Catch-up and cleanup bookkeeping

When this is the right call

Catch-up work is for books that have fallen behind, whether that is a few months or a few years. It is a one-off project with a defined end: bring the ledger current, reconcile it, and hand back a trial balance that stands up.

The reason is usually one of these:

• A tax deadline is coming and the records are not ready
• A lender or landlord wants financial statements you cannot currently produce
• You are switching accountants and the file has to be handed over clean
• Bookkeeping quietly stopped some months ago and never restarted
• You are selling, bringing in a partner, or need a real valuation

What actually happens

First a look at what exists: which accounts are connected, how far back the last clean reconciliation goes, and where the gaps are. That assessment is what the quote is built on, because there is no honest way to price this without seeing it.

Then the rebuild. Historical transactions are categorised, accounts are reconciled period by period against real statements, duplicates come out, and balances that never tied are chased down until they do. Whatever cannot be resolved from the records comes back to you as a single list of questions.

At the end you get a clean trial balance, statements for the periods covered, and a file your CPA can work from. If the cleanup is inside QuickBooks specifically, the QuickBooks page goes into what tends to be broken in those files.

If the problem is a QuickBooks file that has drifted rather than missing months, the free QuickBooks health check will tell you what is actually wrong before you ask anyone for a quote.

How it is priced

Separately from monthly work, and as a flat quote rather than an hourly meter. The scope depends on how many months are open, how many accounts are involved, and what state the records are in. You see the number before anything starts.

Most people move onto monthly bookkeeping once the catch-up is done, which is the point of doing it. It is not required.

Where to next