The accounts system and the folders the schedules live in
Xero, Sage, QuickBooks or the others on the integrations list, read only, plus SharePoint or Google Workspace for the schedules and the pack. Up to three systems in a First Agent.
Finance · AGT-11 Month-End Assembler
Month-end reporting automation that assembles the pack and names what is missing.
The close is the same every month: the bank reconciliation, the aged debtors and creditors, the accruals schedule, the intercompany, the fixed asset movements, all gathered from the same places into the same pack, and the same three items missing because the same three people have not sent them.
Month-End Assembler gathers the schedules you always gather, builds the pack in your format, and produces one list of what it could not find and who owns it. It assembles. It does not make accounting judgements, and it does not sign anything off.
01 / The workflow
Gather, reconcile the sources, assemble, list the gaps, chase the owners, hand over for sign-off.
Assembly is the agent's job. Judgement, the accrual that needs a decision, the provision that needs a view, stays with the person who signs the pack. The line between the two is drawn in the audit and written down.
01
Gather
The trial balance and the ledgers from the accounts system, the bank statements, the schedules people keep in spreadsheets, the reports from payroll and stock. From the places you name, on the day you name, read only.
02
Reconcile the sources to each other
Does the bank schedule agree to the bank statement? Does the debtor listing agree to the control account? The agent does the arithmetic and shows every difference with both sides. It does not decide what a difference means.
03
Assemble the pack
Your format, your section order, your cover sheet, the same as last month because it is built from last month's. Every figure in the pack carries a reference to the schedule it came from.
04
List the gaps
One page: what is missing, what does not agree, what has not been received, and who owns each item. This is the page the finance lead used to spend the first two days of the close producing by hand.
05
Chase the owners
A short note to each person who owes something, saying exactly what and by when, in the tone you approved. Internal only. Nothing leaves the business. A person can switch the chasing off for any owner, any month.
06
Hand over for sign-off
The pack, the gap list and the reconciliations go to the person who signs, with the judgement items marked as theirs. Hardy records what was gathered, from where, when, and what changed after a person reviewed it.
02 / The boundaries
What it cannot do
Four things Month-End Assembler will never do on its own authority.
- It does not post a journal. Read only, always. A difference it finds is reported, never corrected. The books are changed by people, in the accounts system, with their own names against the entry.
- It does not make an accounting judgement. Accruals, provisions, revenue recognition, the treatment of the odd item: marked as a judgement and handed to the person who signs. The agent assembles the facts around the decision and stops there.
- It does not fill a gap. A schedule it cannot find is a gap on the list, not an estimate in the pack. A pack with a hole in it is honest; a pack with a plausible number in the hole is not.
- It does not send anything outside the business. The chasing is internal. Nothing goes to the bank, the auditors or a customer.
Anything outside those rules waits for a named person.
03 / A test run, labelled as one
Test scenario, not a customer result
Working day one of a close, against a test ledger we built for the purpose.
We do not yet have a permissioned customer case to publish for this agent, so here is the next most honest thing: a test we ran ourselves, with the inputs stated. When a client agrees to be named, their measured days to close will replace this.
The test close, working day one
Inputs: a trial balance, 3 bank accounts, 14 schedules owned by 5 people, last month's pack as the format
- 06:00:00 Butler Gathered the trial balance, 3 bank statements and 11 of 14 schedules Accounts system and shared folders, read only. 3 schedules not yet in their folders.
- 06:01:30 Butler Reconciled 11 schedules to their control accounts: 9 agree, 2 differ Both differences shown with both sides and the amount. No cause suggested.
- 06:02:15 Butler Assembled the pack in last month's format, 3 sections marked missing, 2 marked as judgement Every figure referenced to its schedule. The judgement items are the accrual and the stock provision.
- 06:02:16 Hardy Produced the gap list: 3 schedules missing, 2 differences, 5 owners named Internal chasers drafted for the 3 owners of missing schedules, held for the finance lead to release.
- 08:45:00 A person Released the 3 chasers, took the 2 differences and the 2 judgements Named in the ledger. Day one's gathering and reconciling, previously most of two days, done before the finance lead sat down.
A test close we assembled from anonymised schedule types, run on 5 September 2026. It shows the format and the division of labour. It is not a measurement of any customer's close, and the counts are not a forecast of yours.
Measured on, when it is live for you: working days to close, hours of the finance lead's time in the first two days, and figures in the pack without a source reference, which should be zero and is checked. The audit sets the baseline before anything is built.
04 / Fit
Last month's pack and a list of who owns what
The format comes from the pack you already produce. The audit writes down each schedule, where it lives, who owns it and which items are judgement. That list is often the first time the close has been written down anywhere.
When we would advise against it
A close that is mostly judgement and very little gathering. A business whose schedules change shape every month. A close done entirely by an outside accountant in their own system. We will tell you either in the audit.
The audit first, then a fixed price
A £1,500 two-week audit, credited in full against the build. Month-End Assembler is normally a First Agent at a fixed £6,500, live in three to four weeks, then from £450 a month to run and watch it, plus £40 to £200 a month paid directly to the providers. Not VAT registered, so no VAT is added. The full price list.
05 / Next step
Tell us how many working days your close takes.
Roughly how many schedules, how many people they come from, and which day the pack is signed. That is enough for a first conversation, and we will tell you whether Month-End Assembler is the right first agent or whether another one is.