A clean month-end close runs as a sequence. Review coverage, fix the gaps, approve the period, and reconcile the exports. Each step has an owner. If the reconciliation step finds a problem, the fix usually belongs in one of the earlier steps.

Priya Nair, Mia Chen, and Dan Okafor are fictional people at a fictional agency. Their October hours appear in the checklist at the end.

Step 1: Review coverage on the Team tab

Open Team, select Last month, and read the coverage card. It names the people who have not logged or submitted time for October. A person on leave for the whole month does not count as missing. The reports and approvals help documents this view.

Pick the mode that matches your billing rule. Submitted shows pending and approved timesheets only. All logged time also shows work that nobody submitted yet.

Step 2: Fix the gaps before the cutoff

Each person opens My Timesheet and compares their October weeks against the coverage list. For the current week, Fill week suggests entries from Jira activity. Nothing saves until you accept a cell, so review every suggestion first. For an older week, select the empty cells and enter the durations you can support. The timesheets help explains the grid and the expected-hours total.

One cutoff rule decides whether this is still possible. An admin can set an edit window for older weeks, and weeks outside it are read-only. Ask the admin to widen the window before the month closes, not after.

Check entry fields at the same time. A required field with no value blocks a save inside Daylight. Time logged directly in Jira can carry no value, and the approval screen marks those entries as missing. Fix the entries now, because the approval step will surface them anyway.

Step 3: Submit and approve

Each person selects the submission control when their October entries are ready. Your organization chooses weekly or monthly submissions, and the editing grid stays weekly either way.

Approvers open the Approvals tab and review each submission. They approve the hours or return the submission for corrections. A pending submission can be withdrawn with Unsubmit. Approved periods stay read-only, and Daylight currently has no action to reopen one. Correct what you find before approval.

After approval, a direct Jira edit is the only correction path, and it follows Jira permissions. Daylight marks the change with a changes after submit tag. The audit log lists who made the change and the hours before and after. The log keeps rows for 13 months.

Step 4: Export and reconcile

Run three exports with the same October date range.

In Reports, each person exports their own month with Export report (CSV).
In Team, an admin exports person and project totals with Export team (CSV).
Under the report table, an admin uses Export entries (CSV) for one row per entry.

Then compare the totals. The personal reports must add up to the team export. The entry rows must add up to each person total in that team export. The report CSV shows two-decimal hour values, and costs use the underlying duration with the configured rate. A mismatch usually points to a different date range or to an entry logged after one of the exports.

The October close checklist

Download the October close checklist. It carries ten steps with named owners, the screen for each task, and the evidence. The sign-off columns record who closed the step and on which date. The hours are fictional, and the three export totals all reconcile to 428.0.

Where the close is won

The approval step decides how smooth the close is. Submissions that arrive in the last hours leave the approver no room to return them. Agree on an internal cutoff one or two days before month end, and the reconciliation step becomes arithmetic instead of archaeology.

Read the approvals guide for reviewer assignments, correction paths, and the limits of the in-app lock.