From 7 Days to 2: How Top Contractors are Crushing Month-End Close

For most construction finance teams, the first week of every month is a blur of spreadsheets, reconciliations, and late nights. The industry average for month-end close is 7-10 business days.

But a growing number of contractors are closing in 2-3 days—and they’re not doing it by working harder. They’re working smarter.

Why Month-End Takes So Long

When we audit a typical construction company’s close process, we find the same bottlenecks:

1. Manual WIP calculations - Pulling job cost data from the ERP, calculating percent complete, updating the schedule of values
2. Waiting for reports - Batch reports that take hours to run, scheduled overnight
3. Reconciliation hell - Checking the GL against submodules, hunting down variances
4. The Excel gauntlet - Exporting raw data, then spending hours massaging it into board-ready formats

The common thread? Waiting for data.

The 2-Day Close Formula

Here’s how the fastest contractors have restructured their close:

Day 1: Validate the Data

Instead of running batch reports, leading teams use real-time queries to spot anomalies:

• “Show me all GL accounts with unusual balances compared to prior month”
• “List jobs where cost to date exceeds budget by more than 10%”
• “Flag any vendor invoices received but not posted”

With AI-powered tools, these queries take seconds instead of hours. Issues are identified before they become reconciliation nightmares.

Day 2: Close and Report

Once the data is validated, the actual close becomes mechanical:

• Run standard closing entries
• Generate WIP schedules directly from verified data
• Produce board reports using pre-built templates fed by real-time queries

No more overnight report runs. No more “let me get back to you” during board meetings.

The Technology Stack

What do these high-performing teams have in common?

1. Cloud-based ERP access - Whether on-prem or cloud, they can query their data from anywhere
2. Natural language querying - Finance staff can get answers without SQL knowledge
3. Audit trail visibility - Every query is logged, so there’s no “black box” fear
4. Real-time dashboards - KPIs update as transactions post, not monthly

A Case Study: Mid-Atlantic Construction

One of our customers, a $150M GC in Virginia, was closing in 9 days. Their controller spent the entire first week just running Crystal Reports and compiling Excel workbooks.

After implementing AskERP:

• Day 1: Query-based data validation identifies issues in hours, not days
• Day 2: Standard close entries and WIP generation
• Day 3 (optional): Board deck finalization

They now close in 2.5 days—and their controller has reclaimed 30 hours per month for strategic analysis instead of report jockeying.

Getting Started

You don’t need to overhaul your entire ERP to achieve a faster close. Start with these steps:

1. Map your close process - Where are you waiting for data?
2. Identify query candidates - Which reports could be replaced by on-demand queries?
3. Run a pilot - Test AI querying on one or two bottleneck reports
4. Measure impact - Track hours saved and close timeline

Ready to cut your month-end close in half? Schedule a 15-minute call and we’ll show you how AskERP works with your specific ERP system.