{"id":2614,"date":"2011-12-21T07:01:58","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T05:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/?p=2614"},"modified":"2011-12-18T09:57:32","modified_gmt":"2011-12-18T07:57:32","slug":"month-closing-is-before-month-end-what-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/month-closing-is-before-month-end-what-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Month closing is before month end \u2013 what to do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/pic_before_endmonth.png\" alt=\"Month closing is before month end\" style=\"float:right\" \/>In situations where the month closing has to be done before the month itself has actually ended, it is very difficult to make sure you have accounted for all expenses and even revenue. This is more complicated as in fact you do have to estimate the revenue as well and not just expenses. Normally those extremely tight reporting deadlines are applicable to groups, which report to stock exchanges and are also globally very big. \u201cVery big\u201d means that they have consolidated assets and revenues bigger than some country\u2019s budgets. <\/p>\n<p>But what should you as an accountant do when you have to meet those very short deadlines? Simply put you estimate everything. Normally expenses are easier as you more or less know your regular costs (i.e. rent, heating, electricity etc).  One off charges as marketing, repairs etc is also something you know a bit in advance (you know about the campaign and estimated budget for it for an example). <\/p>\n<p>As for revenue though, it depends on your business \u2013 if you sell goods, you can always base your estimation on month end revenues in recent months, pervious years or average daily sale. If you sell services, it can be based on month end sales or bookings made for your services.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nWe know that estimating is not the most precise method and for most accountants it creates more mess than needed in their view because you have to recognize accruals and make reversals in future periods. <\/p>\n<p>However, when you think about it for a moment \u2013 the reason you do it, is because a multibillion company needs to report its figures \u2013 will they be in anyway misleading to the readers of the reports, if your expense is instead of 100,000 in fact 120,000. No, the answer is no. So, when you\u2019re not sure of the exact amount, just estimate based on your previous experience and be done with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In situations where the month closing has to be done before the month itself has actually ended, it is very difficult to make sure you have accounted for all expenses and even revenue. This is more complicated as in fact you do have to estimate the revenue as well and not just expenses. Normally those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-basic-accounting","category-1-10-accruals"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2614"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2619,"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2614\/revisions\/2619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}