Monthly close
The monthly close, as one guided flow instead of one spreadsheet
This is the flow FundFlow exists for. The same five steps every month, in the same order, each one asking for exactly one thing: and a calculation at the end that refuses to be locked while it does not foot.
No credit card. Nothing is charged until your first 30 days are over.
The five steps
Every step saves as you go. Leave halfway through and you come back to where you stopped, on whatever device you pick up next.
Step one, month-end balances
One card per bank and brokerage account you registered. Enter the cash and securities balance as the statement shows it. Last month’s figure sits behind the field, and a running total shows what the fund is worth as you type. What it replaces: the block of cells at the top of the sheet where four statements were transcribed.
Step two, the money that moved
Every deposit and withdrawal dated inside the month, listed per participant. Confirm it, or exclude it if it did not actually settle. Each decision has an undo, and the step will not advance while one is still open. What it replaces: remembering which transfers were in the month and which were not.
Step three, costs and dividends
Book the month’s expenses. Book dividends per security, with the withholding-tax rate prefilled from the country and a live gross, withheld and net preview: then allocated across participants by ownership when you save. Record payments against outstanding fees. What it replaces: the costs tab, and a separate sheet for dividend tax.
Step four, compute and review
Press compute and the engine runs. You get the opening assets, the gross return, the total fees and the closing assets; the koers of each series from its opening to its closing price with the net return; and the four reconciliation checks. Change any input afterwards and the result is marked stale rather than silently kept. What it replaces: pressing F9 and hoping.
Step five, confirm and lock
Review the month one last time and lock it. If your fund requires NAV confirmation, you submit it instead and a second person locks it. From that moment the month is immutable. What it replaces: saving version 5.1 of the spreadsheet and hoping nobody opens 5.0.
The four checks that stand in your way
These are not warnings you can scroll past. A failing check blocks the lock, and tapping it opens an explanation of what is off and a link to the screen that fixes it.
Bank and broker versus NAV
The balances you entered must equal the net asset value plus the fees that have been accrued but not yet paid. A difference means a missing transaction, a mistyped balance or an unrecorded cost.
Participants versus fund assets
The sum of every participant’s value must equal the fund’s assets. A difference means units and value have come apart somewhere.
Fees calculated versus fees paid
What the engine charged must reconcile with what has actually been paid out, so an unpaid accrual is visible rather than forgotten.
Units versus assets
Units outstanding times the koers must equal the series' assets. This is the arithmetic identity that a spreadsheet quietly breaks when a row is inserted in the wrong place.
What locking actually guarantees
The database refuses the edit
Immutability is enforced where the data lives, not in the interface. There is no screen, and no accidental keystroke, that changes a locked month.
Reopening leaves a mark
Only an administrator can reopen a locked month, and only with a written reason. The reason is stored with the event.
One open month at a time
A fund can have exactly one month that is not yet locked, so there is never a question of which month you are actually working in.
Recomputing is always safe
The calculation is derived entirely from stored inputs and fully replaces its own output. Running it again on an open month cannot produce a different answer from the same inputs.
What this is really about
The monthly close is the job, and everything else on this site exists to serve it. Whatever a fund's strategy is, the administration comes down to the same cycle every month: establish what the assets are worth, book what came in and went out, book what it cost, work out the fees, check the whole thing against the outside world, and then stop changing it. Done in a spreadsheet, that cycle takes an evening and produces no record of how it was done.
Here it is five steps with a review at the end, and the review is the part that matters. You see the computed koers per series, every participant's new value, the fees each one paid, and the four reconciliation checks with their differences. If a check fails, the month does not lock. What you approve is the thing that gets written, and once it is written the database will not let anyone change it without an administrator reopening the period with a reason on the record.
Questions about this
How long does a month actually take?
The work is entering what only you can know: the closing balance per account, the flows to confirm, and the costs for the month. Everything after that is computed. For a fund with a handful of accounts and a dozen participants it is a short sitting rather than an evening, and the second month is faster than the first because the shape is already set up.
What if I find a mistake after locking the month?
Two routes, both deliberate. An administrator can reopen the period, which requires a written reason that is stored with the event, or you can correct it through the current open month, which is how a fund administrator would normally handle it. What you cannot do is quietly edit a locked month, because the database rejects the write.
The rest of the product
Every part of FundFlow works on the same monthly cycle. These are the neighbouring pieces.
Run one close and you will know
Set up a fund, anchor it with an opening position and close a month. That is the whole evaluation, and thirty days is more than enough for it.
In your first session
- Create a fund and register the bank and broker accounts its assets actually sit in.
- Anchor an opening position at a month you have already reconciled, so you have something to compare against.
- Close the next month, read the review screen, and check the koers and every fee against your own working.
No credit card. Nothing is charged until your first 30 days are over.