Bookkeeping cleanup,
explained end to end.

A cleanup starts from what is already in your file and corrects it. The work is mostly reconciliation and review: matching every month of every account to the bank’s own statement, then working through the transactions that don’t fit: the uncategorized pile, the duplicates from a failed bank-feed import, the personal charges on the business card, the journal entries a previous bookkeeper used as a band-aid, the opening balance that was never right.

It ends when the balance sheet is true. Every bank balance matches, receivables and payables are real, loans agree with the lender, equity reconciles, and the profit and loss shows what the business actually did. That is the point at which your CPA can file with confidence and you can read your own numbers and believe them.

It is a project with a scope and an end, not a subscription. See the cleanup service for the full list of what is covered and the five-step process every engagement follows.

Catch-up means the books are behind but not broken: months or years of transactions were simply never entered, and what is recorded is fine. The work is entry and reconciliation in chronological order until the file is current.

Cleanup means what is recorded is wrong: miscoded transactions, broken reconciliations, commingled accounts, duplicated entries. The work is diagnosis and correction before anything can be trusted.

Many files need both, with the recorded months corrected and the missing months entered, and the diagnostic sorts out which is which. You do not have to decide before the first call; it is the first thing we tell you. Read catch-up bookkeeping for the behind-but-not-broken case, or what catch-up bookkeeping is for a longer explanation.

Any business whose books can’t be relied on for a decision, a filing, or a lender. The tell is usually one of these:

• Your bank balance in QuickBooks or Xero doesn’t match the bank statement.
• There is a large pile of uncategorized transactions, or months that were never entered.
• Personal and business spending run through the same account or card.
• Your P&L shows a profit or loss you know isn’t real.
• Your CPA has asked for “clean books” before they will file, or filed on estimates.
• A previous bookkeeper left, and nobody is sure what state the file is in.
• You need financial statements for a loan, an investor, or a sale, and can’t trust what you have.
• You received an IRS notice and your records aren’t in order.

Not sure how bad it is? The free bookkeeping health check scores your books in two minutes, and the signs your QuickBooks needs cleanup goes through each symptom in detail.

Every Poised Books cleanup works through the same 25-step checklist, in five phases. The phases are the shape of the work; the steps inside them are what “done” means.

1. 01Account Reconciliation. reconcile all bank accounts month-by-month; reconcile all credit card accounts; verify loan and line of credit balances; and more.
2. 02Transaction Review & Categorization. clear all uncategorized transactions; review and correct miscategorized expenses; identify and remove duplicate transactions; and more.
3. 03Balance Sheet Cleanup. resolve Opening Balance Equity; clear stale Accounts Receivable; clear stale Accounts Payable; and more.
4. 04Payroll & Tax Compliance. verify payroll transactions and liabilities; confirm quarterly payroll tax filings; review 1099 contractor payments; and more.
5. 05Financial Statement Preparation. generate clean Profit & Loss statement; generate accurate Balance Sheet; review Cash Flow statement; and more.

The full checklist is free to download, and the service page lists everything included in every cleanup.

Most projects finish in two to six weeks. A simple six-month catch-up can be done in about a week; a multi-year cleanup with commingled finances sits at the top of the range. Four things set the timeline: how many months or years are involved, transaction volume, the number of accounts to reconcile, and the condition of what is already in the file.

The first week is mostly about access rather than entry: accountant logins, statements, and a read of the file. Then the work settles into a month-by-month rhythm. You get a specific timeline with the written scope, before anything starts. How a catch-up project actually unfolds walks through it week by week.

Cleanup is billed hourly against a written estimate, not a flat fee, and not an open-ended meter. After a free review of your actual file, the scope, the estimate, and the rate are put in writing and agreed before any work begins. If the file turns out simpler than expected, you pay for the hours it took.

Five things drive the estimate: how far behind the books are, transaction volume, the number of bank, card, loan, and processor accounts, whether personal and business spending are commingled, and the quality of what is already recorded. Industry complexity (job costing, inventory, multi-state sales tax) and the end state you need, “good enough to file” versus lender-ready statements, move it further.

