Most shops close the month "when the bookkeeper gets to it" — sometimes 4-6 weeks later. By then, anything wrong is hard to fix. Here's the 90-minute monthly close routine.
Day 1 of new month — quick close (30 min)
Wait until 9 AM Day 1 to let any last-day-of-month payouts post.
### Step 1 — Confirm all jobs from last month are closed
Check your Calendar for anything from last month still sitting in an active status (In progress, Ready) instead of Completed. Should be zero or close to zero. Anything outstanding from prior month: chase it down, finalize the invoice.
### Step 2 — Confirm all invoices issued are reflected
Reports → Daily Revenue → last month. Sum should match what you intuitively expected.
If revenue looks wrong: - Check if any jobs completed but weren't invoiced - Check if any invoices were voided mid-month - Reconcile against your payments dashboard
### Step 3 — Payment reconciliation
Settings → Payments shows your SalesThumb Payments merchant status, but there's no per-month payout log inside SalesThumb today. Reconcile from your bank statement against what SalesThumb shows as collected for the month (Reports → Daily Revenue, or the payments list on individual invoices).
Discrepancies usually trace to: - Payouts that were pending vs. settled crossed the month boundary - Refunds processed in the new month for old-month payments
Day 1-3 — Deep close (60 min)
### Step 4 — QBO push confirmation
Settings → Integrations → QuickBooks → Sync Now (then review the result banner). Confirm:
- All last-month paid invoices were pushed (re-run Sync Now to catch any new ones)
- Each pushed invoice shows up in QuickBooks with its customer
- No push failures left unresolved
- Record refunds and processing fees in QuickBooks manually — they aren't pushed (the sync is one-way, paid invoices only)
If pushes failed: reconnect QuickBooks or escalate to support.
### Step 5 — Tip and commission payouts
These are two separate things in SalesThumb, worth not conflating:
- Tips are tracked read-only — each technician's team profile (Settings → Team → the technician) shows their earned tips and how much is unpaid, but there's no "mark tips paid" action in the software. Pay them out through your normal payroll process and treat the unpaid figure as informational.
- Commissions have a real payout action: on that same technician profile, a Mark all paid button flips every unpaid commission entry to paid. Use it once you've actually run the payout, so next month's unpaid total starts clean.
### Step 6 — Inventory count (the hardest step)
There's no dedicated "cycle count" tool, but the capability is there: open each high-cost item (Inventory → the item → Record movement) and log a Count correction to reconcile SalesThumb's running count against what you physically counted.
For each high-cost SKU: - Physically count what's in inventory - Compare to SalesThumb's running count - Investigate any variance >5% - Record a Count correction movement with a note explaining the variance
Common causes of variance: - Tech consumed material but didn't mark the job - Material was used for re-do (warranty) without proper allocation - Theft (rare but real — usually small amounts that add up)
Day 4-5 — Reports + analysis (30 min)
### Step 7 — Run the monthly story recap
Reports (the dashboard view) → Story-mode recap → Generate. This gives you one AI-written paragraph comparing this month to last — revenue, appointment mix, quote conversion, new-customer count, and top service category. It's a quick narrative gut-check, not a full metrics report — for bay utilization, margin by service, or a top-customers breakdown, pull those from the individual reports under the Reports tab.
Note the 2-3 most-important takeaways for next month.
### Step 8 — Compare actual vs. budget
If you have a monthly budget: - Revenue: actual vs. budget - COGS: actual vs. budget - Labor: actual vs. budget - Operating margin: actual vs. budget
Anything off by >10%: investigate before next month repeats it.
### Step 9 — Team review
Hold a 30-min team meeting with managers: - Last month's numbers - 2-3 wins - 2-3 misses + plan to address - 1-2 focus areas for new month
Month-end edge cases
- Service performed in last month, invoiced in new month: revenue belongs to last month (accrual) per accounting standards. SalesThumb's revenue date defaults to invoice date; adjust manually if you accrue.
- Deposit paid last month, service performed this month: deposit revenue recognition varies. Most shops recognize at service completion; some at deposit. Pick one method and stick to it (talk to your CPA).
- Refund issued this month for last month's job: shows as negative revenue in current month, OR adjust last month's revenue and disclose the adjustment.
Annual close
December 31 close is the same routine, plus:
- 1099-NEC issuance for contractors over $600
- W-2 prep for employees
- Inventory physical count (full count, not just cycle count)
- Year-end P&L for tax filing
Start year-end close on Dec 28, finish by Jan 15.