Agent skills for month-end close
Close is the same checklist every month with per-client variations that live in your head. A close skill carries the checklist, drafts the client questions about the items that will not tie out, and writes the summary note. It never touches the ledger and it never decides a treatment. It removes the remembering, which is the part that goes wrong in a busy week.
Three jobs worth handing over
The per-client checklist.
Every client has variations: a prepaid schedule, a payroll accrual with a specific cut-off, a director loan account somebody looks at. Written into a file per client, the skill runs the right list rather than the generic one, and it says which items are still open.
The client question email.
The four transactions you cannot code without being told. Drafting these is quick and doing it eleven times in three days is not. A skill turns the list of unknowns into one clear email per client, with the amount, the date and the counterparty on each line.
The close summary.
What moved, what is still open, what needed judgement and what you decided. Written the same way each month, this is the note that makes next year's audit and next month's handover survivable.
A checklist file the skill can actually run
cut-off: 3 working days after month end
review: partner sign-off before the pack is sent
items:
- bank reconciled to statement, all accounts
- card feed cleared, receipts attached or queried
- payroll journal posted, accrual for the split month
- prepaid insurance schedule released for the month
- intercompany balance agreed to the other side
- director loan account movements listed for review
always query, never assume:
- anything over the review threshold with no receipt
- transfers between accounts that do not pair
- a supplier that has not appeared in three monthsThe "always query, never assume" block is the important half. It is where the skill is told, in writing, which uncertainties it must hand back rather than resolve.
The hard boundary
- No write access to the ledger. The skill reads exports and drafts text. Postings are made by a person in the accounting system, every time.
- No treatment decisions. Capitalise or expense, accrue or defer, which VAT or sales-tax code applies: these are yours, and the checklist should route them to you rather than answer them.
- No arithmetic you have not checked. Where a number matters, the skill should point at the line it came from so you can tie it back in one click.
- Client data is client data. Decide what is allowed to leave your machine before you install anything, not after.
Re-run the checklist against last month before you trust it
Point the skill at a month you have already closed and compare its list of open items against what actually needed a query. Anything it missed goes into the checklist file; anything it invented tells you the instructions are too loose. Doing this once per client, at the start, is worth more than any amount of tuning later. The method is set out in the guide on testing whether a skill actually works, and the fields that control what a skill is allowed to touch are covered in SKILL.md frontmatter, field by field.
Works with Claude Code.
The Bookkeeper pack
Eleven skills for month-end checklists, client questions and reconciliation notes, with per-client checklist templates and the eval cases included. The pack page carries the price, the refund terms, and the date everything was last tested.
See the packs