Month-end close: a step-by-step routine

Closing the books each month is the habit that keeps your numbers trustworthy. A consistent month-end routine catches missing rent, un-entered bills, and bank discrepancies while they’re small and easy to fix — instead of as a tangled mess at tax time. This article gives you a repeatable checklist for closing the month in TenantLedger, with the reasoning behind each step and the exact place to do it.

The whole routine usually takes well under an hour once your data is current. Block the same time each month (for example, the first business day after month-end) so it becomes automatic.

Why a monthly close matters

If you only look at your books once a year, every error has had twelve months to compound. Reconciling and reviewing monthly means:

Errors surface early. A duplicated payment or a deposit that doesn’t match the bank is obvious this month and nearly invisible a year from now.
Your reports are usable. The Cash Flow report and Dashboard only tell the truth if every payment and bill is entered and categorized.
Delinquencies get chased while they’re collectible. Rent that’s 30 days late is far easier to collect than rent that’s 90 days late.
Owner reporting is painless. When the books are closed and clean, handing an owner their numbers is a two-minute job.

The month-end checklist

Work through these in order. Earlier steps make the later ones accurate — you can’t trust a reconciliation if payments and bills aren’t entered yet, and you can’t trust an owner payout calculation if the books aren’t reconciled.

#	Step	Where in TenantLedger
1	Verify all rent and recurring charges posted	Lease / charges, Recurring schedules report
2	Record every payment received	Tenant account / Payments
3	Enter all vendor bills	Bills
4	Pay (and record) bills due	Bills
5	Batch your deposits to match the bank	Banking → + Deposit
6	Reconcile every bank account	Banking → Reconcile
7	Review the Dashboard	Dashboard
8	Run the Cash Flow report	Reports → Cash Flow Report
9	Handle owner payouts (manual)	Bills / payment, plus Owner Contributions if money came in
10	Chase delinquencies	Dashboard delinquency panel

1. Verify rent and recurring charges posted

Do this first. Confirm that the month’s rent and any recurring fees (parking, pet rent, storage) actually landed on each tenant’s account. Recurring charges are designed to post automatically, but it’s worth a quick scan so you don’t reconcile a month with a charge missing.

Spot-check a few leases, or run the Recurring Schedules report to see what was scheduled to post.
If a charge didn’t generate (a lease started mid-month, a schedule was set up late), add the one-time charge manually so the tenant’s balance is correct.

Why it matters: every later number — balances, delinquency aging, income — depends on the charges being right. Fixing this now prevents chasing “phantom” delinquencies caused by missing charges.

2. Record every payment received

Enter any rent payments, fees, or other income that came in during the month and aren’t yet in TenantLedger — checks, cash, and any payments that arrived outside the system.

Apply each payment to the correct outstanding charge so balances update.
If online payments (Stripe) are enabled for your account, tenant portal payments are recorded for you — you only need to enter the ones you took by check, cash, or transfer.

Why it matters: the Cash Flow report and your reconciliation both count money that actually moved. A payment you haven’t recorded will make a tenant look delinquent and will throw off your bank reconciliation.

3. Enter all vendor bills

Enter every vendor invoice for the month — repairs, landscaping, utilities, insurance — even ones you haven’t paid yet. Assign each bill a chart account (expense category) and the property it belongs to.

For predictable monthly expenses, recurring bills can create these for you automatically; confirm they generated.
Enter the bill before you pay it. Recording the bill first keeps your payables (what you owe) accurate and preserves a clean trail.

Why it matters: un-entered bills understate your expenses and overstate your profit — which leads to over-distributing to owners and a nasty surprise later.

4. Pay and record bills due

Record the bill payments you made during the month: open each bill, mark it paid, choose the bank account and method, and enter the check number if you printed a check.

Why it matters: a bill payment that isn’t recorded won’t appear on your bank reconciliation, leaving a difference you’ll have to hunt down.

5. Batch your deposits to match the bank

When you carried several payments to the bank as one deposit, group those same payments into one deposit batch so your TenantLedger deposit matches the single line on your bank statement.

Go to Banking and click + Deposit, pick the bank, then check off the payments that went in together.
Make each batch equal one real bank deposit. If you walked five rent checks in as one deposit, batch those five.

Why it matters: this is what makes step 6 fast. When your deposits match the statement line-for-line, reconciliation is mostly checking boxes. See Create a deposit batch.

6. Reconcile every bank account

Reconcile every active account against its statement — your operating account and any separate security-deposit account. This is the single most important step in the close.

In Banking, click Reconcile and choose the account.
Enter the statement ending date and the ending balance from your bank statement.
Check off every deposit and cleared payment that appears on the statement. Leave anything that hasn’t cleared (outstanding checks, deposits in transit) unchecked.
When the Difference reads 0.00, save.

