Bookkeeping › Catch-up
Catch-up bookkeeping, deadlines first.
Published range $1,800–$6,000
If stretches of the year were never entered, the work is creating them from bank, card, payroll and processor records, proving each month, and bringing the file up to today in the order your deadlines need.
Reviewed before delivery means a documented check runs before anything reaches you: every bank and card account tied to its statement, open items listed in writing. How the review works.
One fixed fee in writing for the agreed scope. Backlogs beyond 12 months are scoped separately. Your CPA keeps the returns.
Quick answer
Ask for catch-up when the problem is absence: months with no entries at all, rather than entries that are wrong. The build order follows your nearest deadline, so the periods a return, lender or buyer needs are finished first and the remaining months follow. If recorded months are also wrong, cleanup joins the same written scope.
A longer backlog moves the figure toward the top of the range; several entities or years of records reconstruction are quoted separately. What the range covers.
Entries there but wrong? That's a whole-ledger cleanup. A single account that won't agree with its statement? See account reconciliation.
Build order
The deadline sets the order, not the calendar.
Missing months aren't entered oldest-first by default. We start with whatever someone is waiting for, open that stretch from statement balances, and work outward from there.
Worked example
The books stopped partway through the year before last. A lender now wants last year in full, plus this year to date.
Entering everything in date order would leave the lender waiting until the very end. Instead, the year they asked for is built first, from balances the bank and card statements already prove, and the older gap is filled once the urgent part is delivered.
The same logic works for a return on extension or a buyer's diligence list: identify the periods on the request, finish those, then close the rest of the backlog.
Fix the known balances
Statements give a verified balance for the first day of last year, so that year opens on solid numbers while the months before it are still empty.
Build the requested year
Every month entered from statements, coded, tied out and reviewed, then delivered as a profit and loss and balance sheet the lender can read.
Carry on to today
The months since that year-end come next, covering the lender's interim request and giving you a current picture.
Fill the gap behind
The stretch after the old stopping point is built last, and its closing balances are tied to the opening figures already used.
Join it into one file
Each month now links to the next, with a short record of how every stretch was built.
Deadline planner
Match what you're waiting on to the months built first.
Find the row that matches the request in front of you. The date itself comes from your CPA, your lender, the buyer or the letter; we don't set or advise on filing dates. What we set is the order, so the periods on that request are finished before anything else.
| What you're waiting on | Who sets the date | Built first | Then |
|---|---|---|---|
| A tax return, filed or on extension | Your CPA or tax preparer | The tax year on the return | The months since that year-end, then any gap before it |
| A loan application or renewal | The lender | The years the lender asked for, then year to date | The gap behind |
| A buyer's or investor's diligence list | The buyer, investor or their adviser | The periods named on the list | Everything else up to today |
| A letter from a tax agency | The agency, on the letter | The periods the letter names, plus the months needed to prove their opening balances | The rest of the backlog |
| No outside date yet | You | The current year, so decisions rest on current numbers | Earlier months, newest to oldest |
Bring the request itself to the free review: the lender's email, the diligence list or the letter. The periods it names become the first milestone in the written scope, with its own delivery date.
Inside each month
What a caught-up month has to contain before it counts.
A month isn't caught up because transactions were typed in. It is caught up when it could be handed to a CPA or lender on its own and stand up.
That standard is what separates a backlog project from data entry, and it's why each month is reviewed before it is delivered.
If you've been searching for retroactive bookkeeping, this is that service under its other name: past months recorded now, each entry carrying the date printed on the statement, so a caught-up month reads as if someone had kept it at the time.
- Every deposit and payment on the statement entered with its real date.
- Each transaction coded to a chart of accounts that fits the business.
- Bank and card balances agreeing with the month-end statements.
- Payroll recorded from the provider's register, with liabilities cleared against remittances.
- Processor payouts split into sales, fees and refunds instead of one net deposit.
- Loan payments divided into principal and interest.
- A month-end profit and loss and balance sheet that follow from all of the above.
Records
What we'll ask you for, and what can be recovered without you.
A backlog moves at the speed its records arrive. This is the list we work from; the free review tells you which items your file actually needs.
Statements for every account in the gap
Checking, savings, cards and loans. If a month is missing, ask the bank to reissue it; we'll tell you exactly which months to request.
Payroll registers and filings
Payroll providers keep registers for past periods that can be downloaded, which is enough to recreate each pay run.
Processor and platform reports
Payout reports from card processors and online platforms, so deposits can be split into gross sales, fees and refunds.
Notes on unusual spending
A few words on large or odd transactions saves a round of questions later. Routine spending doesn't need a receipt hunt.
The last return your CPA prepared
It shows where the last reliable numbers ended and helps set the starting balances.
For a per-month list you can print and tick off, use the documents checklist in the catch-up bookkeeping cost guide, which also covers how a blank stretch is priced.
