What responsibilities do you have during month-end?

Question

Bobbi Witt · Accepted Answer

"I'm new to the accounting world but we had a project in my advanced accounting class where we had to run month end from start to finish. This included updating journal entries and opening and closing ledgers multiple times for a real world view of how month end is run."

Bobbi Witt · Answer

Explain your month-end experience and elaborate on all responsibilities, especially if there's a complex journal entry. The point of this question is to ensure that your responsibility is more than typing in debit and credit into the system and that you have additional responsibilities and understand the GL impact.

Some companies don't have month-end close, or it's quarterly, or they only have end year prepared by a CPA firm. If this is the case, explain your role in preparing and maintaining many accounts and reconciliations.

If you're recently out of school and new in the field, use an example from a class or project.

Bobbi Witt · Answer

"I've been responsible for opening and closing the ledgers for input by multiple departments. I'd get approval from the executive director of finance to open ledgers after the month had ended and closed them after inputting edits."

Bobbi Witt · Answer

"As a Senior Accountant, I've spent the past two years as a General Ledger Accountant, where I'm responsible for a posting 50% of all monthly journal entries for a specific profit center. One of the more difficult Journal Entries is the payroll entry. This includes the actual and accrued payroll entry. Since the payroll system isn't linked to the company's current ERP system, it's done and generated in a separate system. Each entry is about 54 line items and it can't be downloaded and then uploaded into the General Ledger due to system limitations, so it's all manually entered. It's very time consuming and most importantly, it's necessary to ensure the accrued payroll entry is correct based on the number of payroll working days left in the month. If this entry is off, then the following month's entry will be inaccurate."

Anonymous User · Answer

"As a Senior Accountant, I have spent the past five years posting monthly journal entries for various accounts. I have worked on monthly reconciliations for cash and other balance sheet items. At the end of the month, I closed the ledger once all reconciliations are done. My monthly responsibilities also included preparing the financial statements."

Anonymous User · Answer

"One of my responsibilities in my last position at Deloitte was to post entries during month-end. Except for routine entries, I had to generate necessary entries by analyzing B/S, IS and a variety of reports. I reconciled accounts to ensure that accounting information was compliant and accurate.

Payroll entry was the most difficult. This entry included both actual and accrued accounts and included massive and complicated raw data. Payroll entry was very time-consuming to post, and it was easy to miss details. However, I established a spreadsheet that included many formulas and functions that linked to raw data. I could simply copy and paste the raw data and then the entry would be 80% complete. In this way, I significantly improved my work efficiency and reduced mistakes."

Anonymous User · Answer

"Reconcile bank and credit card accounts, analyze general ledger accounts, prepare necessary journal entries, prepare basic financial statements and any necessary notes to the financial statements, and distribute same to the necessary stakeholders; then, answer questions posed by those."

What responsibilities do you have during month-end?

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9. What responsibilities do you have during month-end?

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