Behind on your books? Start here.
Two months or two years — it’s fixable, and it’s routine work. 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.
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. Cleanup projects start with a 50% deposit, with the balance due on delivery.
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. The fee depends on how much there is and what condition it’s in, quoted as a fixed project number rather than an open hourly meter — and it’s separate from monthly bookkeeping, so you’re not paying a premium for years to cover work that took three weeks.
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 — plans start at $275 a month. See the plans →
Waiting is the expensive part.
Books get behind because businesses get busy — that’s the ordinary reason, and it’s the one I see most. But delay compounds in specific ways: documentation gets harder to find, banks start charging for old statements or stop providing them, and anything owed keeps accruing quietly in the background. Whatever state your books are in, the number is smaller today than it will be, and you’re better off knowing it 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.
Common, especially for sole proprietors. Separating it is part of the work, and going forward I’ll help you set things up so it stops happening.
Will fixing this cause problems with the IRS or Department of Revenue?
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.
What if my CPA wants it a specific way?
Tell me who they are and what format they need before the work starts, and I’ll deliver the cleaned periods that way — chart of accounts included. It’s a shorter conversation at the start than a rework at the end.
Do I have to move to QuickBooks Online?
For ongoing monthly work, yes. For a one-time cleanup we can talk about it — though in most cases moving you into QBO during the cleanup costs less than doing the work twice. You’d subscribe with Intuit directly, so the file stays in your name.
Find out how deep it goes.
A free 30-minute review. You’ll leave the call knowing where your books actually stand and roughly what it takes to fix them.