What catch-up bookkeeping costs, and what drives the price

Why it’s priced by the month

Catch-up bookkeeping means recording months that nobody recorded. Every one of those months needs the same work: pull the bank and card statements, put each transaction in the right account, and reconcile until the balance in the books matches the statement. A month is a clean unit of work, and you can count how many you have before you ask anyone for a price.

So the arithmetic is simple. Six months behind starts at $1,800. Twelve months starts at $3,600. Those are starting prices for an ordinary month. You get the real number in writing after we’ve looked at your statements.

The replies to that question range widely, because nobody in the thread is pricing the same books. On ours, these are the things that change the number.

What pushes the price up

• More accounts. Each bank account, card and loan gets reconciled separately, every month. One checking account and one card is a different job from four accounts and two cards.
• More transactions. A consultant with twenty payments a month and a shop with six hundred aren’t the same month of work.
• Missing statements. If we have to wait for, or work around, months with no statement, it takes longer. If a month is missing, we tell you instead of guessing.
• Personal and business mixed together. Every personal charge on a business card has to be found and separated out.
• Books that exist but are wrong. Undoing bad categories and duplicates can take longer than starting from nothing. That’s cleanup, and it starts at $600.
• Opening balances that don’t match the last return. If the books have to agree with a return you already filed, any difference has to be traced.

What keeps it near the starting price

• Send every statement for every month up front. PDFs from online banking are fine.
• Give us a login to whatever you use now, even if it’s a spreadsheet.
• Send your most recent business tax return, so we start from the numbers you already reported.
• Answer the question list quickly. The few transactions nobody can identify are where the time goes.

You don’t need to sort receipts before you send them, because that rarely saves money. Having every statement does.

What the IRS expects from your records

The IRS doesn’t require any particular software. Its recordkeeping guidance says you can use any system suited to your business that clearly shows your income and expenses, and that good records are what you use to prepare your return and support the items on it. Books that are months behind mean the return is either late or built on guesses.

The records you rebuild also have a shelf life. The IRS’s general rule is to keep the records behind a return until its period of limitations runs out, three years in the ordinary case, and indefinitely for a year where no return was filed (IRS, how long to keep records). Once the months are rebuilt, keep them for that whole window.

What’s in the price, and what isn’t

For each year we cover, you get reconciled accounts, transactions in the right categories, and a profit and loss and balance sheet you can hand to whoever files your return.

The tax return isn’t in the catch-up price. Tax preparation starts at $225, or you can take your finished books to your own preparer. We don’t audit books or issue reviewed or compiled statements, because that is CPA firm work. Qeihan is a bookkeeper and tax return preparer, not a CPA. See our disclosures for what that means.

How long it takes

It depends on the same things as the price, and mostly on how quickly the statements arrive. A full year’s turnaround goes in your written quote. If you’re also behind on a return, we’ll tell you which year to catch up first.

Every price is on the pricing page, and the full scope is on the catch-up bookkeeping page.