Catch-Up and Clean-Up Bookkeeping

Books fall behind for ordinary reasons: the business got busy, a bookkeeper left, or the software was set up by the owner in whatever seemed easiest at the time. That is fine until it is not, usually the first time a lender, a partner or the IRS wants to see something the books were never set up to produce.

Catch-up and clean-up work is common, and it is usually the first thing we do for a new business client. There is no point at which books become too far behind to fix. It does get steadily more expensive the longer it waits: catch-up work takes longer per transaction than current work, because context is lost and questions have to be asked rather than remembered.

• Review how the books were set up, including the chart of accounts
• Reconstruct the missing period from bank and credit card statements
• Categorize uncategorized or misclassified transactions
• Reconcile every bank and credit card account from a clean starting point
• Correct mis-categorized history where it materially matters
• Produce financials you can use, and that your tax preparer can work from
• Keep the books current monthly afterwards, so it does not happen again

If someone else set the books up, we take them over as they are rather than asking you to start again from scratch. Most broken books we take over are broken through configuration rather than software, and we work in both QuickBooks and Xero.

Once the books are current, keeping them that way costs far less than rebuilding them. Ongoing bookkeeping includes monthly reconciliation and reporting, with payroll alongside if you need it, and business clients can have the books and the return handled by the same firm.

Where sales tax filings were missed as well, the back periods are cleaned up through sales and use tax filing.