Percentage of the last 12 monthly closes completed by the target close date. A trailing measure of close discipline and finance capacity.
At a glance
Of the last twelve monthly period closes, the share that finished on or before their target close date. This is the single best trailing indicator of whether your finance function is in control of its calendar or perpetually firefighting. A close that slips is rarely just late; it usually means reconciliations were rushed, accruals were plugged, and the numbers the board saw were less reliable than they looked. Sage Intacct tracks the soft-close and hard-close timestamps per period; the card compares each against the configured target close date and rolls the last twelve into a single rate so the Controller can see the trend, not just this month.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Sage data by comparing each of the last twelve close events against its target close date. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US direct-to-consumer brand on Sage Intacct, single primary entity plus a small UK subsidiary, consolidated monthly. Annual revenue ~$25M across Shopify and Amazon. Target close is business day 8 (BD8). Snapshot taken 6 Jun 26 covering the trailing twelve closes from Jun 25 to May 26. Default alert threshold of 90%.
Five things to notice:
- 75% is below the 90% threshold, but two of the three misses are explainable and one is not, and the card’s job is to make that distinction visible. The October miss (Q3 audit prep) and the January miss (year-end close) are predictable, seasonal, and arguably acceptable; a year-end close that runs to BD15 is normal for a business this size. The May miss is the one to chase, because it was caused by a new ERP integration that disrupted the close, and if that disruption is structural rather than one-off, the next close will slip too. A Controller reading only the headline 75% might over-react; a Controller reading the breakdown knows that the underlying monthly discipline is actually strong and only one miss is a live risk.
- A slipped close is a leading indicator of unreliable numbers, not just a late number. When the close runs long, the usual cause is that reconciliations (bank, AR, AP, inventory) were not done in time, so the period was either held open while they caught up or closed on estimates that later needed correction. That is why this card pairs so tightly with Accrual Reversals (last close): a late close and a spike in reversals in the same period usually means the books were closed on plugs. On this account the May close that ran to BD11 also showed elevated reversals, confirming the close was rushed rather than clean.
- The trailing-12 framing smooths out single-month noise and reveals the real trajectory. Any one close can slip for a one-off reason. The value of the 12-month rolling rate is that it answers the question a board actually cares about: is finance reliably in control of its calendar over a year, or is it slipping more often than it used to? A rate trending from 92% to 75% over a few quarters is a capacity or process warning even if no single month looks alarming. The fix is usually one of three things: more finance headcount, more automation of the reconciliations that gate the close, or a more realistic target date.
- The target date itself is a policy choice and the card flags when it is unset or unrealistic. A business that sets BD5 but consistently closes at BD9 does not have a close problem; it has a target problem. The honest move is either to invest in the automation that makes BD5 achievable or to move the target to BD9 and hit it reliably. A target nobody ever meets erodes the credibility of the whole close calendar. The card surfaces the gap between target and actual so the conversation about which lever to pull is grounded in twelve months of evidence, not one bad month.
- Pair with Period Close Status for the live view alongside the trailing trend. This card is the rear-view mirror (how reliably have we closed on time over a year); Period Close Status is the windscreen (is the current period on track right now). Read together they tell the full story: a strong trailing rate with the current period drifting overdue is an early warning that this month is about to break the streak, while a weak trailing rate with the current period on track suggests a fix is taking hold. On this account the two cards together showed the May disruption had not recurred in June, which was the reassurance the CFO needed before the board meeting.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against Sage
Where to look in Sage Intacct: The native Sage Intacct views to run side by side with this card:General Ledger → Setup → Manage Reporting Periods to see each period’s open/closed state and the close timestamp per book Company → Setup → Books to confirm which books (primary, tax, budget) are in scope and their close cadence Audit Trail on the period-close action to see who closed each period and exactly when, which is the source of truth for the actual close date Reports → General Ledger → Trial Balance run as-of each close date to confirm the period was balanced when locked Interactive Custom Report (ICR) on period state changes, comparing the close timestamp to the configured target close date across the last twelve periodsIn Intacct the close event is a discrete, timestamped action recorded against each reporting period, which is what makes this card precise: there is no ambiguity about when a period was hard-closed. For Multi-Entity Console accounts the consolidated close is the gating event; run Manage Reporting Periods at the consolidation level as well as per entity, because a subsidiary can close on time while the consolidation slips on inter-entity eliminations. Common reconciliation pitfalls:
- Soft close vs hard close: Intacct supports closing sub-ledgers while leaving the GL open for adjustments. The card measures the hard close by default; if your team reports off the soft close, switch the field map, otherwise the card will read later than your internal “we closed” date.
- Reopened periods: a period closed on time, then reopened to post a correction, then re-closed. The card uses the first hard-close date for on-time purposes by default (you did close on time; the reopen is a separate event). Some teams prefer the final close date; the field map can switch.
- Multiple books: tax and budget books close on different cadences. The card measures the primary book by default; a tax book that closes weeks later is not a primary-close miss.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
The cross-connector value is that a late close almost never has a single cause inside the GL alone. It is the downstream symptom of upstream friction: unreconciled bank lines, an uncoded transaction backlog, a flood of manual journals, or a revenue gap between commerce and the GL that nobody could explain in time. Reading this card next to its causal siblings turns “the close was late again” into “the close was late because the Shopify payout reconciliation took six days,” which is a fixable problem with an owner, not a vague capacity complaint.