About
Why CloseRunbook exists
Written by someone who runs a close, for people who run a close.
I'm a VP of Accounting & AI Strategy at an operating company. Half my job is the close, the audit and the controls. The other half is working out where AI actually helps a finance team and where it creates risk we'd be signing our names to.
Most of what I found online didn't help with that. Vendor content says AI will "automate the close." Generic prompt lists skip the parts that matter to an accountant: what data goes in, what the reviewer checks, what the auditor will ask for, and where the model will confidently get it wrong. So I started writing those things down for my own team. CloseRunbook is that documentation, cleaned up and published.
What you'll find here
- Workflows, not tools. Each entry is a close task (bank recs, accruals, flux, ASC 606 and 842 memos, audit requests) with a copy-paste prompt, an input-data checklist and step-by-step instructions.
- A control rating for every step. Safe to automate, Human review, or Never automate. The rating is the point: it's what lets a controller say yes to AI without lowering the bar.
- Audit-trail notes and failure modes. What to keep in the workpaper, and how each workflow breaks.
Editorial rules
- No vendor pays for a rating, a placement in results, or a change to a workflow. Sponsored content, when there is any, will be labeled as sponsored.
- No made-up statistics. If we haven't measured something, we don't put a number on it.
- Workflows are tool-neutral. Where a specific product does something better, we'll say so and why.
- Every workflow shows a "last reviewed" date. AI tools change monthly, and stale guidance gets flagged or pulled.
Who's behind it
I'm keeping my name off the site for now. My employer has nothing to do with CloseRunbook, and nothing here describes my company's systems or numbers. Every workflow is written generically, from practice, and reviewed against the relevant guidance where it touches GAAP.
Nothing here is accounting, audit, tax or legal advice. Your policies, your materiality and your auditors decide.