Finance Index
What's different about year-end close for accounts payable?
Year-end adds four layers to the normal month-end: audit exposure (cutoff and accruals get tested, not just reviewed), 1099 obligations (vendor tax data must be clean by January), harder cutoff (no posting back after reporting), and cleanup deadlines (stale credits, debit balances, and dormant vendor balances are best resolved before the books freeze). Treat year-end as month 12 plus an audit-prep workstream, planned backward from fieldwork.
What should AP deliver for the annual audit, and when?
Before fieldwork: the year-end AP aging tied to the GL, the accrual schedule with methodology and support, the open PO / received-not-invoiced report, and the post-year-end invoice and disbursement registers (for the unrecorded liabilities search). During fieldwork: sampled invoice support - image, approval evidence, receipt data, posting record. Teams with complete digital audit trails turn the sample requests from a scramble into a lookup.
What does 1099 preparation at year-end involve?
Verify TINs and W-9s for all reportable vendors, review the year's payments for reportable amounts by box, fix vendor classification errors before January, and meet the filing deadlines (recipient copies January 31). The December scramble is optional - it's the price of not collecting W-9s at onboarding.
How do I avoid the annual missing-W-9 panic - should we require W-9 before first payment?
Yes - make W-9 collection a vendor onboarding gate, not a year-end project. No W-9, no payment is the single control that ends the December chase; vendor portals that collect tax documents at self-onboarding make it painless.
Why do year-end accruals get more scrutiny, and how do I make them audit-ready?
Year-end accruals hit audited statements, so estimates become assertions: every line needs a basis (PO, receipt, contract, run-rate), a source reference, and review evidence. Run the same methodology as every month - just with the workpaper rigor turned up and the lookback analysis attached.
How do I handle the december/january invoice flood and the extended subsequent-events window?
Process continuously through the boundary, assign periods deliberately (receipt date governs), and keep recording arrival dates faithfully - the subsequent window means January activity is evidence about December. The flood is only dangerous when processing lags make period assignment guesswork.
Auditors selected vendor balances for confirmation and the vendors won't respond - what happens?
Auditors fall back to alternative procedures: vouching subsequent payments and examining invoice support for the balance. It's routine, not a finding - but AP can help by warming up the request with key vendors and having complete invoice support ready for the alternative testing.
How do I close the fiscal year in the ERP, and what does year-end rollover do to AP balances?
Year-end close routines roll P&L accounts into retained earnings and carry balance-sheet accounts - including AP - forward as opening balances; open invoices simply persist. Some ERPs (GP notably) run explicit year-end close routines for payables that also reset 1099 and summary buckets, so sequence the routine per your ERP's documentation and back up first.
How do I clear old outstanding items before year-end?
Work the list in November, not January: unapplied credits matched or refunded, debit balances chased, unvouchered receipts investigated, dormant vendor balances confirmed against statements and written off with approval where dead. Every item cleared before year-end is one the auditors don't ask about.
What does year-end vendor master cleanup involve?
Deactivate vendors with no activity (define a window, commonly 18-24 months), merge confirmed duplicates, refresh W-9/TIN data for active reportable vendors, and verify remit and banking details through controlled channels. A clean master entering the new year improves 1099 accuracy, duplicate prevention, and every report built on vendor data.
What does a fiscal year change or stub period do to AP reporting and 1099s?
The stub period needs its own cutoff, accrual, and audit treatment like any year-end - but 1099s stay on the calendar year regardless of your fiscal year, so AP reports tax data on a January-December basis no matter where the fiscal boundary moves.
How do I build the year-end timeline working backward from audit fieldwork?
Anchor on the PBC due date: final AP package a week before fieldwork; aging tie-out and accrual workpapers the week prior; cleanup projects (credits, debits, vendor master) done by late November; cutoff and accrual execution per the normal close calendar. Publish the timeline in October - December is for execution, not planning.
What does the tax team need from AP for year-end accruals - recurring item exception, economic performance?
Tax deductibility of accruals follows economic performance rules, not book treatment - the tax team needs the accrual schedule with detail on what was received/performed by year-end versus merely estimated, plus payment dates for the recurring-item-exception window (generally 8.5 months). AP's job is detail and dates; the tax call is theirs.
Stampli perspective
Stampli keeps the year-end package audit-ready by default: every invoice carries its image, approvals, conversations, and history in one immutable record, so sampled-item support is retrieval, not reconstruction. Clean, validated posting all year means the aging the auditors tie out hasn't been accumulating reconciliation debt for twelve months.