Catch-up and cleanup bookkeeping services, with the price on the page

The same — $65 per month, up to 300 transactions. We charge one price for catch-up and cleanup because most files need some of each, and working out which is which is our job rather than yours. Across the market, cleanup is usually quoted per project after an evaluation, which is why so few providers publish a figure.

Catch-up means the work was never done — months of transactions uncategorised or unentered. Cleanup means the work was done but is not reliable: duplicated transactions, balances that do not agree to the bank, everything sitting in an uncategorised account, personal spending recorded as business expense. Catch-up is a volume problem; cleanup is a diagnosis problem. Most real files are both.

There is no limit. The longest backlog we have brought current is two years. Older than that is a scoping question, not a refusal.

Typically about a week for one to three months behind, about three weeks for six to twelve months, and one to two months for multi-year backlogs. Those are typical rather than fixed: our own projects include a five-month backlog that took two months and a fourteen-month backlog that took five weeks. Transaction volume and scope drive the timeline far more than the number of months.

Gather bank and credit card statements for every month in the gap, whatever receipts and invoices exist, and payroll records if you have staff. Then either work through it month by month in date order — reconciling each period before starting the next — or hand it over. The part most people underestimate is reconciliation: entering transactions is slow but simple, while working out why a balance does not agree is where the time goes.

Reconcile first, then diagnose. Every account gets tied back to statements to find what is missing, duplicated or misposted; then uncategorised and catch-all accounts are cleared item by item; then owner transactions, loans and credit cards are reclassified correctly; then prior-period figures are agreed to whatever was filed. Anything genuinely ambiguous goes on a query list for you rather than being guessed at.

Intuit offers cleanup through its own assisted bookkeeping service, priced separately from the software subscription and quoted per file after a review, so there is no single published figure. Whoever does the work, ask two things before agreeing: what happens if the file turns out to be worse than it looked, and whether the price covers reconciliation or only categorisation.

Yes. We work in QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Zoho Books and Sage. Desktop files are a large share of the genuinely messy work we see. If you want to move to QuickBooks Online at the same time, we handle that migration at additional cost — though cleaning first and migrating second is usually the cheaper order.

No. One month of catch-up is a valid job. There is no retainer requirement, no setup fee, and no obligation to continue with monthly bookkeeping afterwards.

One line on your bank statement is not always one transaction. A card purchase is one. A single payroll payment becomes gross wages, employee withholding, employer taxes, any deductions, and the liability clearing — five or more entries. A customer deposit covering three invoices becomes the receipt plus application against each invoice. Most months are mostly ordinary purchases; we count this way so that “300 transactions” means something specific rather than becoming a reason to re-quote you later.

Disha Hiranandani, our Project Development Coordinator, with 5+ years and 6 certifications across Xero, Zoho Books, Sage and QuickBooks Online. She reviews every catch-up and cleanup project before it comes back to you, and her profile with her credentials is published on our team page.

Demand has outrun the number of people entering the profession, and experienced bookkeepers retiring are not being replaced one for one. The practical effect is that firms increasingly decline messy or backlogged files, because a clean monthly client is more profitable than a remediation project. That is exactly the work we take on, which is why so many of the files we see arrive after someone else has said no.