Tag: continuous-close
All the articles with the tag "continuous-close".
Continuous close for FP&A
Updated:A three-part series: what a continuous (zero-day) close is and why to aim at one, one FP&A month worked old way and new, and how to build it with mainstream AI tools.
What a continuous close is, and why to aim at zero days
Zero-day close as a direction, what a continuous close actually is, who is talking about it, why the forecast is the point, and why a finance team can now build one: writing the code got cheap, owning it did not.
The use case: a contract signed on the 6th, on the forecast by the 8th
One FP&A month, old way and new: a contract that reaches the forecast in week six or on the morning of the 8th, which numbers can close early, which must wait, and the chain from purchase order to accrual that decides it.
How to build it: small processes, one log, approvals where people already are
The architecture of a continuous close: small processes orchestrated centrally, one append-only log, people at the gates, approvals in Slack or email, and a console that is only a view over the log.
Questions I asked
Questions I kept asking while designing the continuous close, with the answers I settled on: where the forecast lives, the two closes, why actuals load nightly against a monthly budget, exception queues, estimates, idempotency. A page that grows.