If the books have not been touched since spring, you are not lazy and you are not the first. You have been busy running jobs. We reconstruct, reconcile and hand your CPA a clean file, at a flat price quoted up front.
If you recognize two or more, cleanup is the fix, and it is a one-time project, not a life sentence.
Your CPA is waiting on you. The extension already got filed once. They need numbers you cannot produce, and the second deadline is coming.
The bank feed has thousands of uncategorized transactions. You opened the software, saw the number, and closed the laptop.
A letter showed up from the IRS or the Department of Revenue. You are not sure if it is serious because you cannot check.
A lender or bonding agent wants three years of statements. You have one year, and you are not confident in it.
Personal and business ran through the same account. For a while. Maybe still.
You are paying for accounting software you stopped opening. The subscription renews, the data does not.
No mystery, no meter. Here is the sequence, start to finish.
Thirty minutes on a screen share. We look at what is actually in there, how far back the gap goes and what shape the records are in.
You get one number for the whole cleanup before we start. If we find something that changes the scope, we tell you before we do the work, not after.
Every bank and credit card account matched line by line against the real statement, month by month, so your books finally agree with what actually moved through your accounts. Loans, credit lines and money you pulled out of the business get separated and put where they belong.
Your chart of accounts is just the list of buckets your money gets sorted into, and most trade shops are running one built for a retail store. We set it up so materials, labor and subs sort into job costs instead of office costs. That one change is what makes it possible to see what you actually keep on a job.
Your CPA gets a clean file they can file from. From there you either take it back or we keep it current monthly so this never happens twice.
Driven by how far back the gap goes and how many accounts are in play, not by how bad it looks. Bad-looking is normal.
| How far behind | Typical turnaround | What usually drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Under 6 months | 1 to 2 weeks | One company, bank feed already connected |
| 6 to 12 months | 2 to 3 weeks | How many transactions, and any statements we have to chase down |
| 1 to 2 years | 3 to 5 weeks | Rebuilding payroll records, personal and business money run together |
| 2+ years or multiple entities | Quoted after review | Past tax filings, returns that may need refiling, how the companies are set up |
Flat-rate project pricing, quoted after the review. Cleanup is separate from monthly bookkeeping and you are not required to buy both.
No contracts. No hourly meter. You see the number before we start.
Underneath the accounting words, here is what actually changes. You will know what you made, what you owe and what is coming, without guessing and without dreading the mail.
"They found a full year of expenses that had never made it into my books. Money I had already spent. My profit looked better than it really was, and I was paying tax on income I never made."
As far back as there are records to work from. Bank and card statements are the backbone, and most institutions keep seven years available. If a year is genuinely unrecoverable we tell you that on the review call rather than billing you to find out.
Filing accurately is what reduces your risk. Unfiled returns and numbers that do not tie to your deposits are what draw attention. We are not a tax firm and we do not give tax advice, but we work alongside your CPA so the return gets filed on records that hold up.
No. We clean up in whichever system your books already live in. We prefer Xero and will say so, but a cleanup is the wrong time to also migrate platforms. If a move makes sense we do it after you are current, and we handle it.
Most contractors do not, and we work from statements. Bank and card records establish what was spent and when. Where a transaction is genuinely ambiguous we ask you once, in a batch, rather than pinging you every day.
Flat rate, quoted after the free review, based on months behind and number of accounts. You get the number before any work starts. Cleanup is a one-time project cost and it is quoted separately from monthly bookkeeping.
No. Every shop that calls us is behind, that is the whole reason for the call. Being behind on paperwork while the field work is excellent is the most common pattern in this trade, and it is a visibility problem rather than a character problem.
Thirty minutes, screen share, no pitch. You leave the call knowing the scope, the timeline and the flat price.