Cleanup is correcting what was entered wrong. Catch-up is recording what was never entered. Most jobs need both. Here are the signs that your books need a cleanup.
If two or more of these sound familiar, your books need a cleanup.
1. Your Accounts Do Not Match Your Statements
Bank, credit card or loan accounts that were never reconciled, or that will not reconcile. Your statements are what we reconcile to.
2. A Reconciliation Was Forced
An adjusting entry was used to make the balance match, rather than finding the actual difference. The account looks reconciled, but the difference is still there.
3. Some Transactions Are in Twice
A transaction entered by hand and then imported again from the bank feed sits in the file as two separate expenses. The opposite happens too: some transactions are not in at all.
4. Income Is Counted Twice
In QuickBooks, payments recorded but never matched to a deposit pile up in undeposited funds, so the account climbs and income gets counted twice. A related sign: receivables full of invoices that were already paid, because payments were applied to the wrong invoice or never applied at all.
5. Transactions Are in the Wrong Categories
When transactions are in the wrong categories, the reports do not show what actually happened. One common cause is a bulk rule: one rule changed, and every matching transaction moved with it, including the ones that were already right. Personal and business expenses mixed together is another.
6. A Number Nobody Ever Cleared
In QuickBooks, it is often opening balance equity: a number parked in a holding account since setup that nobody ever cleared.
7. Someone Is Waiting on Numbers You Cannot Produce
Your CPA is waiting. Or your lender, or a buyer. And if you do not know how bad it is, that uncertainty is usually worse than the actual state of the books.
What a Cleanup Gives You Back
Books you can hand to anyone:
- Every account reconciled back to the last point the books were correct
- Transactions categorized properly, including the ones that were wrong before
- Duplicates, missing entries and misapplied payments resolved
- Personal and business expenses separated
- Financial statements that reflect what actually happened
- A clear record of what was changed and why
For what happens to each document along the way, read the bookkeeping cleanup process, step by step.
How We Handle a Cleanup
We look at your file before either of us commits to anything. You get the scope and the cost in writing, with no surprises later. We work through it account by account rather than guessing at totals, and you see what we find as we find it.
Cleanup is priced at your monthly rate times the number of months that need cleaning up, and your monthly rate is set by transaction volume. Here is what cleanup actually costs.
Cleanup transitions to monthly bookkeeping once the file is current. We only take cleanup work that becomes ongoing, because a cleaned file drifts again within months if nobody keeps it current.
We work remotely with businesses across the country, in QuickBooks Online or Xero, with read-only bank access. If your file is in QuickBooks Desktop, we work in that too. We are bookkeepers, and we do not prepare income tax returns: we get the books tax-ready and coordinate directly with your CPA.
Where to go next:
- Cleanup and catch-up: how the two fit together
- QuickBooks cleanup or Xero cleanup, if you know which software your books are in
- Years behind on your books, if more than a year was never entered
- After you fire your bookkeeper, if a previous bookkeeper left the mess
Behind on your books and not sure where to start?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation. We'll listen to your situation and tell you honestly what makes sense and what doesn't.
You don't have to figure your books out alone.
Cents of Wyoming Bookkeeping helps business owners get accurate, organized, stress-free financials, so you can focus on running your business.