Guide
Month-end takes an afternoon if you start on the first.
Updated 6 March 2026 · 8 minutes · Studios of two to twenty
Where the afternoon goes
A close is slow because the evidence has gone cold, not because the arithmetic is hard. Three weeks after the payment, nobody remembers whether £118.40 to Northbank Rail was a client visit or the commute, and finding out costs a phone call.
In a sample March product aggregate, studios that finished before lunch were not working faster. They had moved the work to the days it happened, so the last day held less to discover.
The write-up, with the four habits ranked: read it in the journal
Sort it as it lands
Everything routine is filed the moment it arrives. What reaches you is the handful of lines a rule cannot settle, each one phrased as the question behind it: client travel, or getting to the studio?
For a studio of twelve that is about six items a week, and four minutes on a Monday. Do the four minutes and the close has nothing left to find. Skip them for a month and you are reading bank statements in April.
The four awkward lines
Four things account for most of the mess at month-end, and every one of them can be settled in the week it happens.
- Owner draws
- Decide the split in the month you take the money. Deciding in the spring means restating three quarters.
- Prepaid software
- A year of Adobe bought in January belongs to twelve months, not to January. Spread it once and the P&L stops flattering you.
- Foreign invoices
- Lock the rate at the date of the transaction. Invoice in dollars, bank in pounds, and the reconciliation still closes.
- Receipts
- Forward the email the day it arrives. The total is matched to the transaction and nobody asks you for it again.
Sign off on a Tuesday
By the last day the checklist has three of its five lines already ticked, and the fourth was cleared on a Monday. What is left is reading the numbers and agreeing with them.
In this sample, Fieldwork Studio signed March off at 16:12 on a Tuesday, and the accountant pack went out in the same click. Active work totalled 3h 40m across the month, matching the sample median across 1,400+ studios.
The month, in order
Sample March at Fieldwork Studio, with every sitting timed.
| Day | What you do | Time | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Mar | Connect the feeds and leave them alone | 4 min | 00:04 |
| 2–8 Mar | Forward receipts as they arrive | 16 min | 00:20 |
| 9 Mar | Clear the first review queue | 50 min | 01:10 |
| 16 Mar | Invoice the work you finished | 30 min | 01:40 |
| 22 Mar | Read the runway line | 40 min | 02:20 |
| 31 Mar | Tick the checklist and sign off | 1h 20m | 03:40 |
| Active work across March | 3h 40m | 03:40 | |
None of this needs Alder.
The order works in any ledger, on paper if you like. Alder takes the sorting and the arithmetic off every line above, and leaves you the judgement.
Proof
“We used to lose the first week of every quarter to the books. Last quarter I did the whole close on a Thursday afternoon, and the only thing my accountant asked for was a coffee.”
Marguerite Osei
Founder, Fieldwork Studio
12 people · Bristol · with Alder since 2024 · Sample content
“The runway number is the only dashboard I look at. It has been right within a fortnight every time, including the quarter we hired two designers.”
“I run books for nine studios. Alder is the first tool where I have not had to teach the client anything before it works.”
- Median month-end close
- 3h 40m
- Median time to get paid
- 19 days
- Studios keeping books here
- 1,400+
Keeping the books for 1,400+ studios, including
Sample content
- Fieldwork
- Hollis Studio
- Wren & Co
- Northbank
- Bramble
- Ardent Type
Sign off month-end in one afternoon.
Thirty days, all of Studio, no card. Import last year while you are there. It takes about ten minutes and tells you more than this page can.
- Bank and card feeds reconcileddone
- Uncategorised queue cleared6 items
- Owner draws and payroll journalleddone
- Prepaid software spread across the yeardone
- Accountant pack exported1 click
- Set-up time
- Under 10 minutes, on your own
- If you would rather ask
- hello@alder.co