Last checked by Coal Boss
Closing a month is not running a report. It is settling the small number of things that are still unfinished, so that the figures the reports produce can be trusted. In a coal business the same few always come up, and they come up in the same order.
Coal that left but was never billed is the first. A truck is loaded, it reaches the customer, the delivery is acknowledged — and the invoice is never raised, because the person who would raise it was waiting for a weight, a rate or a confirmation. Until it is billed it sits in no one's figures: the stock has gone out, the receivable does not exist, and the month looks better than it was.
Stock is the second. Book stock is opening plus receipts minus dispatches; physical stock is what is in the yard. A gap is normal in coal, but it has to be explained rather than absorbed. The harder version of the same problem is a lot whose cost nobody recorded — the quantity is known and the value is not, so any valuation built on it is a guess.
Party balances are the third, in both directions. What customers owe, and what is owed to suppliers and transporters. These drift when a payment is received against no particular bill, when a deduction is agreed verbally, or when an advance is paid and never adjusted.
Then the bank. Every line on the statement should match a receipt or a payment already recorded. Lines that match nothing are either entries nobody made or money nobody expected, and both matter more than the amount suggests.
Last, the purchases. A supplier bill, the material actually received, and the order it came against should agree. Where they do not, the difference is either a genuine variance to record or a bill that should not be paid yet.
More detail
The reason to settle these before closing, rather than after, is that each one quietly distorts a different statement. Unbilled dispatches understate both sales and receivables. Unvalued stock distorts the closing stock figure and therefore the margin. Unadjusted advances overstate what is owed. Unmatched bank lines mean the cash position is a guess. A trial balance that balances can still be built on all five.
It is also why 'closing' should mean something irreversible. If a period can be silently reopened and a back-dated entry added, then every figure already reported from it becomes provisional, and the month was never really closed at all.
None of this is unique to coal, but coal makes it heavier: weights change in transit, quality is argued after delivery, freight is settled separately from the goods, and a single lot can be bought, blended, moved between yards and sold in parts. The further a lot travels from its purchase, the harder its cost is to reconstruct later — which is the practical argument for recording cost at the point of receipt rather than at the point of valuation.
A sensible order of work: bill what has been delivered, value what is unvalued, agree party balances, match the bank, then reconcile purchases. Tax matters sit on top of this and belong with your accountant — the point of the sequence is that the commercial facts are settled before anyone reads anything into the numbers.
What it means if you trade coal
Work the five in order — bill what was delivered, value what is unvalued, agree party balances, match the bank, reconcile purchases — and close the period only after. A month closed on unsettled facts has to be reopened, and by then someone has already quoted the figures.
How Coal Boss handles this · In Coal Boss today
One list of what is holding up your books — failed ledger postings, unmatched bank lines, supplier bills not matched, stock lots with no cost, ITC waiting on evidence, unsettled freight — each with the amount, whether it blocks the close or only warns, what to do next, and the screen where it is fixed.
From Coal Boss's verified product record — separate from the explanation above.
Hinglish mein, short mein
Mahina band karna matlab report nikalna nahi — jo cheezein khuli padi hain unhe settle karna. Coal ke business mein aksar yahi hoti hain: delivery ho gayi par bill nahi bana, stock register se nahi milta ya uski lagat likhi hi nahi, party ka baaki dono taraf, bank ki lines jo kisi entry se match nahi hotin, aur supplier ke bill jo mile hue maal se nahi milte. Har ek alag statement ko bigadti hai, is liye trial balance mil kar bhi galat ho sakta hai. Tax ka maamla iske upar hai aur wo aapke accountant ka kaam hai.
Sources
- ExplanationCoal Boss explanation of common coal-trade practice
Coal Boss explanation of common trade practice — not a rule. Every business agrees its own terms.
