How do you run month-end close in Applied Epic?

Month-end close in Applied Epic is not a checklist you can run in any order. The steps depend on each other: trust reconciliation needs a completed bank reconciliation as an input, carrier and commission reconciliation need statements matched before the GL can close, and accruals need the reconciled numbers to be correct first. Run them out of order and you either redo work or close a period with numbers that do not hold up.

The order, and why it matters

1. Reconcile the bank accounts first. Every other reconciliation depends on a clean bank balance. Identify deposits in transit, outstanding payments, and unexplained entries before you touch trust or commissions.
2. Reconcile trust next. Trust reconciliation compares the trust bank balance to the trust ledger and the trust liability. It needs the bank reconciliation done, because an unreconciled bank balance makes the trust position unreliable too.
3. Match carrier statements. For both agency-bill and direct-bill business, match each insurer’s statement to what Epic recorded on the policies. Do this before commission reconciliation, since the commission numbers come from these statements.
4. Reconcile direct-bill commission. Compare what the carrier reported and paid against what Epic expected, and correct commission income and receivables. See how to reconcile direct bill in Applied Epic for the step-by-step process.
5. Post accruals and adjusting entries. Once trust, carrier, and commission numbers are correct, post accruals, prepaids, and adjustments so income and expenses land in the right period. Posting accruals before the reconciliations are done means redoing them when a reconciliation turns up a correction.
6. Close the GL period. Review the trial balance, confirm every reconciliation is signed off, then close the period and produce the financial package.

What breaks when a step is skipped or done out of order

• Closing the GL before commission reconciliation locks in a period that gets restated the next time you find a carrier discrepancy.
• Posting accruals before trust and carrier work is done means the accrual itself may need correcting, which shows up as a prior-period adjustment later.
• Skipping bank reconciliation and going straight to trust hides bank-side errors inside what looks like a trust shortfall or surplus.

Building this into a calendar

The order above only holds if it runs on a fixed schedule every month. A brokerage that closes on a calendar, with a set day for each step, can deliver a financial package within a committed turnaround. Firms that reconcile occasionally take longer, because differences from prior months have compounded and each step now includes cleanup as well as the current period’s work.

For the setup work behind these steps (the general ledger, reconciliation settings, and bill workflows the close depends on), see what is the Applied Epic accounting module? For the broader, non-Epic-specific version of this checklist, see our insurance brokerage month-end close checklist. (Applied Epic and Applied Systems are trademarks of Applied Systems, Inc.)

We run this close, in this order, every month as part of our Applied Epic accounting service. If the close keeps drifting out of the system and into Excel, that is exactly the Applied Epic work we take on.