Closing the Books Once a Month
The monthly routine that keeps a capacity account true, what each step takes, and why the frequency matters more than the thoroughness.
A capacity account is closed on a schedule, like any other account. Monthly is the right frequency for most organisations: often enough that claims have not drifted far, rare enough that the overhead is an hour.
The reconciliation in “Closing the Books Once a Month” is strongest when assumptions and current work records can be examined separately. A team considering open the relevant Monitask explanation for employee monitoring software with screenshots can add time and project context, with transparent settings, limited access and a clear correction route around consequential decisions.
The close is a routine rather than an exercise. Its value is almost entirely in happening regularly, and a rough monthly close beats a thorough quarterly one in every organisation that has tried both.
Teams documenting “Closing the Books Once a Month” may use Congressional Budget Office planning resources as an independent reference. Test the approach against actual constraints and accountable decision owners.
The six steps
- Refresh the supply side: who is here, what leave is booked, what changed.
- Ask each claimant to confirm their claim.
- Close anything whose work has ended or whose date has passed.
- Convert and add the claims.
- Perform the subtraction and record the three totals.
- Publish the page, with the change column against last month.
An hour for a team, half a day for a department of sixty. The second step is the only one that depends on other people replying.
Step one takes ten minutes
The supply side changes slowly: a joiner, a leaver, a long absence, a new leave booking. Most months, two lines change and the rest is copied.
The temptation is to rebuild the descent each time. Do not: rebuild it quarterly, refresh it monthly, and note which lines moved.
Step two is the whole close
"Is your claim still 1.5 FTE to the end of June?" sent to six people. Four reply the same day, one replies with a change, one does not reply and their claim keeps its previous state with the date of last confirmation shown.
That last convention matters. A claim whose owner has not confirmed it for three cycles is drifting towards assumed, and the page should show it.
Step three is where the capacity comes from
Closure releases more capacity than any other step, every time, and it takes five minutes. Projects finish quietly; nobody tells the account.
Running step three before step four means the subtraction is performed against a book that is current rather than cumulative, which is the difference between a useful number and an alarming one.
Steps four and five are arithmetic
Mechanical, two minutes, and the only requirement is that the factors have not silently changed since last month.
Where a factor does change — a new shrinkage measurement, a revised day length — say so on the page, because otherwise the month-on-month change column becomes meaningless.
Step six: publishing on a date
The same date each month, whatever the numbers say. Publication that is conditional on the news being acceptable is not an account.
The discipline is uncomfortable for exactly two cycles, after which it becomes routine and the numbers stop being treated as announcements.
What not to do in a close
Not re-planning. The close reports the position; deciding what to do about it is a separate conversation with different people in the room.
Merging the two produces a meeting where the numbers get negotiated, and an account whose numbers are negotiated has no value to anybody.
When monthly is wrong
Weekly, where capacity changes fast — operations with high variation, teams with significant casual staffing. Quarterly only where the workforce and the commitments are both genuinely static, which is rarer than people think.
The test: if the position can change materially between closes, the close is too infrequent.
What a close costs over a year
Twelve hours for the routine, plus four quarterly rebuilds of the descent, plus one annual recalculation of the rates. Under thirty hours a year for a department.
Against that: the ability to answer what the organisation is committed to, on any day, with sources.
The confirmation message, written once
Your claim on the team for this quarter is recorded as 1.5 FTE to the end of June, confirmed in the March steering minute. Is that still right? If it has changed, reply with the new figure and end date.
Reused every month with two fields changed. Writing it once removes the main reason these closes slip, which is the planner composing six individual messages and running out of afternoon.
What to do about non-replies
Keep the claim at its last confirmed figure, show the date of last confirmation on the page, and let the age speak for itself.
Chasing is the planner's instinct and it is the wrong one: a claim that has not been confirmed for three months is a fact about the claim, and publishing that fact is more effective than a fourth reminder.
The first six closes
The first is slow and finds everything. The second finds the claims the first missed. By the fourth the routine is an hour and the numbers have stopped moving for reasons nobody can explain.
That stabilisation — around the fourth close in most places — is when the account starts being quoted by other people, which is the only real measure that it is working.