Catch-up bookkeeping services

Every catch-up bookkeeping services project we quote lands in one of four tiers. The ranges below are what we actually charge service, trades, and professional businesses. Multiple entities, point-of-sale integrations, and job costing sit at the top of a tier.

Months behind	Timeline	Flat fee	What we usually find
1 to 3	1 to 2 weeks	$399 to $1,200	A bookkeeper left or a busy season got away from you. Pull statements, reconcile, deliver clean reports.
4 to 12	3 to 6 weeks	$1,500 to $4,500	The most common range. One tax year missing. Sales tax to refile if you collect it, payroll to reconcile if you have W-2 employees.
13 to 24	6 to 10 weeks	$4,500 to $9,000	Two tax years to rebuild, often with an extension already on file. We work the year that's due first so your CPA can file.
25+	10 to 16 weeks	$9,000 to $20,000+	Reconstruction. Closed accounts, missing statements, a QuickBooks file that's easier to rebuild than repair. Never fast, rarely cheap, always doable.

One thing to know before you get scared off by the top row: the missed deductions we find during a multi-year cleanup usually cover a big chunk of the fee.

Four things, in order of how much they matter:

1. Number of accounts. One checking account and one credit card is a different job than four bank accounts, three cards, a line of credit, and a merchant processor.
2. Transaction volume. 80 transactions a month reconciles in an afternoon. 800 doesn't.
3. Payroll and sales tax. If either one was running while the books weren't, we're reconciling filings against reality, not just categorizing expenses.
4. Condition of the file. Books that were never done are honestly easier than books that were done wrong. Duplicates, mis-linked bank feeds, and years of uncategorized transactions add hours. That's the QuickBooks cleanup side of the job, and most catch-up projects need some of it.

We don't bill hourly on catch-up work. You get one flat number after the assessment. If we open the file and it's worse than expected, that's our problem, not a change order.

• Catch-up bookkeeping fills in months that were never done at all. Nothing categorized, nothing reconciled.
• QuickBooks cleanup fixes months that were done wrong. Miscategorized transactions, duplicates, balances that never matched the bank.
• Monthly bookkeeping (from $399/mo) is what keeps you from needing either one again.

Most people who call us need the first two together, because books that fell behind usually had problems before they stopped. We quote it as one project. And when the cleanup's done, most clients roll into monthly service. Some take their clean file and go. Both are fine.

Nobody calls us the month they fall behind. They call when something forces it. The usual triggers, and what they cost:

• A tax deadline. Your CPA can't file from guesses. S-Corp and partnership returns are due March 15 and individual returns April 15, or September 15 and October 15 with an extension. Miss those and the failure-to-file penalty on a partnership or S-Corp runs $255 per partner or shareholder, per month, for up to 12 months (returns due in 2026). Two owners, six months late: $3,060 for a return that wasn't hard, just unfileable.
• A loan or line of credit. Lenders want two years of financials and a current P&L. "I'll get you those" is a no. We've watched approvals stall for weeks waiting on nothing but books.
• An IRS or state notice. Responding means reconstructing the year in question under a deadline. Same work, more stress, and penalties accruing while you do it. If the notice is about estimated payments you couldn't make, clean books are step one of the fix.
• Missed deductions. Uncategorized transactions don't get deducted. On a service business doing a few hundred thousand a year, it's common for us to find five figures in legitimate expenses that never made it onto a return.

The work costs the same whether you do it now or in a year. The penalties don't.

You don't need to organize anything. Handing us a mess is the point. What we need:

1. Access to your QuickBooks file (or the spreadsheet, or the shoebox).
2. Bank and credit card statements for the catch-up period. Online access through QuickBooks covers most of it; closed accounts sometimes need PDFs from you.
3. Payroll reports and sales tax filings, if you have either.
4. Your last filed tax return, so the opening balances tie to something real.
5. About 30 minutes, once, for the transactions we can't identify.

Then you go back to running the business. We'll be in touch when it's done. If you're in the Pittsburgh area, our Pittsburgh catch-up bookkeeping page covers PA deadline sequencing and local tax specifics.