For your team · The Closing Cycle
Accounting & Monthly Close · Accounting & Monthly Close
Run the monthly close. Accruals, reconciliations, judgments, audit asks — period after period.
The Closing Cycle adapts the continuous-operations model to monthly close work. Every active day, the inbox surfaces 2-5 close events from senior accountants, the controller, audit managers, legal, HR, and IT: a late vendor invoice three days post-close, a reconciliation out by $87K, a warranty accrual that needs reassessment, a PCAOB inspection letter, an ERP outage 48 hours before publish. Some events are multiple-choice with explicit consequences across the four pillars; others ask for a written response (accrual methodology memo, investigation plan, audit response) that a senior controller / audit partner LLM grades on technical accuracy, process discipline, and audit readiness. Persistent state tracks four pillars and counters for closes completed, material errors, events expired. The simulation models what students rarely see in case studies: the actual rhythm and judgment of closing books under real time pressure.
Every team is scored on four pillars that compound across the sim. They aggregate into a composite the leaderboard ranks by, and the professor can see per-pillar deltas in the gradebook.
On-time closes, documented methodology, minimal suspense balances and out-of-period adjustments.
Fix breaks fast, escalate intelligently, don't kick the can.
Workpapers, methodologies, and judgments that withstand auditor scrutiny.
The numbers in the board package match reality. No surprises later.
Written responses graded by Claude as a senior controller or audit partner — judges technical accuracy, process discipline, and audit readiness.
Tracks closes completed, material errors, events expired across many periods — long-term reputation matters.
Grader anchored to real GAAP / audit framing, not generic management feedback. Students get accounting-grade feedback.
Professor picks active days, events per day, response window, total length (up to 16 weeks).
Flexible — typical: 5-6 weeks Mon-Fri at 3 events/day. The engine ticks per sim-day; a cosmetic "Close Cycle X of N" label surfaces the day-of-N framing rather than a batched monthly close.
Designed for ~15-30 students in teams of 4-5. Each team runs one persistent close team.
Graduate or upper-undergraduate accounting courses, controllership and audit electives, accounting capstones.
The only sim built around the rhythm of accounting work. Case studies teach standards; this teaches the lived experience of closing books under time pressure with auditor scrutiny.
One of many pre-authored prompts from the sim’s Week 1 debrieflibrary. Grounded in the team’s actual decisions and used as a scheduled teaching moment.
Week 1 debriefThe late invoice — accrue or hold?
A vendor invoice arrived after close cutoff this week. Show us your team's memo. Did you accrue, hold in next period, or push back on the vendor? What is your team's materiality threshold, and did the memo reference it?
A single in-tray event drawn from the sim’s live event catalog — the kind of decision a student team sees in their inbox on any given active day.
A $42K legal invoice for services rendered in close period arrived 3 days after we closed the period. Materiality threshold is $25K. Adjust the prior period? Book in current? Both have implications.
Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, Moodle via LTI 1.3. Students launch from your LMS with single sign-on; one-click grade publish posts scores back with the rubric breakdown as the comment.
Per semester. No platform fee, no per-section charge, no seat minimums. Institutional invoicing available.