Year-End Close Checklist for International Payments and FX Balances

On December 31, the CFO of a company with international payments and subsidiaries or suppliers in Colombia or Mexico is not just closing the month, they are closing the year. That means revaluing every dollar, euro or stablecoin balance at the year-end rate, reconciling that figure against the ledger, confirming payroll and overseas supplier payments do not collide with a bank holiday, and lining up the paperwork behind the year's tax filings.

In Soulbit Academy we treat the year-end close as an extra layer on top of the December monthly close, distinct from the quarterly treasury close, which focuses on forecasting, covenants and counterparties. The year-end close is about the full year's FX revaluation, the December-January calendar and the annual tax filings. Soulbit is a stablecoin payment and treasury rail for companies, not accounting close software, and the checklist below is an operating guide for a company with exposure to Colombia and Mexico.

What a year-end close is and how it differs from a quarterly close

A year-end close for a company with international payments is the December monthly close plus four tasks that only happen once a year: revaluing the full year's foreign currency position, a final reconciliation of every FX balance, the December-January payment calendar checked against bank holidays, and the tax filings due on the calendar year. It does not repeat the quarterly forecast or covenant review already covered in a quarterly close; it looks back at the entire fiscal year and outward at the tax authorities that require an annual cutoff.

The difference between the two closes is scope and audience, not rigor. A quarterly close reports to the board; a year-end close produces the figures that feed the annual income tax return, the foreign asset disclosure and each country's tax authority.

Does a year-end close replace the regular December monthly close?

No, it includes it. December still has its own monthly close, with its own cutoff and its own complete bank reconciliation. The year-end close adds the full-year FX revaluation and the filings that only get submitted once a year on top of that same monthly close.

The year-end close checklist for international payments and FX balances

A company operating in Colombia or Mexico moves through six fixed steps at year end, summarized in the table below. Skipping a step will not stop the books from closing, but it leaves the next year with figures that need correcting midway through.

Step	What the CFO verifies	Evidence that gets documented
1. December monthly close	Cutoff of operations, the month's closing rate and December's bank reconciliation	Signed December bank reconciliation
2. Full-year FX revaluation	Every foreign currency asset and liability restated at the official December 31 rate	FX gain or loss schedule by line item
3. Reconciliation of FX balances	Every dollar, euro or stablecoin balance matched against the ledger at year end	Signed reconciliation by account and currency
4. Year-end payment calendar	Payroll and overseas supplier payments scheduled against December and January bank holidays	Payment calendar with adjusted dates
5. Supporting documentation	Contracts, invoices and receipts for every international payment of the year, filed and traceable	Supporting file by supplier or client
6. Annual tax filings	Obligations due on the calendar year cutoff, including crypto-asset reporting where it applies	Tax calendar for the year with owners assigned

The first two steps are mechanical and depend on an official rate the company does not control, while the third and fourth are about coordination between treasury, accounting and whoever executes the payments. The last two are why a year-end close carries more weight than an ordinary monthly close: documentation and annual filings only get reviewed once a year, and an incomplete file discovered in January is far harder to rebuild than one checked in December.

FX revaluation at December 31: Colombia and Mexico

The December 31 FX revaluation restates every foreign currency asset and liability at the official year-end rate and compares that value against what was booked during the year. That adjustment does not depend on whether the company collected or paid that balance during the year, only on whether the balance is still open on December 31.

In Colombia, the year-end rate is the Tasa Representativa del Mercado (TRM), certified for the last day of the year by the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia based on interbank foreign exchange transactions. That same year-end TRM is the rate the DIAN uses for tax purposes, and the full procedure for applying it month by month, not only in December, is covered in Colombia's TRM exchange rate and the DIAN.

What exchange rate should a Mexican company use to close its fiscal year?

A Mexican company should use the exchange rate the Banco de México publishes in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, under Article 20 of the Código Fiscal de la Federación. That same article states that on a day the rate is not published, the last published rate before that date applies, a rule that matters precisely around the year-end holidays when the exchange market itself is closed.

A Mexican FX gain or loss is treated as interest income or expense under Article 8 of the Ley del Impuesto Sobre la Renta: an accrued gain gets accumulated and an accrued loss gets deducted, regardless of when the foreign currency receivable or payable is actually collected or paid. A company with a payable to an overseas supplier invoiced in dollars, purely as an illustrative example with no bearing on any real figure, closes the year with a pending obligation that must be restated at the December 31 rate, whether the actual payment happens in January or February.

