Month-End Close Assessment, Run on a Month You Already Closed
Enter last month’s close stage by stage and get the replay scope for your own files.
A month-end close assessment is only as good as the month it scores. This diagnostic sorts your last close into waiting, hand work and judgment, then names the stage a replay on your real files should prove first. KORE1 runs that replay and staffs the people who keep the rebuilt close running, and a year after we place someone, 92% of them are still there.
Last updated: September 23, 2026
Most close assessments are questionnaires. Rate your reconciliations one to five. Rate your automation. People fill them in from memory, usually the week after a close went badly, so the score mostly records how that week felt.
This one reads the calendar. Put in how many days each stage of your last close took and what you still have from that month, and it prints the close back as an adding-machine tape with the hand work highlighted. The method is the Close Replay, which KORE1 consultant Khurram Tehseen used to cut one firm’s month-end from 26 days down to 3, and our private credit data operations page walks through that engagement. The engagement itself sits with KORE1’s finance and accounting consultants.
A Month-End Close Assessment That Takes Two Minutes
It opens on the 26-day pattern from our private credit close illustration. Change each line to your own last close, counted in business days from period end. Count every day once, under the stage that held it up. Then read the tape.
Days per stage, last completed close
- Waiting on filesBorrower packages, bank and administrator reports 7
- Keying documentsPDFs and statements typed into workbooks 6
- Tying outAgreeing to the administrator, sub-ledgers or bank 5
- Marks, accruals and reviewValuation calls, accruals, sign-off questions 4
- Building the packCommittee, lender and investor reporting 4
waiting on someone else hand work judgment
What you still have from that month
Who could run this close without asking anyone
- Waiting on files7W
- Keying documents6H
- Tying out5H
- Marks, accruals and review4J
- Building the pack4H
- Waiting7S
- Hand work15S
- Judgment4S
- Close days26T
- Hand work share58%%
Keying documents, 6 days
The largest hand-work line on your tape. A replay rebuilds it on the files you actually received and times it against the 6 days it took.
Yes
The files and the pack are enough to run it. Without stage dates, the timeline gets rebuilt from email and file timestamps.
Waiting is your biggest single line, 7 days. That one shrinks through intake terms, such as system exports on a fixed day. One person holds all of it, so book their time first and put a second name in the replay.
Close 26 days, hand work 15. Replay first: Keying documents.
Your numbers stay here. The tool does arithmetic on your own numbers and prints no benchmark it can’t source, so there’s no predicted “after” figure on the tape. Only a replay produces one of those.
The replayed schedule on the left, the signed pack on the right. Every highlighted row is a disagreement somebody has to explain.
Why a Month-End Close Assessment Should Score a Real Month
Close maturity surveys aren’t useless. They start a decent argument in a controller’s meeting. What they can’t do is tell you where the days went, because whoever fills one in is remembering rather than counting, and people remember a close by its worst night, the one where the administrator’s file landed at nine and the pack went out at two. Memory is a bad ledger.
A replay starts from the other end. Khurram’s rule is to test a process on work that is already finished, grade it against what really happened, and only then ask anyone to believe a projection. For a close, the thing that already happened is last month. Files came in on known dates, a pack went out to the committee and the lenders, and every correction since then is written down somewhere, in a journal entry, an email thread or a restated page.
So we rerun that month through a rebuilt process and score two things. How many days each stage takes this time around. And how the rebuilt numbers compare with the pack you signed, line by line, including anything your team had to restate afterward. Anything else is opinion.
Short version? Grade the month you already have.
How the Close Assessment Reads Each Stage
Each line gets a code. Only hand work is something a replay can prove on your own files, but all three stay on the tape, because a rebuild that ignores waiting and judgment ends up promising days it can’t deliver.
| Stage | Code | What a replay measures | What usually shortens it | Who owns it afterward |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waiting on files | W | Days from period end until the last file lands | Intake terms, meaning system exports delivered on a fixed day | Whoever holds the borrower and administrator relationships |
| Keying documents | H | Hours to structure each file, and the keying errors in them | Structured intake with validation the day a file arrives | A data engineer, often through data engineering staff augmentation |
| Tying out | H | Days to agree two sets of books, and every break found | One record per borrower that both sides reconcile to | The same engineer, with an analyst deciding what each break means |
| Marks, accruals and review | J | Days, and which calls changed after review | A smaller exception queue for the same people | A credit analyst for the queue, a controller for sign-off |
| Building the pack | H | Days from final numbers to sign-off, and restated pages | A pack assembled from validated records instead of copied cells | A financial analyst, frequently on contract terms while the rebuild settles |
One ordinary month, laid out in the order the close used it. The first pile is the input. The last one is the answer key.
