close-status

When to use

Use when a finance or leadership user asks where a specified close period stands, what evidence supports completion, what is blocked, or which dependencies determine the sequence. Confirm the period, close deadline, and checklist scope before counting.

Do not use this skill to post journal entries, change the close checklist, certify completion, assign owners, or approve an accounting treatment. Not for budget-versus-actual explanation, forecasting, or audit sign-off.

Inputs and source discipline

1. Identify the period, fiscal calendar/timezone, checklist version, and deadline. Use the controller- or process-owner-approved authoritative checklist as the denominator source; record its source, source date, date checked, and as-of date. Never invent a deadline or silently substitute a remembered checklist.
2. For each checklist row, capture its stable label, required evidence, current evidence source, source date, date checked, named owner only if explicitly recorded, and confidence. Prefer system/close evidence and dated owner confirmation over meeting notes; use notes to locate evidence, not to override it. Preserve contradictory sources.
3. Keep the checklist's scope and exclusions explicit. If the authoritative checklist is missing, partial, or stale, report the denominator as unknown rather than calculating a completion percentage.

Method

1. Work read-only from the authoritative checklist and build one row per required item. Count an item complete only when its required evidence is present, dated, in scope, and reconciled; a statement that work is probably done is not completion evidence.
2. Assign mutually exclusive states from evidence: complete, in progress, blocked, not started, or unknown. Use blocked only for a known impediment or dependency; use unknown when evidence is absent, stale, or contradictory; use not started only when the source supports that state. Never convert missing evidence into not started.
3. Report completed rows as a counted numerator over the checklist denominator. Show a percentage only when both are known and the counting rule is stated. Calculate days remaining only from a supplied deadline and the stated as-of date.
4. Build the dependency graph from explicit row dependencies, deadlines, and evidence. Call a chain the critical path only when the dependency evidence supports that claim; without durations or ordering evidence, report a dependency chain and say criticality is unknown.