Services Details

What is Cleanup: A process to go back through prior months and make sure the bookkeeping was completed properly, there are no missing items or other issues creating inaccurate numbers, and add or complete necessary items. Cleanup is called catch-up in a situation where no or little bookkeeping was done in the past, or when accounting software has not been set up at all. Catch-up typically involves doing the bookkeeping from scratch in arears. Cleanup may not seem like it involves as much work as catching up from scratch. But it many times takes more effort to undo an error or explore where a problem came from than to do it from scratch. But where do you start? At the beginning of course! We use the term “cleanup” to include catch-up and not differentiate.

Starting point: Cleanup can begin at whatever point the business owner wants complete financial records to look back on, (or could be audited for). At a minimum, the starting point would be January 1 of the year after the last tax return was filed. This is because you can use the prior tax return numbers as your baseline for business finances. Also, a business owner would need a very good reason to go back and change anything in the prior accounting records because the tax return would also have to be amended.

Can any bookkeeper do a cleanup for an eCommerce business? Yes, maybe, but most likely it will not be done in the eCommerce way. So why would you not get an eCommerce specialist to do it correctly form the start?

What we need to get started:

• Prior year tax return
• Bank and Credit Card statements for the months to be cleaned-up
• Receipts, invoices and bills for the months to be cleaned-up
• Outstanding invoices and bills from the period prior to the clean-up start date
• Other financial documents that support any assets or loans or other business features you may have
• Anything else we determine we need based on review of your books
• Access to your accounting software and sales platform and payment processing accounts
• Bank feeds connected to your accounting software and CVS files for any months that can’t be updated

How does cleanup work with monthly services? You cannot begin monthly services with us without some minimum cleanup project. If your bookkeeping is more than 2 months behind, then you need cleanup services in addition to monthly engagement. If It is January and you have your bookkeeping ready to file the prior year’s tax return, we could start January first with monthly services. Otherwise, we quote a one-time fee to review and catch-up or cleanup each prior month back to the last tax return. Or you may choose to go back further.

Can I get cleanup without engaging monthly services? Yes. If you want your books cleaned up or set up so that you can do it yourself going forward. We charge a higher fee for stand-alone cleanup plus a setup fee. If you are not knowledgeable to set up and clean up your bookkeeping, you probably are not going to be able to handle month to month very well. So we recommend you engage cleanup and monthly services with us at the get go.

Pricing: Cleanup is a one-time fee that is calculated using the monthly services fee calculated for your business based on the blue plan, times the number of months to be worked up. This fee can be paid in 2 installments if the cleanup period is more than 6 months. If you need cleanup and book a minimum 6 month engagement for ongoing bookkeeping services we will discount your cleanup by 2 months. If you are not engaging with us for monthly services, a fee for setup will be added if your software is not setup at all. A discount may also be available if you obtain a diagnostic review first.