Cleanup & catch-up

QuickBooks Cleanup, Done Once and Done Properly

Unreconciled accounts, transactions in the wrong place, duplicates, a balance sheet that does not balance. We fix it, tell you exactly what was wrong, and keep it from happening again.

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Cleanup & catch-up

What we usually find.

From opening a few hundred QuickBooks files. Almost every one has at least three of these.

Uncategorised Expense, growing

The account everything lands in when nobody decides where it belongs. It is often the largest expense line in the file, and it makes the P&L meaningless.

Bank accounts never reconciled

If the reconciliation has not been run, the balance in QuickBooks is a hopeful number. Transactions get duplicated, missed, or silently deleted.

Opening Balance Equity with a balance

This account should be zero. A balance in it means something was forced during setup, and the books have never truly balanced since.

Owner and business money mixed

Personal spending recorded as business expense. It overstates costs, understates profit, and is the first thing an examiner looks for.

Duplicate transactions

The same expense entered manually and imported by the bank feed. Costs are overstated and the reconciliation will never come out.

A chart of accounts nobody designed

Two hundred accounts, half unused, several meaning the same thing. Reports built on it cannot tell you anything useful.

The specific thing

How to tell in ninety seconds whether your file needs cleanup.

Open QuickBooks and check three things:

1. Balance Sheet → Opening Balance Equity. Any balance other than zero means the file was forced to balance at some point, and has carried that error ever since.

2. Profit & Loss → Uncategorised Expense. If it is one of your largest lines, nobody has been deciding where transactions belong.

3. Reconciliation history on each bank account. If the last reconciliation is more than a month or two old, the balances are not verified against reality.

Any one of those is fixable. All three together means the reports you have been making decisions from are not describing your business.

How it works

How a cleanup runs.

Fixed scope, quoted before anything starts.

1. Free diagnostic

We open the file and list what is actually wrong, in plain English. You get that list whether or not you hire us.

2. Fixed-scope quote

A one-time fee based on how far back it goes and your volume. Quoted as a range and confirmed before work starts — never open-ended hourly.

3. The cleanup

Reconcile every account, recategorise, remove duplicates, fix the chart of accounts, clear Opening Balance Equity properly.

4. Handover

We show you what changed and why. Take it from there yourself, or move onto a monthly plan so it stays clean.

What's included

Every cleanup includes.

Clear deliverables, every month — nothing vague.

Full reconciliation of every bank and credit card account for the period
Recategorisation of miscoded transactions with a clear audit trail
Duplicate detection and removal
Opening Balance Equity cleared properly rather than forced
Chart of accounts restructured around how your business actually works
Personal and business spending separated
A written summary of what was wrong and what changed
Books left tax-ready for your CPA
Good to know

QuickBooks cleanup questions.

01How much does a QuickBooks cleanup cost?
It depends on how many months are affected and your transaction volume — genuinely, not as a way of avoiding the question. We quote a fixed range after the free diagnostic, so you know the number before committing. Never open-ended hourly billing.
02How long does it take?
A few months of a low-volume file is usually about a week. A year or more of a busy ecommerce file takes three to four weeks. We give you a date at quoting and keep to it.
03Will you tell me if I do not need one?
Yes. Sometimes the diagnostic finds a file that is basically sound with two things to fix, and we say so. Selling a cleanup nobody needs is a bad way to start a relationship.
04Do I have to sign up for monthly bookkeeping afterwards?
No. Cleanup is a one-time engagement and plenty of clients take the file back and run it themselves. Most stay, but that is a separate decision.
05Do you work in Xero too?
Yes — certified in both. The same process applies, and the three checks above have Xero equivalents.

Find out what is actually wrong in your file.

Free diagnostic. We open your books and tell you plainly what we find — no obligation either way.

Free 30-min consultationNo pressure, no jargon
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