If the difference won’t go to zero, common causes are a payment or bill not yet entered (go back to steps 2–4), a bank fee or interest you haven’t recorded, or a typo in the ending balance.

Why it matters: reconciliation is your proof that nothing is missing, duplicated, or miskeyed. It catches errors and fraud early. See Reconcile a bank account.

If you later find you cleared the wrong item, there’s no button named “Unreconcile.” Open the saved reconciliation, choose Edit, uncheck the item, and save.

7. Review the Dashboard

With the month’s data complete, open the Dashboard for a health check.

Check the Income and Expenses Trend and your year-to-date Net Income — does this month look reasonable next to prior months? A big swing usually means a missing entry or a miscategorized bill.
Scan the Company Statistics list for anything needing action: bills due, ending leases, open work orders.
Read the Delinquency Rent History aging panel (Coming Due, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, Over 90) — you’ll act on this in step 10.

Why it matters: the Dashboard is your sanity check. An obviously wrong total here is your cue to find the error before you report numbers to anyone. See Understanding your Dashboard.

8. Run the Cash Flow report

Run the Cash Flow Report (under Reports → Financial Statements) for the month you’re closing. It shows income by category, less any refunds, minus expenses, ending in your net operating income.

Set the date range to the calendar month and choose a single property, or All for the whole portfolio.
Compare to prior months and look for surprises — an expense category that’s unusually high or an income line that’s lower than expected.

Why it matters: this is your monthly profit-and-loss picture and the basis for deciding how much, if anything, to pay out to owners. Its accuracy depends entirely on steps 1–6 being done. See Run the Cash Flow report.

9. Handle owner payouts

Distributing profit to owners is a manual process you perform — TenantLedger does not have an automatic owner-distribution or payout feature. Once the month is closed and you can trust the Cash Flow report:

Determine each owner’s share of net income for the period, using the Cash Flow report (run per property, or filter the Dashboard by owner). Remember to hold back a reserve for upcoming expenses if that’s your policy.
Write the check or send the transfer to the owner yourself, outside the app.
Record the money leaving the property — typically as a bill/payment to the owner from the property’s bank account — so your bank reconciliation next month stays clean and the cash actually moving is reflected in your books.

Note on security deposits: never include deposit money in an owner payout. Security deposits are liabilities you hold in trust, not income — they belong to the tenant until properly applied or returned.

Owner contributions are the opposite direction. When an owner puts money in (a capital injection for a repair or down payment), that does have a dedicated screen: Owner Contributions. Use it to record money coming from the owner — not money going out to them.

Document your payout calculation method in writing and keep it consistent month to month so owners always know how their number was derived.

10. Chase delinquencies

Finish the close by acting on overdue rent while it’s most collectible. From the Dashboard, click into the Delinquencies tile or the aging panel to see exactly who owes what and how old it is.

Prioritize by age: a 1–30 day balance is a friendly reminder; 31–60 warrants a firmer follow-up; 61–90 and Over 90 may call for formal notices or a decision about next steps.
Confirm the balance is real before you chase it — if a payment is missing (step 2) or a charge posted in error (step 1), fix the record first.

Why it matters: every day a balance ages, it gets harder to collect. Acting at month-end, every month, keeps small slips from becoming write-offs.

A repeatable monthly routine

Treat the close as a recurring appointment, not a fire drill:

Pick a fixed day — for example, the first or second business day of the new month, once statements are available.
Gather inputs — bank statements for every account, the stack of vendor invoices, and any payment records not yet entered.
Work the checklist top to bottom — charges, payments, bills, bill payments, deposits, reconcile, Dashboard, Cash Flow, owner payouts, delinquencies.
Save your reports — print or save-as-PDF the Cash Flow report so you have a snapshot of the closed month.
Note anything unresolved — if a reconciliation won’t zero out and you’re out of time, write down the difference and come back; don’t force it or skip it.

Common mistakes to avoid

Don’t pay a bill before you enter it. Always record the bill, then pay it — otherwise your payables and reconciliation drift out of sync.
Don’t skip a month. Catching up two or three months at once multiplies errors and makes reconciliation far harder. Monthly is exponentially easier than annually.
Don’t reconcile before payments and bills are entered. A reconciliation only proves anything if the underlying transactions are all in place first.
Don’t force a non-zero difference. A reconciliation that doesn’t reach 0.00 is telling you something’s wrong — find it, don’t override it.
Don’t deposit payments individually if the bank lumped them together. Match each deposit batch to one statement line, or reconciliation becomes a guessing game.
Don’t pay owners from deposit money. Security deposits are liabilities held in trust, never income to distribute.
Don’t over-distribute to owners. Base payouts on a closed, reconciled month with un-entered bills accounted for — and reserve for known upcoming costs.
Don’t let delinquencies sit. The aging buckets exist so you act early; review and follow up every close.
Don’t assume a missing charge is a delinquent tenant. Verify rent actually posted before chasing a balance.