The whole packet, annotated section by section. No form, no email gate, no popup — because asking you to trade contact details for a document you have not seen yet is a strange way to start a conversation about your books.
This is an illustrative example, not a real client's books. Ridgeline Mechanical does not exist, and every figure below was constructed for this page. The structure is exactly what a real packet contains — same sections, same reconciliation logic, same exception categories — but no client data appears anywhere on this site. Real close packets are confidential and stay that way.
| Revenue | $387,450 | 100.0% |
| Cost of goods sold | $241,300 | 62.3% |
| Gross profit | $146,150 | 37.7% |
| Operating expenses | $98,720 | 25.5% |
| Net operating income | $47,430 | 12.2% |
The percentage column is the number most owners actually use. Revenue moving is normal; gross margin moving is the signal. If the 37.7% drifts by more than a point or two month over month without a known cause, that is worth a conversation before the next close.
"Per source" means the processor's own settlement report, not the bank feed. That distinction is the entire point — a bank feed shows the net deposit after fees, so matching against it hides fee drift and makes revenue look smaller than it was. Stripe gross was $38,240 with $1,109 in fees; both numbers are carried separately in the detail schedule.
Deposit cleared the operating account with no corresponding invoice or sales receipt. Sitting in undeposited funds. Needs to be identified before it can be recognized as revenue.
Bill #CS-88421 entered twice, on March 6 and March 11. Only one payment issued. The second entry overstates both COGS and accounts payable.
Seven items parked pending classification, the oldest from January. Each is listed with date, payee, and amount in the detail schedule so they can be cleared in one sitting.
Recovery machine purchased March 22 and expensed to Repairs & Maintenance. This is a fixed asset. Left as-is it understates net income for the month and misstates the balance sheet.
Exceptions are findings, not accusations — every set of books generates them, and a close that reports zero exceptions usually means nobody looked. Nothing here is changed on your behalf. Each item names the specific transaction so your bookkeeper can fix it in minutes rather than hunting for it.
March revenue was $387,450, up 13.6% from February's $341,200. The increase came almost entirely from commercial service work — two rooftop replacements closed in the same week, contributing roughly $71,000 between them. Residential was effectively flat.
Gross margin held at 37.7%, against 38.1% in February. The slight decline is material cost on the rooftop jobs, which were quoted in January before the February supplier increase. Jobs quoted after March 1 carry the new pricing, so this should self-correct next month unless the backlog runs longer than expected.
Operating expenses rose $6,300, driven by overtime. Field labor overtime ran $8,900 against a $4,000 monthly average. Two crews worked consecutive weekends to hold the rooftop schedule. This is a capacity signal rather than a cost problem — the work was profitable, but a third month like this would be worth a hiring conversation.
One thing to watch: the $12,400 equipment purchase in Section 3 is currently expensed. Once reclassified as a fixed asset, March net operating income rises to roughly $59,800. The figures above are stated as the books currently read, not as they will read after corrections.
This section is the one that gets read. It is written in sentences rather than variance tables, it names causes rather than restating the numbers, and it says plainly when a figure will change after corrections. If a narrative ever tells you revenue moved without telling you why, it was not worth writing.
A real packet also carries the full balance sheet, the transaction-level detail schedule behind each exception, and the prior-period comparison, which are omitted here for length. A downloadable PDF version of this sample is not yet posted.
Most small businesses get one of these four things. They get a P&L their software generated, or a bank reconciliation their bookkeeper ran, and nothing that connects the two or explains what happened. The exceptions never get compiled, so the same $8,915 sits in Ask My Accountant for three quarters. Nobody writes the narrative, so the month is never actually explained to the person who owns the business.
The packet exists because those four sections are only useful together. The reconciliation is what makes the P&L trustworthy. The exception list is what makes the reconciliation actionable. The narrative is what makes any of it matter to someone who did not spend the month in the ledger.
The version above is a specimen. The useful one has your accounts in it, your exceptions, and a narrative about your March. Two weeks, refundable if the packet is not delivered.