ChecklistMonth-end
Month-End Red Flags Service Firms Usually Miss
A short checklist for engineering firms, staffing firms, construction services and agencies. Each item is a habit that quietly slows the close or leaks margin. Count how many sound familiar.
Ten red flags.
Unbilled time sitting past month-end.
Hours logged but not invoiced by the last day mean revenue lands a month late and cash follows even later.
Vendor bills keyed twice, or not at all.
Bills arriving by email, portal and paper get entered by hand. Duplicates slip through, and missing ones show up as surprises after the close.
Subcontractor and pass-through costs not matched to the job.
Costs that never get tagged to a project or client make job margin look better (or worse) than it is.
Payroll journal entries built from a spreadsheet.
Copying payroll reports into an entry by hand invites misallocated wages, burden and accruals, especially across departments or jobs.
Accrued payroll ignored at cutoff.
When a pay period crosses month-end and wages are not accrued, labor cost swings from month to month for no real reason.
Cash receipts posted in a lump.
Deposits applied "on account" instead of to specific invoices leave aging reports wrong and collections chasing clients who already paid.
Collections that start at 60 days.
Without a steady, polite reminder at the first missed due date, receivables age quietly while the team is busy delivering work.
Recurring entries rebuilt every month.
Prepaids, depreciation, rent and software accruals typed fresh each close are slow and easy to get wrong.
Tie-outs skipped when the close runs late.
Bank, AP, AR and payroll clearing accounts not reconciled before reports go out means leadership decides on numbers that will change.
Reports exported and rebuilt by hand.
If revenue, margin and receivables come from a weekly export, the numbers are already stale when someone reads them.
Every one of these is a job an agent can take on. lumic builds AI agents that prepare bills, receipts, payroll entries and month-end entries in the systems a firm already runs, and a person approves each entry before anything posts.
Book a 20-minute call: cal.com/lumic/20-minute-call · hello@get-lumic.com · get-lumic.com
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- 1A 20‑minute call.You walk the team through the work your people do by hand.
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- 3An on-site visit.lumic’s FDEs meet your team where the work happens and confirm the plan. St. Louis first; they travel for the right fit.