Operations reporting: close the month and flag what looks wrong

What this is

The month-end close is the same every month and late every month. This playbook gives the repeatable part to a team and keeps the judgement with you: the workers reconcile, chase and write; you decide what to do about the exceptions.

Who it helps

Owner-managed businesses, agencies and small e-commerce operations where one person does the books beside everything else, and where "what looks wrong" is usually discovered in March for January.

The team

• Operations Manager (manager). Runs the close as a routine, tracks each worker's state, and sends you one list of exceptions.
• Finance Ops. Matches payments to invoices from the records you give it access to, and lists what did not match.
• Vendor Ops. Lists supplier invoices that are overdue and subscriptions due for renewal in the next 30 days, and drafts the reminder emails.
• Reporting. Writes the month's report in the format you set, with the exceptions list at the top.

Sample assignment

Illustrative. Change the systems and thresholds to yours.

Objective. Close each month by the fifth working day. Reconcile payments, chase what is unpaid, and tell me what looks wrong.

Context. Payments arrive through Stripe. Invoices and bills are in the shared Drive folder "Finance / 2026". Supplier contracts and renewal dates are in the Operations Notion page. The report template is in the Operations room.

Rules. Read-only on Stripe and Drive. Never pay anything and never change an invoice. Reminder emails to suppliers or customers wait for my approval. Anything over the amount I set in the room, or anything you cannot explain, goes on the exceptions list rather than being resolved.

Done looks like. By day five: the report in the Operations room, with an exceptions list at the top, and the reminder drafts in Needs You.

What happens each month

1. The routine starts on the first working day. Finance Ops reads the month's Stripe payouts and the invoices in the Drive folder and matches them. It lists what is unmatched, with a reason where it can find one ("payment is for two invoices", "amount differs by the card fee").
2. Vendor Ops reads the Notion page and the bills folder, lists invoices overdue by more than the number of days you set, and lists renewals due within 30 days with their cost and notice period. It drafts one reminder per overdue invoice.
3. Reporting writes the report: revenue by product line, unmatched items, overdue and upcoming, and the exceptions list.
4. The manager posts the report and sends the reminder drafts to Needs You.
5. You approve the reminders that should go, decide the exceptions, and the CRM or accounting update you choose to make is yours.

Example output

An illustrative exceptions list, the top of the report:

September close: exceptions (4)

1. Payment of an amount matching two invoices (INV-2041 and INV-2043) arrived as one transfer. Suggest matching to both; please confirm.
2. Supplier "Harbor Print" invoice overdue 34 days. Reminder draft in Needs You.
3. Annual renewal for the design tool is due on 3 October with a 30-day notice period; that period has passed. No action possible this month; flagged for next year.
4. One Stripe refund has no matching invoice note. Could not explain; needs a person.

The items are fictional and show only the shape.

Requirements and availability

• Available in Korps. Routines, teams, assignments, approvals for the reminders, and Activity naming each system read.
• Connections. Stripe, Google Drive and Dropbox, Notion, Gmail and Outlook are Korps connections. Accounting packages (for example, ledger software) are not Korps connections today; a worker would reach one through the browser, a vendor MCP server, or Composio where listed. Verify before you plan on it. See integrations.
• A runtime (Hermes Agent comes bundled) and a model on your account. Reconciliation benefits from a stronger model; see choosing a model.
• The free account is open now; the app that hosts workers opens at launch.

Limitations and approval points

• Read-only on money. Give Finance Ops read access only. Paying, refunding and editing invoices are actions a person takes.
• Reminders are approval points, because they go to a customer or a supplier under your name.
• Matching is pattern work and a model can be confidently wrong. The exceptions list exists so that anything not obviously right is a question for you, not a decision by the worker. Set the threshold low at first.
• This is bookkeeping support, not accounting advice, and it does not replace your accountant or your obligations.