15 days before the end of the quarter seems reasonable. We would start pulling reports and running estimates for quarterly results before the end of the last month. That way when the numbers were run after the end of the month we could true things up to see if things look reasonable. Many times it was just to make sure expenses looked reasonable. Make sure there was nothing double paid, look at accounts payable to make sure things were not double counted, estimate revenue. From someone who lived in the financial reporting area, It makes good sense to me that numbers would start getting thrown around about this time at the end of the quarter.
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