the work

With the columns in this order (A Date, B Supplier, C Description, D Amount, E Project, F Category), spending per project on a summary tab, where cell A2 holds a project code, is:

=SUMIFS(Receipts!$D:$D, Receipts!$E:$E, $A2)

A flag for possible duplicates, in a helper column on the Receipts sheet, is:

=IF(COUNTIFS($A:$A, A2, $B:$B, B2, $D:$D, D2) > 1, "Possible duplicate", "")

Both work in Google Sheets and Excel. To compare spending with budget, add a Budget column next to the project code on the summary tab and subtract.

What to hand your accountant

• The summary sheet: totals by project and by category.
• The Receipts sheet, with the link to each file, or the receipts folder.
• The month's bank and card statements.
• The payroll report.
• The open-items list, with what you are still chasing.

Send it only after you have read it. A person who knows the projects will spot a wrong code faster than any formula.

Weekly and monthly

The monthly close does not replace a weekly look at cash. The RIBA Journal quotes Emily Rae of Fletcher Priest Architects, whose team reviews the cash and debtor position formally at least once a week and keeps short-term and long-term cashflow forecasts. For the invoices still unpaid at month-end, see the late-invoice reminder schedule. To have an AI assistant draft the accountant summary from your export, the Admin Prompt Pack includes a month-end prompt: 25 free AI prompts for architecture firms.

Sources

• AIA Best Practices, Budgeting key performance indicators (monthly monitoring of multipliers).
• IRS, Recordkeeping (what records to keep and why).
• RIBA Journal, How should architects deal with clients if they don't pay invoices on time? (weekly cash and debtor review).
• PKF O'Connor Davies, 10 essential key performance indicators for architects and engineers (net revenue excludes reimbursable expenses).