tl;dr
Month-end close is the process of finalizing a company's books for the month: reconciling accounts, reviewing and posting adjusting entries, and producing financial statements that are ready to report on.
It's traditionally one of the most concentrated, deadline-driven periods in a finance team's calendar.
The reason close is stressful in most companies isn't the accounting itself. It's that a month's worth of coding and reconciliation gets left until the close instead of handled as transactions occur, which turns three or four days into a scramble against a deadline.
Continuous close is the alternative: the same reconciliation work, done throughout the month instead of compressed into a few days at the end of it. Where continuous close is in place, month-end close stops being an event and becomes closer to a checklist, because most of the work is already done.
See how this works in Light's Consolidation.
