Behind on your books? Start here.
Two months or two years — it’s fixable, and it’s most of what I do. You’ll get a straight assessment and a fixed number before you commit to anything.
How people usually end up here.
Nobody plans to fall behind. It happens the same handful of ways, and none of them say anything bad about you as a business owner.
The work picked up
The books were fine until you got busy. Then a month slipped, then a quarter, and now opening QuickBooks feels worse than not opening it.
Your bookkeeper left
Mid-year, mid-reconciliation, sometimes mid-argument. You inherited a file you can’t read and half the logins you’d need to fix it.
Your CPA is waiting
They asked for financials and you don’t have anything to send. Or they quoted you a cleanup fee that made you close the email.
You never really started
You’ve been running the business out of a checking account and a folder of receipts. That’s a starting point, not a failure.
What a cleanup actually involves.
A free review
I look at what you have — a QuickBooks file, spreadsheets, or a stack of statements — and tell you how deep it goes. Thirty minutes, no cost, and you get the assessment whether or not you hire me.
A fixed quote, before anything starts
You get a number and a timeline in writing. Catch-up is quoted separately from monthly bookkeeping, and it doesn’t change halfway through because the job turned out bigger than I said it was.
Reconstruct and reconcile
Every account, every month, matched against real statements.
- Missing transactions found and entered
- Duplicates removed
- Transfers stopped from double-counting as income
- Opening balances corrected so the periods actually connect
Rebuild the chart of accounts
Most messy files aren’t messy because of the data — they’re messy because of the structure underneath it. I reclassify miscoded transactions and rebuild the account list so your reports mean something. This is the part that stops the same problem happening again next year.
Clean statements, handed over
A profit & loss and balance sheet for every period we cleaned, in a format your CPA can work from directly instead of billing you to untangle.
If you’re behind on books, you may be behind on filings.
This is the part out-of-state cleanup services miss, and it’s usually the part that actually costs you money.
B&O returns filed from guesses
Washington taxes gross receipts. If your revenue was never properly recorded, whatever you reported was an estimate. I reconstruct the real numbers by classification so you know where you actually stand.
Sales tax collected but not tracked
This is the one that gets serious fastest. Sales tax you collected was never your money, and the Department of Revenue treats it that way. Getting the record straight matters more here than anywhere else.
Seattle business license tax
A separate return with its own deadline, on top of the state’s. Easy to miss entirely if nobody told you it existed.
Where I stop
I’m a bookkeeper, not a CPA or an enrolled agent. I rebuild the records your tax professional needs to file or amend — I don’t file returns or represent you. If you don’t have someone, I’ll tell you what to look for.
What it takes to get current.
Most cleanups run two to six weeks. Price depends on how much there is and what condition it’s in — not on an hourly meter that rewards me for going slowly.
What drives the number
Transaction volume, how many accounts are involved, how many months or years are open, and how much documentation still exists.
What makes it faster
Bank and card statements you can still download, accounts that are still open, and access to whatever file your last bookkeeper was working in.
What makes it slower
Closed accounts, mixed personal and business spending, cash-heavy operations, and years old enough that statements have to be requested from the bank.
What happens after
Nothing automatically. Plenty of people get cleaned up, take the file back, and run it themselves. If you want ongoing monthly work, that’s a separate conversation once you can see what you’re dealing with.
One more thing, before you put this off again.
I’ve never looked at someone’s books and thought less of them. In my experience messy books almost always mean the business was busy, which is the good problem. But waiting genuinely does make it worse — documentation gets harder to find, banks stop offering old statements without a fee, and anything owed keeps accruing quietly in the background. Whatever state it’s in, you’re better off knowing the number than imagining it.
What people ask before they call.
How far back can you go?
As far as you have records. Bank and card statements are the backbone of any cleanup — if those are available, most things can be reconstructed. I’ll tell you early what’s missing and what that means.
I don’t have all my receipts.
Almost nobody does. We work from statements first. Receipts matter most for larger purchases and anything your CPA might need to substantiate later — missing some is normal and not a reason to wait.
My personal and business spending are mixed together.
Extremely common, especially for sole proprietors. Separating it is part of the work. Going forward I’ll help you set things up so it stops happening.
Will fixing this cause problems with the IRS or DOR?
That’s a fair question and the right person to answer it is a CPA or enrolled agent, not me. What I can tell you is that accurate records are the foundation of any position you or they decide to take.
Can you work with my CPA?
Yes, and I’d rather. Tell me who they are and what format they want things in, and I’ll deliver it that way.
Do I have to move to QuickBooks Online?
For ongoing monthly work, yes. For a one-time cleanup, we can talk about it — but in most cases moving you into QBO during the cleanup is cheaper than doing the work twice.
Find out how deep it goes.
Thirty minutes, free, no obligation. You’ll leave the call knowing where your books actually stand and roughly what it takes to fix them.