What lands, and when
What should an outsourced accounting provider deliver every month?
A defined set of things, on dates agreed in advance, in a state you can act on: books current and reconciled, a receivables position with next actions, payables prepared for your authorisation, payroll reconciled, the period formally closed, management reporting, and a short list of what needs your decision.
The dates matter as much as the contents. A pack that arrives when somebody gets to it is not a deliverable — it is a favour with a spreadsheet attached.
A month has a shape. It is not one delivery at the end.
The most common way monthly accounting disappoints is not poor work. It is batching. Where everything happens in the last three days, every month contains the same three days of reconstruction, receivables go unattended for four weeks at a time, and the pack lands too late to change anything. A month that is worked through produces a month that closes quickly.
| When | What lands | What state it should be in |
|---|---|---|
| Through the month | Transactions recorded, bank and card activity cleared, bills captured, sales invoices raised. | Current to a known cut-off. You should be able to ask “as at when?” and get a date rather than an estimate. |
| Weekly | The receivables position: what is overdue, what was promised, which promise was broken. | Each item carrying a next action and an owner — not simply an age bucket. |
| On a set day | Payables and commitments falling due, assembled for authorisation. | Prepared and evidenced, never released. Approval sits with the business. |
| First days after month end | Reconciliations completed; the unresolved list published. | Agreed to statements, with a named reason for anything that does not tie. |
| An agreed close date | The period closed. | A dated event with an owner. After it, these are the reported figures. |
| An agreed reporting date | Management reporting and the decision list. | Delivered unprompted, measured against something — prior month, prior year or plan. |
The specific working days belong in your engagement letter, not in an article. What matters is that they exist, are written down, and do not move each month.
What should be in the monthly pack — and what makes each part real.
A monthly pack is not a bundle of exports. Each part answers a question an owner actually has, and each has a condition that makes it worth reading.
- What the month did. Income and costs for the period, set against something — the prior month, the same month last year, or plan. A figure with no comparison carries almost no information.
- What the business is holding. The balance sheet, with the material balances explained in a line each. An unexplained balance is a question deferred, and deferred questions accumulate.
- Where the cash went. Movement across the period, not just an opening and closing balance. Profit and cash diverge for ordinary reasons, and the pack should show which reasons applied this month.
- Who owes you. Receivables by age, with what has been promised, what was broken, and what happens next on the largest items.
- What you owe. Payables and known commitments falling due, so that a payment decision is a decision rather than a discovery.
- What is unresolved. The exception list: item, reason, owner, date. A short list is a good sign. An absent list is not.
- What needs deciding. A small number of items only the business can settle — a concession request, a disputed invoice, an unusual transaction needing context.
Delivered is not reconciled. Reconciled is not closed.
Most disputes about monthly work are really vocabulary problems. Four words get used interchangeably and mean quite different things, and a buyer who separates them can describe exactly what they are not getting.
- Recorded. The transactions are in the system. Nothing has been checked against an outside source. This is the state most “the books are up to date” messages actually describe.
- Reconciled. Each account has been agreed to an external statement, and anything that does not tie has a named reason. This is the first state in which a figure is worth quoting.
- Closed. The period is finished on a stated date, exceptions are either resolved or explicitly listed, and the figures will not quietly change afterwards. Where a later correction is needed, it is recorded as a correction rather than an edit.
- Reported. The closed figures have been turned into something that answers a question, delivered to a person, on a date.
Ask which state each bank account is in today. A provider running the month answers immediately. The question is unanswerable for a provider who intends to start the work next week.
The ten-minute test.
A monthly deliverable is worth what it changes. Length, design and page count are not the measure. Sit down with the pack, alone, and see how far you get.
- Did the business make money last month, and why is that different from the month before?
- Do we have money — and how much of it is already committed?
- Who owes us, and what happens next on the three largest overdue accounts?
- What needs my decision this month?
If those four take longer than ten minutes, or cannot be answered without a call, the pack is a document rather than a deliverable. That is usually a presentation failure rather than a competence failure — the underlying work may be perfectly good — but it is still the buyer who pays for it, in the hour spent every month decoding what should have been stated.
What should not count as a monthly delivery.
None of the following are dishonest. They are the residue of work rather than a delivered standard, and they are commonly accepted as the real thing.
- A raw export from the accounting system, forwarded without comment.
- A bank balance, or a screenshot of one.
- A statement that the books are up to date, with no close date attached.
- A profit figure with nothing to compare it against.
- A pack with no unresolved list — which means either nothing is open, or you are not being shown it.
- Reporting that appears only in the months you ask for it.
- A spreadsheet rebuilt by hand each month that nobody else could reproduce.
The pattern common to all seven: they describe what the provider did, rather than putting the business in a position to decide something.
