The owner's month-end package, drafted from ERP exports for your controller to check.

After month-end your controller runs a set of ERP reports, pastes them into a workbook, ties the totals to the general ledger and writes a page on what moved. The owner wants the same answers every month: what shipped, what is booked but not built, what sits in WIP, and which jobs made or lost money.

In the test, AI takes copies of the exports from months you have already closed and drafts the package, with a tie-out to your trial balance and notes on what changed. Anything that won't tie is listed, not forced. It closes nothing and posts nothing.

WIP is only as good as the close. Work in process is the cost sitting on open jobs (material issued, labor, burden and outside processing) that hasn't yet moved to finished goods or cost of sales. In Epicor that movement posts through Capture COS/WIP Activity, which Epicor advises running at least once a period, just before the period closes in the general ledger. Users on the Epicor forum warn that capturing early locks out labor corrections, and some close every finished job before they capture. The draft reads WIP from exports taken after that step and checks it against the Inventory/WIP Reconciliation report and the GL balance.

Shipping and billing don't always land in the same month. A truck that leaves on the last afternoon can be invoiced on the first of the next month, and a partial shipment can leave a job half billed. The draft reports shipments by ship date and sales by invoice date, and lists every shipment from the last days of the month with no invoice in the same period, so your controller makes the cutoff call.

Backlog needs a definition before it gets a number. Backlog is open order value not yet shipped, but plants differ on whether blanket quantity, firm releases only, or a job won on a handshake belongs in it. Book-to-bill, new orders divided by billings for the same period, tells the owner whether backlog grew or shrank, and it means something only if bookings are counted the same way every month. Your controller writes those rules down before the test, the draft follows them, and cancellations get their own line.

Job margin depends on how overhead lands. Many job shops apply burden to jobs at a set rate per labor or machine hour, so a job's margin compares estimate to actual on that rate. When real overhead runs above or below what was applied, the difference sits outside the jobs; AccountingTools notes that underapplied overhead is charged to cost of goods sold by the end of the fiscal year at the latest. The draft keeps job margin and that overhead difference apart, so a slow month on the floor doesn't hide inside one job.

Your reviewer holds the draft against the real package. That is normally the controller, the person who knows these numbers best. They check that every total ties, that every difference is listed with its source, and that the notes say only what the numbers show. Getting the exports needs nothing new: in Epicor a BAQ export can write a query to CSV on a schedule, and most systems have reports your controller already runs.

After a yes, the job runs live for about 30 days, which takes in your next month-end.

The draft package goes to your controller, who checks, corrects and approves it before the owner sees anything. Every journal entry and the period close stay in your controller's hands, and the same comparison table scores the live month.