Balance My Books
Cleanup & catch-up

Books behind? That is fixable.

Months or years of catch-up, sorted properly and without judgment. Then a clean file you can actually rely on.
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What cleanup bookkeeping actually is

Cleanup is not the same as monthly bookkeeping done late. It is the work of taking a file that has drifted, and rebuilding it until it reflects what actually happened in the business.

Sometimes that is months of transactions nobody has touched. More often it is a file that looks finished but is not: accounts that have never been reconciled, transactions coded to whatever was convenient, personal spending mixed in with business, and a balance sheet nobody can explain.

Who this is for

You are months or years behind and the gap keeps growing
Your file has been reconciled at some point, but nobody is sure when
Transactions are categorized inconsistently, or dumped somewhere neutral
Personal and business spending are mixed together
Your accountant has asked for something you cannot produce
A letter has arrived from CRA and you need to know where you stand

You do not need to tidy anything before we talk. I would rather see the real state of things.

What the process looks like

01
A review of your QuickBooks Online file
I go through the chart of accounts, accounts payable and receivable, the profit and loss and the balance sheet. I check when the accounts were last reconciled, and I look for personal bank and credit card activity mixed in with the business. That review is what tells me the size of the job. Until it is done, nobody can honestly tell you what a cleanup will cost.
02
Reconciliations first
Your bank statements are the golden list of what actually happened in the business. Everything else is someone's interpretation of it. So the accounts get reconciled before anything is tidied up, because there is no point categorizing transactions that may not belong there in the first place.
03
Then the cleanup itself
Once the accounts reconcile, we sort out what is left. Recategorizing, correcting, separating personal from business, and resolving the balances nobody could explain.

What I need from you to start

Two things: access to your QuickBooks Online file, and your bank statements.

That is enough to do the review and quote the work. Receipts come later, once we know which transactions actually need backup.

What happens after

Cleanup ends with a file that reconciles and statements you can hand to your accountant without apologizing for them.

From there you move onto a monthly retainer, so the same thing does not happen again. Cleanup is a one-off. Staying clean is the service.

How pricing works

I cannot price a cleanup from a phone call, and anyone who does is guessing.

Every file is different. Twelve months with one bank account and nothing filed wrong is a different job from two years with several accounts, payroll, and returns that were filed on numbers that will need revisiting. The only way to know is to look.

So the first step is the file review. Once I have seen what is actually there, you get a real number before any work starts.

If you have a letter from CRA, bring it to the call. Reading it is the first thing we do, and if it needs your accountant rather than me, I will say so.

Cleanup questions

What people ask before we start

How far behind is too far behind?

There is no such thing. Years behind is common and it is still fixable. The work scales with how much there is and what condition it is in, not with how embarrassed you are about it.

Do I need to sort anything out before we talk?

No, and I would rather you did not. I need to see the real state of the file to know what the job actually involves. Tidying it first hides the very things I am looking for.

How much does a bookkeeping cleanup cost?

I cannot price it from a phone call, because the cost depends on things that are only visible inside the file: how many accounts, how much volume, whether payroll is involved, and whether anything was filed on numbers that will need revisiting. The file review comes first, and you get a real number before any work starts.

What do you need from me to get started?

Access to your QuickBooks Online file and your bank statements. That is enough to do the review and quote the work. Receipts come later, once we know which transactions actually need backup.

What happens once the cleanup is done?

You move onto a monthly retainer so the same thing does not happen again. Cleanup is a one-off. Staying clean is the service.

I have a letter from CRA. Can you help?

Bring it to the call. Reading it is the first thing we do. If what it needs is your accountant rather than me, I will tell you that rather than taking the work.

However far behind you are, it is fixable.
Fifteen minutes, no commitment, no judgment.
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