Figure data as a table
| Account | Debit | Credit | From the payout report |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checking | 4,712.35 | — | The single deposit on the bank statement |
| Card processing fees | 143.65 | — | Fees the processor kept back |
| Sales refunds | 96.00 | — | A refund netted out of the payout |
| Sales | — | 4,952.00 | Gross card sales for the batch |
| Totals | 4,952.00 | 4,952.00 | Deposit, fees and refund add back to gross sales |
Getting the records
Where to download what a missing month needs.
Every record below has a download route that doesn't need a phone call. Each row links to the provider's or agency's own help page, and says what that page describes. Menus change, so follow the provider's page if it differs from our summary.
| Record | What the provider's help page describes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Bank statements | Every bank's online banking has a statements page. At Chase, for example, you sign in to see, download or save statements and documents. Ask your bank to reissue any month you can't download. | Chase: Statements & documents |
| Square payouts | In the Square Dashboard, go to Banking, then View all transfers. Each transfer lists the card payments it contains, and Export downloads the details as a CSV file. | Square: Match transfers to sales |
| Stripe payouts | The payout reconciliation report matches each payout to the transactions in it. Each section downloads as a summary of its totals or an itemized list of every transaction in them, and CSV export works for every account. | Stripe: Payout reconciliation report |
| PayPal activity | Transaction activity can be downloaded for up to the past seven years, twelve months per request, as PDF, CSV or a QuickBooks file. Monthly statements are requested month by month. | PayPal: View and download statements and reports |
| Shopify Payments payouts | The Shopify Payments activity report shows starting balance, gross activity, fees, payouts and ending balance for a date range, for month-end reconciliation, and exports to PDF. For one bank deposit, the Payouts page has the detail. | Shopify: Payments activity report |
| Amazon payments | Seller Central's Payments Reports Repository holds the reports on your Amazon payments. A Date Range report gives a detailed list of transactions, or a summary of income, expenses, taxes and transfers, for any period. Reports for past dates can take up to three hours to generate. | Amazon Seller Central: Payments Reports Repository |
| Toast payouts | In Toast Web, go to Reports, then Payments, then Reconciliation. Toast says the report is in limited release, so it may not be in your Reports menu yet. The report lists every payout Toast sent to your bank account for a location and date range, and downloads as a CSV inside a ZIP file. Selecting a payout opens its Payout Details. | Toast: Reconciliation report and Payout Details |
| Gusto payroll | Reports in the Gusto admin account is where payroll, HR, time and tax data is viewed and downloaded. For one payroll, Pay, then Pay History, then a check date, then Download gives the full breakdown of earnings, taxes and deductions. | Gusto: View, download and customize reports |
| IRS transcripts | A business can get free transcripts online in its business tax account, by mail with Form 4506-T, or by phone. The tax account transcript shows deposits, refunds and penalties after filing. | IRS: Get a business tax transcript |
Checked: , each link against the provider's or agency's own page. Last evidence check: . Other payroll providers keep registers in their own reports area; if you can't find one, the free review will tell you which report to run.
What forces the deadline
A backlog surfaces when someone is waiting on the numbers.
Books slip quietly while the business runs. They become urgent when one of these arrives.
The return is due, or already extended, and the year isn't entered.
Your CPA can't prepare a return from bank statements alone. The months that return depends on are built first, so the filing has real books behind it.
Free books review FinancingA lender or buyer wants statements you don't have.
A loan file, a credit-line renewal or a sale needs a profit and loss and a balance sheet for set periods. Those periods move to the front of the queue.
Free books review Hand-off gapWhoever kept the books left, and nobody picked them up.
When a bookkeeper, treasurer or volunteer leaves, the last reconciled month marks where the records stop. We start from there and bring the file forward month by month.
Switching bookkeepers A notice arrivedA tax notice asks for records nobody has compiled.
The months behind the notice are rebuilt first so your CPA can answer it; the rest of the backlog follows in order.
Tax notice, no booksBehind, wrong, or both
Missing entries and bad entries are different jobs.
Nothing recorded → catch-up
Whole months are empty. They get created from records, in deadline order, until the file reaches the present. That's the work described on this page.
Recorded but wrong → cleanup
The months exist but the coding, balances or statements don't hold up. That calls for rebuilding the ledger layer by layer.
Whole-ledger cleanupWhen a file needs both, one written scope covers both, with a single fixed fee. Once you're current, monthly bookkeeping can take over from the last caught-up month.
Falling behind is a side effect of running a business. Catching up is ordered work: the month someone is waiting for first, then everything else.
FAQ · Updated October 2026
What owners ask when the books are months behind.
Stuck after a provider walked away? See how switching works. Weighing the first step yourself? Read what to do first when you're behind.
Get a free books review
Tell us how far behind, and who is waiting.
Say which months are missing and what deadline is driving it. We look at the file and the records you have, then set out the build order. The free books review closes with a written scope and one fixed fee; no price is guessed on the call. See what a findings report looks like, illustrated with an invented file.