Reconciling FX balances and organizing supporting documentation

Reconciling foreign currency balances at year end matches every dollar, euro, pound or stablecoin balance against the ledger, account by account and currency by currency, before that figure feeds the FX revaluation. Reconciling only the local currency account and assuming the foreign currency accounts are fine is the most common mistake in a rushed year-end close. The full procedure for matching every statement, including accounts held in more than one currency, is covered in multi-currency bank reconciliation.

Supporting documentation brings together the contracts, invoices and receipts for every international payment made during the year, and it should be filed by supplier or by client before closing, not rebuilt after the DIAN or Mexico's SAT requests it. In Colombia, the UGPP can audit payroll-related social security contributions up to five years back, under Article 178 of Ley 1607 of 2012, which means the file for a closed year needs to be kept well beyond the close itself. Traceability of each payment from the moment it is made, which makes assembling that file easier, is covered in payment traceability for accounting close.

The December-January payment calendar: bank holidays to plan around

The year-end payment calendar has to plan around each country's December and January bank holidays, because a payment scheduled for a non-business day settles the next business day, not the same day. In Colombia, December 8, December 25 and January 1 are fixed holidays that Ley 51 of 1983, the Ley Emiliani, does not move, but January 6, Epiphany, does shift to the following Monday. In Mexico, December 12 is a non-business day for banks under the CNBV calendar, and December 25 and January 1 are mandatory rest days under Article 74 of the Ley Federal del Trabajo, and Mexico has no other federal bank holiday in January until the first Monday of February.

Date or mechanism	Colombia	Mexico
December 8	Fixed holiday, does not move (Ley 51 of 1983)	Bank business day
December 12	Bank business day	Bank non-business day (CNBV calendar)
December 25	Fixed holiday, does not move (Ley 51 of 1983)	Fixed mandatory rest day (Article 74 LFT)
January 1	Fixed holiday, does not move	Fixed mandatory rest day
January 6 (Epiphany)	Shifts to the following Monday under the Ley Emiliani	Not a bank holiday in Mexico
Next January bank holiday	None beyond the shifted one	None until the first Monday of February
December payroll accrual	Year-end prima de servicios, due by December 20	Aguinaldo, due by December 20

What happens when an international payment is scheduled on a bank holiday?

The payment does not settle that day, it settles the next business banking day, which can push the value date one or two days past what the supplier or the employee receiving payroll expected. The prima and aguinaldo accruals that build up ahead of this close, common to both Colombia and Mexico, are covered in year-end payroll provisioning: prima and aguinaldo.

Annual tax filings to close out before year end

Annual tax filings to close out before year end include, for a Colombian company operating with crypto assets, DIAN Resolution 000240 of 2025, in force from tax year 2026, which requires crypto-asset service providers to report their users, the type of crypto asset, its fair value and the number of transactions, with a deadline set for the last business day of May of the following year, meaning the first report under this rule is due in May 2027. Failing to file this information return is penalized under Article 651 of Colombia's Estatuto Tributario, with a fine of between 0.5% and 1% of the unreported amounts.

That filing sits alongside the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), in force since January 1, 2026, which starts collecting data during 2026 for a first automatic exchange between tax authorities in 2027; Colombia signed the CARF Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on October 31, 2024. A Colombian company with assets abroad, including stablecoin balances held outside the country, should also check whether it needs to file the annual foreign asset disclosure with the DIAN, Formulario 160, whose exact deadline each year is confirmed in the filing-deadline decree the DIAN issues annually.

A Mexican company has no crypto-specific filing equivalent to Colombia's within Soulbit's V1, but it still needs to factor the year's FX gain or loss into the annual inflation adjustment, under Article 8 of the Ley del Impuesto Sobre la Renta, when preparing the information behind its annual return. Always confirm the tax calendar in force for the year you are closing, since deadlines and forms can change from one fiscal year to the next.

What Soulbit automates in the year-end close today, and what stays the CFO's job

Soulbit V1 keeps a company's balance in several currencies at once, USD, EUR and GBP alongside USDC and USDT, with exportable transaction history by account and by period. That helps gather the input for the reconciliation step, because part of the foreign currency balance stays centralized in one place instead of spread across several platforms.

Soulbit does not calculate the year's FX gain or loss, does not prepare the foreign asset disclosure, does not file returns with the DIAN or Mexico's SAT, and does not classify which transactions belong in Mexico's annual inflation adjustment: those four tasks stay with the CFO, the accountant and the tax advisor. There is also no automatic connection to the company's ERP, no API or SDK in V1, and exporting the year's transaction history is a manual step.