Months behind? Years behind? Our favorite call.

Almost nobody gets behind on their books because they are lazy. They get behind because they were busy running the business, and one month turned into three, and by then opening QuickBooks felt worse than not opening it. Then it is a year. Then the CPA calls.

If any of that landed, you are exactly who this page is for.

What a cleanup actually involves

"Cleanup" gets used loosely, so here is the real list. Not every file needs all of it, and the free look is how we find out which parts yours needs.

• Every account reconciled to a real statement. Bank, credit card, loans, lines of credit and merchant processors, every month of the period. This is the bulk of the work and there is no shortcut for it.
• Transactions categorized properly, including the ones sitting in Ask My Accountant, Uncategorized Expense, or wherever the last person parked them.
• Duplicates found and removed. Usually from a bank feed connected twice, or a feed plus manual entry.
• Loans recorded right. Every payment split between principal and interest so the balance actually matches what you owe.
• Payroll unwound and rebooked if it was recorded as lump sums, so your books agree with your quarterly filings.
• Business and personal separated, with personal spending recorded as owner draws and business expenses you paid personally recorded as contributions.
• The balance sheet repaired. Undeposited Funds cleared, Opening Balance Equity resolved, negative balances chased down to their cause.
• Ecommerce and processor deposits tied out, so Shopify or Stripe or Square deposits reconcile against gross sales and fees instead of landing as one mystery number.
• Sales tax reconstructed if it was never tracked.
• A clean set of reports at the end, and a walkthrough so you actually understand what they say.

What it costs

Cleanups start at $1,800 and are flat quoted after the free look.

The range is wide, and it is not the calendar that sets it. In order, it is whether business and personal money are mixed together, how many accounts have to be reconciled, what condition the file is in, and only then how many months. Two businesses can both be twelve months behind and be an $1,800 job and a $9,000 job.

Only a few months behind, with one or two accounts and nothing tangled? That is catch-up bookkeeping, a much smaller job, and we will tell you so. Please still reach out.

The full breakdown, including monthly bookkeeping and add-ons, is on our pricing page. We publish real numbers because we would want them too.

We do cleanups for businesses all over the north metro, including Forest Lake, White Bear Lake and Blaine, and remotely across Minnesota.

How far behind is too far behind?

There is no too far behind. One year, two years, five years, we have seen it and we do not flinch. The longest backlogs are usually the ones where somebody was working too hard to sit down and do the books, which is not a character flaw.

How long does a QuickBooks cleanup take?

Most cleanups finish in 4 to 8 weeks once we have your statements. The clock starts when the statements arrive, not when you call, so gathering those is the fastest thing you can do to speed it up.

What do you need from me to start?

Access to your QuickBooks file and statements for every account for the period being cleaned up: bank, credit card, loans and lines of credit, and merchant processors. If your prior tax returns were filed, we want those too, so the cleaned-up books tie back to what was reported.

Will this create a problem with taxes I already filed?

It can, and it is better to know. If returns were filed off books that were wrong, the corrected books may not match what was reported. We flag it clearly and hand it to your CPA, who decides whether anything needs amending. We never guess at that, because it is a tax decision and taxes are not our lane.

Do I have to sign up for monthly bookkeeping afterward?

No. A cleanup is a standalone project and plenty of people take their clean books and carry on themselves. Most do stay, because the whole point of the cleanup was to stop this happening again, but there is no requirement and no pressure.

How much does a QuickBooks cleanup cost?

Cleanups start at $1,800 and are flat quoted after a free look at your file. The biggest driver is whether business and personal money are mixed together, then how many accounts have to be reconciled, then what condition the file is in, and only then how many months.

• Separating business and personal money. The thing that shapes a cleanup more than anything else, and how to stop it happening again.
• How to read your Balance Sheet. Where a broken file shows itself first.
• Do I need to send a 1099? Because catch-up season and 1099 season are the same season.
• Full pricing.