What the standard should say about a late month.
Months slip. A bank feed breaks, a client’s own records arrive late, a large query cannot be answered before a deadline. A standard that promises this never happens is not a standard; it is a sales line waiting to be broken. What a fair standard specifies is how a slip behaves.
- You hear before the date, not after it.
- The reason is specific — the named account, the missing document, the unanswered question — rather than a general apology.
- A new date is given, and it holds.
- The cause is recorded, so a repeat becomes visible instead of becoming normal.
A repeated slip with the same cause is not a scheduling problem. It is a scope problem, and it should be reopened as one. The standard also has to cut both ways: the most common cause of a late month is the business itself — missing bills, an unanswered question, a bank statement nobody sent. A provider should be able to show you exactly what it is waiting for and from whom, which turns an argument about lateness into a list.
Where At Par fits — and the limits.
At Par runs the month against this shape rather than against a task list. Work through the period rather than batched at the end, reconciliations and a close on a date, receivables carrying a next action, payables prepared for your authorisation, payroll reconciled, and management reporting delivered with the decisions it raises — with a qualified accountant (ACCA) accountable for the work. Records are evidence-backed and organised so an auditor or a lender can review them.
This standard is deliberately provider-neutral. Hold it against your current arrangement first. A separate question, if what you are really assessing is the boundary of responsibility rather than the monthly artefact: what an outsourced accounting provider should own. If the books are behind, the monthly rhythm cannot start until catch-up work is done.
Asked by owners judging what actually arrives.
What should a bookkeeper deliver each month? +
At minimum: transactions recorded through the period rather than assembled at the end, every bank and card account reconciled to a statement, supporting documents attached to the entries they support, a receivables position showing what is overdue and what was promised, payables due assembled for approval, payroll reconciled where it applies, a list of anything unresolved, and a stated date on which the period was closed. Reporting sits on top of that. Without the reconciliation and the close date, the rest is unverified.
What is a monthly financial reporting pack? +
A prepared set of statements and schedules delivered on an agreed date, covering what the period earned and spent, what the business holds, how cash moved, who owes what, and what remains unresolved. The distinguishing feature of a good one is comparison and consequence: figures measured against a prior period or plan, and a short list of decisions the numbers raise. A pack that contains only outputs, with nothing to compare and nothing to decide, is a filing exercise.
When should monthly management accounts be ready? +
On a date agreed in advance and repeated every month, rather than on an industry-standard day. What that date can reasonably be depends on how quickly source records arrive: bank data is usually available immediately, while supplier bills, payroll inputs and client-side documents often are not. The reasonable expectation is a date the provider proposes, commits to, and hits consistently — with early notice and a specific reason on the rare month it moves.
What reports should a small business get every month? +
A profit and loss for the period with a comparison, a balance sheet with material balances explained, a view of cash movement rather than just a closing balance, an aged receivables list with next actions, and payables or commitments falling due. Beyond that, add only what changes a decision. Extra schedules that nobody reads are a cost in preparation time and a distraction from the few numbers that actually drive the month.
Should a monthly pack include a balance sheet? +
Yes, and with the material balances explained rather than merely listed. The balance sheet is where unfinished bookkeeping becomes visible: unreconciled control accounts, stale suspense balances, prepayments never released, loan balances that do not agree to the lender. A profit figure can look entirely reasonable while the balance sheet shows the work is incomplete, which is why a pack containing only a profit and loss hides more than it shows.
Is a profit and loss statement enough on its own? +
No. It reports one period’s performance and says nothing about what the business holds, what it owes, what it is owed, or whether the cash exists. Two businesses with identical profit can be in completely different positions — one collecting on time, one carrying months of overdue invoices and a large payables backlog. A profit figure alone also cannot show whether the underlying records were reconciled, which is the question that determines whether it means anything.
How can I tell whether last month is actually closed? +
Ask for the date it closed and who closed it, then ask for the list of items that were open at that point. A closed period has both. Two further checks: whether the figures reported have changed since, and if they have, whether the change is recorded as a correction or was simply edited into place. A period that can still quietly move is not closed, whatever the covering message says.
What should I do if the monthly reports are always late? +
Separate cause from pattern. Establish first what the agreed date actually is, in writing, because in many arrangements one was never set. Then ask, for the last three months, what the provider was waiting for and from whom — late months are frequently caused by documents the business itself did not send. If the same cause recurs with no attempt to fix it, that is a scope or capacity problem rather than a scheduling one, and it should be reopened as a change to the engagement or a change of provider.
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Reviewed by an ACCA on the At Par team · Last updated 29 July 2026 · This is a provider-neutral monthly standard, written to be used against any provider. See what we actually do.