What to Pull From the Month You Pick
Pick an ordinary month. Not a quarter-end, not the month the auditors were in, not the one where someone was on leave. You want the close your team runs eleven times a year. Boring is good.
Then pull five things. The files exactly as they arrived, with their dates. The pack exactly as it went out. After that, whatever dates you have for each stage finishing, which usually means email, then every correction made after sign-off, and finally the workbooks the team actually used that month rather than this month’s tidier version.
The first two decide whether a replay can run at all. Auditors lean the same way, and for the same reason. The PCAOB’s audit evidence standard, AS 1105, ranks evidence from original documents above copies or documents “otherwise converted into electronic form,” whose reliability depends on the controls over that conversion. A replay run on the cleaned-up workbook is really a replay of the cleanup.
Keep the originals.
How Many Days a Close Usually Takes
- 26 → 3 Close days at one firm, before and after Khurram Tehseen’s own engagement record
- 50% Finance teams needing six or more business days Ledge 2025 benchmark, 100 finance professionals, via CFO.com
- 18% Teams closing in three business days or fewer Same Ledge 2025 benchmark
- 92% KORE1 hires who stay past twelve months Measured across KORE1 placements over the last year
A hundred respondents is a small sample, so read those two percentages as a direction rather than a law. The 26 is one firm. The number that matters for yours is the total on your own tape, and funds that wait on borrower and administrator files usually sit well past the six-day line before anyone has keyed a single page.
What the Top Line on Your Tape Usually Means
The biggest single line decides what comes first. Four shapes turn up most.
-
on top
Waiting is the biggest line
The close idles on borrowers, banks or the administrator, and intake terms move that far more than new software does.
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on top
Tie-out is the biggest line
Two record-keepers disagree about the same loans monthly, which usually means no single record per borrower exists yet.
-
on top
Review is the biggest line
Judgment is the bottleneck, so the answer is a seat, often a controller, before any rebuild starts.
-
One name
One person runs all of it
That person is the database, and our finance recruiters usually seat a second one before the replay.
Keying heavy instead? Khurram has priced the hours a fund loses to PDFs, line by line. And if nobody senior owns the close at all right now, an interim CFO usually has to come before any replay.
Common Questions
What is a month-end close assessment?
A month-end close assessment measures how long each stage of your close takes, why, and what would shorten it. The useful ones score a real month rather than a survey, so the answer rests on dates and files instead of memory. That’s the whole difference.
How many days should a month-end close take?
Fewer than most teams manage. In Ledge’s 2025 benchmark of 100 finance professionals, half needed six or more business days and 18% closed in three or fewer. Funds that depend on borrower and administrator files tend to run longer, which is why the waiting line on the tape matters so much.
How is a Close Replay different from a close maturity model?
A maturity model rates how your close is designed, while a replay times how one actual month ran. Models help with planning. The replay tells you which stage to fix first, measured on files you already have.
What do we have to send before a replay?
Two things are required, the files exactly as they arrived that month and the pack exactly as it went out. Stage dates, post-close corrections and the workbooks the team used all sharpen the scoring, and the diagnostic above shows which of those you’re missing. Everything else is a bonus.
Should we replay a quarter-end or year-end close?
Not first. Pick an ordinary month your team runs eleven times a year, because that’s where the repeatable days live. A quarter-end carries extra valuation and investor work that’s real but lumpy, and it makes a poor baseline. Quarter-ends come later.
Does this replace our fund administrator or close software?
No. Both stay. A replay runs alongside them and uses their outputs as inputs. What changes is the work between them, the keying and tie-out your team does by hand because the two systems never quite agree.
Who runs the close once it’s been rebuilt?
Usually a pair. A data engineer keeps the pipelines and validation rules working, and a credit or financial analyst works the exceptions they raise, usually on contract while the rebuild settles and then as a direct hire once everyone knows what the seat really is. KORE1 staffs both, and the recruiters doing it average over fifteen years in the job.
Put Last Month’s Tape on the Table
Send us the tape from the diagnostic, or just name the month. An ordinary one is best. We’ll tell you plainly whether a replay would find enough to be worth running. If it wouldn’t, you’ll hear that on the first call.
Book a Close Replay Call →Rather start with the person who built the method? Connect with Khurram Tehseen on LinkedIn.
