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- Financial Close Management
- Features
- Sign-off and audit
Sign-off and audit
Sign-off and audit brings the completed accounting work into an explicit final review. Signoffs and management representations identify the people, capacities and evidence revision behind the decision. Period locks record the request and the connected ledger’s actual response. The audit pack preserves what was approved and confirmed. Finance can distinguish a ready close, a pending connector request and a successfully locked period without relying on a status that was set too early.
OverviewPending Sign-offs×
Financial Close Management · Sign-off and audit
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Pending Sign-offs
Signoffs
| Signoff number | Close period | Required role | Assigned at | Management representation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SGN-97479 | Northstar Treasury, September 2026 | Senior accountant reviewer | 20 Oct | September 2026 management representation | |
| SGN-48190 | Northstar Europe, September 2026 | Close manager reviewer | 31 Oct | September 2026 management representation | |
| SGN-40899 | Northstar Group, FY 2025 | Controller approver | 01 Nov | September 2026 management representation | |
| SGN-36835 | Northstar Holdings, September 2026 | CFO approver | 02 Nov | Q3 2026 management representation | |
| SGN-39590 | Northstar Property, Q3 2026 | SOX lead approver | 23 Oct | August 2026 management representation |
6 of 6 records
Northstar Treasury, September 2026Signoffs · SGN-97479
Senior accountant reviewerAssigned at20 Oct
Management representationSeptember 2026 management representation
What you can do
Sign the evidence that was reviewed
Pending Sign-offs shows the authenticated person’s assigned decisions. Every required signer acts against the same close periods revision and evidence manifest. Controller and CFO capacities use the separately assigned identities required by policy, even when they share a permission-family label. Representation text is company-approved and frozen with the signatures. A material input change invalidates the affected decisions and final manifest, so sign-off cannot authorize accounting work that was added afterwards.
Confirm the lock in the owning ledger
Ledger Lock Requests distinguishes Pending, Failed and Confirmed outcomes. A request carries its idempotency key and expected ledger revision. Only an authoritative matching response that the exact entity and period are Closed permits the close to become Locked. A timeout remains uncertain until checked; it does not justify another untracked request. Downstream consolidation receives a confirmed-lock event after audit-pack publication, rather than starting merely because a request row exists.
Preserve history when a correction needs reopening
Period Reopen Requests retain the reason, prior lock and separate Controller / CFO and Admin authorizations. The period becomes Reopened only after the ledger confirms Open. Keep the same period identity, increment the close revision and reprepare affected accounting evidence with renewed decisions. A later lock creates another retained record. External auditor grants limits every evidence page, file and export to explicit entity-period scope, with expiry and revocation enforced on each access.
What your team sees
- Pending Sign-offs. Sign the evidence that was reviewed.
- Ledger Lock Requests. Confirm the lock in the owning ledger.
- Period Reopen Requests. Preserve history when a correction needs reopening.
Rollout checks
Test a failed lock, a delayed callback, a duplicate request and a response for the wrong period. None may produce an unsupported Locked state or downstream event. Confirm a successful request, retain its audit pack, then exercise an authorized reopen and relock. Revoke an auditor grant and confirm that existing attachment and export links stop working while the retained source evidence remains intact.
Before rollout, agree the entity and period population, source-system ownership and the people assigned to each decision. Preserve existing accounting identifiers during migration and reconcile imported totals to the owning system. A preview on this website does not provision a live connector or grant a user financial authority. In Proto, configure the corresponding records and actions, test permitted and rejected operations through the API as well as the interface, and retain the implementation evidence before releasing the application.
Record the accepted pilot evidence with the exact configuration revision so subsequent changes can be compared to the behavior Finance reviewed.
What it keeps track of
Data model- Signoffs
- Per-role per-Period sign-off ceremony. One row per required role (Reviewer = Senior Accountant cohort, Approver = Controller, Auditor = Internal Auditor concurrence). The signoff-routing-and-completion- gate workflow checks that all required Signoffs are Approved before allowing close period status: Reviewed → lock pending. Only ledger confirmation permits Locked.
- Management representations
- The close-period management rep letter signed by Controller and CFO at sign-off. Carries company-approved representation text, the exact period evidence revision, and separately assigned signatures. The system does not supply a legal conclusion or certify compliance.
- Period locks
- One controlled lock request per close revision. Pending and failed attempts are explicit. Successful records retain the authoritative ledger confirmation and immutable audit-pack identity. An authorized reopen keeps the same close periods identity, increments its revision, and later produces a new lock request without overwriting earlier successful evidence.
- Period reopen requests
- Dual-authorized request to reopen the same ledger period. Final confirmation increments close period revision, invalidates affected review decisions and preserves the prior frozen lock and audit pack. The integration can never claim Reopened from an unconfirmed request.
- External auditor grants
- Per-period read-only grant for an External Auditor user. The grant is the system-of-record that backs the External Auditor role’s scoped read on
ClosePeriodsand the period’s full audit pack. Granted by Controller, defaults to a 90-day window, optionally revoked early; every access against the grant is audit-logged behindAccessLogURL. - Close periods
- Open period instances. One row per Entity per fiscal period (month or quarter). Lifecycle: Not started → in progress → Reviewed → lock pending → Locked, with Reopened as a recoverable off-ramp that requires Controller + Admin dual approval. On reopen-and-relock, the workflow writes a second period locks row preserving the original audit trail; the lifecycle returns to Reviewed → lock pending → Locked again with a new lock signature.
Who uses it
Permissions- Controller / CFO
- Signs assigned financial capacities and manages auditor grants.
- Close Manager
- Coordinates readiness.
- Admin
- Operates the connector and co-authorizes reopening.
- Internal Auditor
- Gives only assigned concurrence.
- External Auditor
- Reads explicitly granted evidence.
Set up Financial Close Management your way.
Start free, then use Proto to change fields, steps and approvals before your team goes live.