Every Poised Books cleanup starts at a $2,500 floor, and most land between $3,500 and $7,000 once the file has been reviewed. The pricing guide has typical ranges by scenario and how to evaluate quotes; the cleanup cost calculator gives you a starting estimate in under a minute, no email required.

Both. Poised Books cleans up QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and Xero files, and the process is the same on each: reconcile every account to its statement, correct what is wrong, and produce statements the CPA can use. Desktop files sometimes need extra steps for data access; Xero and QuickBooks Online do not.

A cleanup is also the natural moment to change platforms if you were going to anyway, because the clean, reconciled file is what you migrate. If you are choosing, read QuickBooks vs. Xero and QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop. Elizabeth is a QuickBooks Advanced Certified ProAdvisor and a Xero Certified Advisor.

Multi-year files are routine. The books are rebuilt in chronological order, year by year and account by account, so that each year closes on a reconciled balance sheet before the next one opens. The first year is the slowest, because that is where the chart of accounts gets fixed and the reconciliation baseline is set, and subsequent years move faster on that foundation.

The further back the work goes, the more it helps to have complete statements; closed accounts and missing months are reconstructed from what exists. Overdue returns, missed 1099s, and an IRS notice are all reasons people arrive years behind, and each is handled in coordination with your CPA rather than around them. See the cost of falling behind and what a tax extension means for your books.

Commingling, meaning business spending on a personal card, personal spending from the business account, or one account for everything, is the single biggest driver of cleanup complexity, because every transaction on the shared account has to be reviewed and classified. It is also the biggest driver of risk: personal expenses booked as business deductions are exactly what an audit looks for.

The work is to separate them transaction by transaction, book the personal side correctly as owner draws or contributions rather than deleting it, and leave a P&L that shows only the business. The handoff includes setting up separate accounts and the habit of using them, because a file that is cleaned up and then commingled again is back where it started within a year.

• Every bank, credit card, and loan account reconciled to its statements through the current month
• Every transaction categorized and verified, with personal items separated out and duplicates removed
• A clean chart of accounts and vendor list
• Year-end adjusting entries, and any fixed-asset and depreciation entries the file needed
• Tax-ready financial statements: profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow
• Documentation of what was found and what was changed, handed to you and your CPA
• A live walkthrough of your clean books, and 30 days of post-delivery support

The file itself stays yours throughout. The work happens inside your own QuickBooks or Xero account, so there is nothing to export and nothing you lose access to when the engagement ends.

A bookkeeper cleans up the books; a CPA files the return. They are different professionals at very different rates, and the cleanup itself is bookkeeping work, which is why many CPAs refer it out rather than doing it at their own hourly rate. The efficient path is a cleanup first and a CPA second, working from clean numbers.

Your CPA is a stakeholder from the start of the project, not the end: they are consulted on what the return needs, they receive the finished statements and adjustment documentation directly, and their follow-up questions are part of the engagement at no extra charge. You genuinely do need a CPA first when the question is tax strategy or a filing position, not the state of the ledger. Read bookkeeper vs. CPA for a cleanup and what your CPA needs before tax season.

Sometimes. An honest framework:

If you are going to try it, work in the order that keeps you out of trouble: back up the file, reconcile month by month, clear the uncategorized pile, hunt duplicates, fix draws and transfers, then sanity-check the balance sheet. How to clean up QuickBooks yourself is the step-by-step version, including the signs it is time to stop.

A weekly habit and a monthly one prevent most drift: categorize the week’s transactions while you still remember them, and reconcile every account to its statement at month end. Keep personal and business spending separate from every transaction forward, and look at the P&L monthly even if only briefly. The early warning sign of a slide is a report you stop reading.

Every cleanup ends with a live walkthrough and 30 days of support so the handoff sticks. Owners who want to run their own books take coaching; those who would rather not carry it alone hand off to a monthly bookkeeper from a clean baseline. The cleanup vs. monthly comparison lays out the trade-offs, and keeping your books clean after a cleanup has the routine.