Who signs off what at month end: a RACI for SaaS finance teams

Short answer: A month-end close RACI names, for each close task, the one person who does the work (Responsible), the one person who signs it off (Accountable), the people asked for input (Consulted) and the people told the result (Informed). The rule that matters most is that the person who prepares a journal or reconciliation is not the person who approves it.

For a SaaS finance team of two to eight people on Xero, QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books, the RACI does not need to be elaborate. It needs to answer three questions that an auditor, an investor or a new hire will ask: who prepared this, who reviewed it, and where is the evidence that the review happened.

What a RACI matrix means for the month-end close

A RACI matrix is a responsibility chart: close tasks down the side, roles across the top, and a letter in each cell. In the close it does two jobs. It removes doubt about who does what by which business day, and it records the review structure that supports the reported numbers.

• Responsible. Prepares the work, for example the accrual journal or the bank reconciliation.
• Accountable. Reviews and signs off the work. There is one Accountable person per task.
• Consulted. Gives input before the work is finished, such as a budget holder confirming a supplier invoice that has not yet arrived.
• Informed. Receives the result, such as the CEO receiving the management accounts.

The discipline is in the word "one". Two Accountable names on a task usually means that neither person reviews it closely, because each assumes the other has.

A RACI for the core month-end close tasks

The table below is an illustrative RACI for a SaaS business with a finance lead (CFO or head of finance), a controller or senior accountant, and one or two accountants. Adjust the roles to your own team; the pattern of separation is the part to keep.

Two patterns are worth noting. Revenue items move one level up the approval chain, because deferred revenue is usually among the largest balances and is one that investors and auditors test early. And revenue operations, which owns the CRM, is consulted on billing and deferred revenue because contract dates and amounts start there.

Segregation of duties when the finance team is three people

Segregation of duties means that no single person can initiate, record and approve the same transaction. In a ten-person finance team that is straightforward. In a three-person team, the controller may prepare the deferred revenue journal because nobody else knows the contracts well enough.

Small teams usually handle this with a few practical rules:

• Split prepare and approve on each journal. If the controller prepares, the finance lead approves, even when the review is short.
• Restrict who can post. Limit the users who can post manual journals in Xero, QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books, and review that user list each quarter.
• Review what was posted, not only what was submitted. A monthly listing of manual journals, read by someone who did not post them, catches entries that skipped the approval step.
• Separate payment authority from ledger maintenance. The person who changes supplier bank details should not approve the payment run.
• Use an outside reviewer where needed. An outsourced accountant can act as the second reviewer when the team has no one else, recorded in the same way as an internal review.

These are compensating controls. They do not create full segregation, but they show that each material entry had a second reviewer and that the remaining risk was considered and accepted by the finance lead.

What counts as approval evidence at month end

Approval evidence is the record that shows a named reviewer checked a specific piece of work on a specific date. A verbal "looks fine" on a call does not count. Good evidence has four parts:

1. Who: the reviewer's name, not a shared login.
2. What: the journal, reconciliation or schedule reviewed, with its period.
3. When: the date of review, which should fall before the period is locked.
4. Support: the file the reviewer looked at, such as the accrual workings, the contract or the bank statement.

Most teams keep this in one of three places: the approval workflow in the accounting system, a sign-off column in the close checklist, or the reconciliation file itself with a reviewer block at the top. Choose one place per task type and keep to it, so that the evidence for any month can be found in minutes. Our guide on what auditors accept from an AI-assisted close covers how the same principles apply when software prepares the entries.

Who signs off journals, reconciliations and the final numbers

Sign-off works as a chain, and each level relies on the one beneath it.

• Journals. The controller approves routine accrual, prepayment and payroll journals. The finance lead approves revenue and deferred revenue journals and any non-routine entry above an agreed threshold.
• Reconciliations. The controller reviews each balance sheet reconciliation, and the finance lead signs off the full set, including the reconciling items that remain open.
• Management accounts. The finance lead signs off the pack before it reaches the CEO or board, after reading the variance commentary against the reconciled balance sheet.

Set the escalation threshold in dollars and write it down. Illustrative example: any manual journal above $25,000, or any journal to revenue or deferred revenue, requires finance lead approval. The amount is an internal choice that reflects materiality for your business and what your auditor expects. Our SaaS month-end close checklist shows where each of these approvals sits in the close calendar.

Keeping the RACI current as the team grows

A RACI is accurate on the day it is written. It drifts when someone joins, leaves or changes role, and when a new revenue stream or entity adds tasks.

• Review it each quarter, alongside the close calendar.
• Update it in the same week as any change in headcount or role.
• Check it against what happened. Compare the names in the RACI with the names on last month's approvals. Where they differ, one of the two records is wrong.
• Keep it next to the close checklist, so the person running the close sees it each month.

Deferred revenue deserves a specific check, because it is where contract changes in the CRM most often fail to reach the ledger. Our article on why deferred revenue reconciliations break explains the usual causes.

How ScaleXP supports review and approval at month end

ScaleXP prepares the recurring journals behind the close, including accruals, prepayments and deferred revenue, from schedules built on your Xero or QuickBooks data and CRM data from HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive. The journals are posted once finance approves them. That keeps the prepare-and-approve split in the RACI intact: the software does the preparation, and a named person in finance does the approval.

The month-end close checklist in ScaleXP records a status and comments for each step, and reviewers and approvers can be assigned to steps, which gives the RACI a home inside the close itself. Cue Technology reports that ScaleXP saves 3–5 finance-team days a month. See how this works in ScaleXP month-end close automation, or read how ScaleXP prepares accrual journals for Xero and QuickBooks.

Conclusion

A month-end close RACI is a one-page document that answers who prepared each item, who approved it and where the evidence sits. Give each task one Responsible and one Accountable person, keep preparer and approver separate, use compensating controls where the team is too small to separate fully, and review the chart each quarter against the approvals actually recorded.

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