Month-end close checklist for Irish small businesses (Ireland)

Every account the business uses should agree with its statement at the last day of the month: current accounts, savings, credit cards, Revolut or other e-money accounts, and payment platforms. If the balance in the books differs from the statement, find the difference before going further, because every other check depends on the bank being right.

Look for transactions sitting in a suspense or uncategorised account. Each one is a question someone will ask later, and it is cheaper to answer now.

Run the aged debtors report. Confirm every payment received has been matched to the right invoice, chase anything overdue, and note any invoice that looks unlikely to be paid. A customer who has not paid for months is a credit control problem first and a bad debt question second, and both are easier to deal with early.

Run the aged creditors report and check that every supplier bill received in the month is in the books, including the ones that arrived by email and were never forwarded. Compare a few supplier statements with your ledger; differences usually mean a missing bill or a payment posted to the wrong supplier.

Skim the month’s transactions for VAT treatment. Irish rates are 23%, 13.5%, 9% and 4.8%, and since 1 July 2026 food service and hairdressing sit at 9%. Watch for purchases with no VAT that should have it, foreign suppliers that need reverse-charge treatment, and personal items that crept onto a business card.

Fixing a code in the month it happened is easy. Fixing it after the VAT return has gone in means a correction.

Record costs that belong to the month but have not been billed, such as electricity used, and spread costs paid in advance, such as annual insurance, across the months they cover. Post the month’s payroll from your payroll product or bureau if it is not in the books already, and check the liability to Revenue matches the payroll report.

Spend ten minutes on the reports, not just the bank balance.

• Is the profit for the month roughly what you expected, and if not, why?
• Has any expense line jumped compared with last month?
• How many weeks of costs does the cash in the bank cover?
• Which customers make up most of what you are owed?

Sometimes the close reveals something bigger than a miscoded line: a supplier you have been paying twice, a customer who has quietly stopped paying, or a cost that has crept up month after month. Treat those as the real value of the close. The checklist exists to surface them while they are still small.

Write a two-line note for each issue and who will deal with it. Next month, start the close by checking those notes, so problems are followed through rather than rediscovered.

HelloBooks keeps transactions coded and reconciled through the month, so the close starts from a nearly finished ledger. Its AI drafts the month-end close, listing unreconciled items, missing receipts and possible accruals for you to review. Nothing posts until you confirm it.

Irish bank feeds are rolling out; statement upload with AI matching works now. Payroll is posted from your payroll product, since HelloBooks does not run Irish payroll.