Your Fiscal Year Ends Sept 30. Your Books Aren't Close.

September is the most expensive month to do nothing. If your public housing authority reaches September 30 with unreconciled accounts, missing invoices, and unanswered questions, October will not magically solve the problem. It will simply bring a rush job, late adjustments, audit stress, and possibly re-filings. “We’ll let the auditor handle it” sounds practical: until the auditor finds that the books were never truly closed. A clean year-end starts before the fiscal year ends.

A proper close begins with cut-off schedules. You need to identify what your organization received, owed, earned, or paid as of September 30. That includes unpaid vendor invoices, payroll and leave balances, utilities, maintenance work, tenant accounts receivable, prepaid expenses, investment balances, and grant or program revenue. The goal is simple: record activity in the correct period. For public housing authority accounting, this documentation also supports your fee accountant, financial statements, and HUD reporting. Guesswork has no place in a year-end close: period.

The details matter. Accruals capture expenses incurred but not yet billed. Inter-program clearing makes sure costs and balances between Low Rent, Housing Choice Voucher, Capital Fund, and other programs are properly supported and reconciled. Fixed asset reconciliation confirms that capital additions, disposals, transfers, and depreciation agree with your records. You should also review bank accounts, tenant receivables, debt, inventory, and prior-year audit adjustments. These may sound like routine tasks, but missed details can affect your financial statements, your HUD REAC submission, and your PHA PHAS scoring.

Here’s how virtual CFO services keep September from becoming a crisis: the work happens month by month. Bank accounts and inter-program balances are reconciled regularly. Capital purchases are tracked when they occur: not discovered during audit preparation. Accruals are reviewed consistently. Management receives timely reports and asks questions while there is still time to act. Whether you use outsourced CFO services, an internal finance team, or a fee accountant, the process should include clear deadlines, assigned owners, documented support, and executive review. PHA consulting can help strengthen that process without adding another once-a-quarter fire drill.

For a September 30 year-end, your unaudited Financial Data Schedule is generally due to HUD within two months: November 30. The audited FDS and audit report are generally due within nine months: June 30, although many PHAs set earlier internal targets to allow room for delays. The best time to prepare for those deadlines is not October 1. It is every month before it. A clean close turns year-end into a checkpoint instead of a panic. Procuris Consulting helps mission-driven organizations and PHAs build financial systems that create clarity, accountability, and trust: so when September 30 arrives, your books are ready because you are.