Bookkeeping › Cleanup
Bookkeeping cleanup services: the ledger rebuilt.
Published range $1,800–$6,000
When the file exists but can't be trusted, fixing one account at a time just moves the errors around. We agree the opening balances, rework the chart of accounts, recode the history and prove every balance-sheet line, then hand your CPA the ledger with a written fix log.
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, set in writing before the work begins. Returns and tax advice stay with your CPA.
Quick answer
Choose a full cleanup when errors cross accounts: miscoded categories, balance-sheet lines nobody can explain, statements that contradict each other. If only one account disagrees with its statement, a single-account reconciliation ($850–$2,000) is the narrower job, and if months were never entered at all, catch-up comes first. The deciding test is how many layers of the ledger are wrong.
How many layers of the ledger are wrong decides where a cleanup lands in the range. What the range covers.
One account out of line with its statement? That's account reconciliation. The QuickBooks company file itself misbehaving? See QuickBooks cleanup. Months that were never entered? Start with catch-up bookkeeping.
Evidence, month by month
One corrected month, and the paper trail it carries.
A month counts as corrected when four things travel with it: a tie-out to each outside statement, a fix-log line for every change, the document supporting that change, and the balance before and after. Here is a single month worked through, with round figures.
Illustrative example — not client data. Assumptions stated.
| Fix-log line | Support attached | Effect on the checking balance |
|---|---|---|
| A customer payment recorded twice | The single deposit on the March statement, and the paid invoice | −$1,400 |
| A transfer to savings left out | The savings statement showing the money arriving | −$600 |
| A monthly service fee not recorded | The fee line on the March statement | −$250 |
| Equipment coded to supplies | The vendor invoice naming the item | None; the cost moves from the P&L to fixed assets |
| Checking balance | Before the corrections: $48,210 | After: $45,960, equal to the statement |
The last row is the tie-out: the corrected ledger and the bank agree to the dollar. The fourth line matters as much as the first three even though it moves no cash, because March's P&L changes and the fix log says why. Your CPA can pick any line, open its support, and check the entry without asking us.
Assumptions: a single checking account, one month in scope, and invented round figures chosen to keep the arithmetic easy to follow; nothing here comes from a client file.
Scope check
Is it the whole ledger, one account, or the software file?
Three different problems get called "cleanup". They need different work, so the first question is where the errors actually sit.
Errors everywhere → whole-ledger cleanup
Categories, balance-sheet accounts and statements all disagree with one another. The fix is rebuilding the ledger in a fixed order, which is what this page covers.
One account won't tie → reconciliation
The rest of the file is sound, but a bank, card, loan or merchant account won't agree with its statement. That is a diagnosis job, handled account by account.
Account reconciliationThe file misbehaves → QuickBooks cleanup
The records are complete but the software file isn't: stranded customer payments, runaway bank rules, a Desktop file failing its own integrity check.
QuickBooks cleanupBehind rather than wrong, with whole months never entered? That's a catch-up job. When both apply, they can be scoped together as one fixed fee in writing.
The rebuild order
Seven layers, rebuilt in sequence, each resting on the one before.
Order matters because every layer depends on the one beneath it. Recoding transactions before the chart of accounts is fixed, or trusting a balance sheet before cash is proven, means doing the work twice.
Agree the starting line
The opening balance sheet is matched to the last figures your CPA filed from, so retained earnings and owner equity begin somewhere already tested by a return.
Rework the chart of accounts
Duplicate accounts merged, dead ones retired, missing ones added for how the business really operates. Recoding against a broken chart only relocates the errors.
Prove cash
Bank and card balances tied to their statements month by month. Diagnosing a stubborn account is its own discipline (see how we reconcile); here it is one layer of the rebuild.
Recode the history
Income, cost of sales and operating expenses reclassified against the reworked chart. Duplicates, personal spending and transfers mistaken for income are pulled out.
Prove the rest of the balance sheet
Loans split into principal and interest to agree with lender statements, payroll liabilities cleared against each remittance, sales tax payable matched to the returns filed, fixed assets and owner draws placed where they belong.
Regenerate the statements
Month-by-month profit and loss, balance sheet and trial balance produced from the corrected ledger, then read for sense as well as arithmetic.
Log, review, lock
Each material correction recorded in the fix log, the whole file reviewed before delivery, and a closing date set so finished periods are protected from stray edits.
Figure data as a table
| Account | Debit | Credit | Fix-log line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accounts receivable | 1,400.00 | — | Removes the second copy of a customer payment |
| Savings | 600.00 | — | A transfer the savings statement shows arriving |
| Bank service fees | 250.00 | — | The fee line on the March statement |
| Checking | — | 2,250.00 | Falls from 48,210.00 to 45,960.00, equal to the statement |
| Equipment (fixed assets) | 2,340.00 | — | An equipment purchase that was coded to supplies |
| Supplies expense | — | 2,340.00 | The cost leaves March's P&L; no cash moves |
| Totals | 4,590.00 | 4,590.00 | Balanced; each line has its support on file |
What "done" means
The sign-off checklist a cleanup has to pass.
"Clean" is easy to claim and hard to check, so we define it. A cleanup is finished when every line on this list holds for each period in scope. If one can't be ticked, the open item is written down for you rather than smoothed over.
The list is also how your CPA can test the work: each line points at a report they already know how to read.
If your CPA's firm has also quoted the cleanup, hold both quotes to this list; should your CPA do your bookkeeping? explains how licensed rates and the monthly handoff change the comparison.
- Cash agrees. Every bank and card account matches its statement through the last month in scope.
- Debt agrees. Loan and credit-line balances match the lender; interest sits on the P&L, principal on the balance sheet.
- Payroll liabilities are real. They hold only withholdings and employer taxes not yet remitted.
- Sales tax payable holds up. It agrees with what was collected and what was filed.
- Receivables and payables are genuine. The aging reports list only invoices and bills that are still open.
- Equity ties. Opening equity and retained earnings agree with the prior-year figures your CPA filed from.
- Holding accounts are empty. Suspense, uncategorized and "ask my accountant" balances are cleared.
- The P&L reads sensibly. Month-to-month swings have an operating reason or an entry in the fix log.
- Finished periods are locked. A closing date goes in once you have signed off.
Whole-ledger symptoms
Four signs the problem is bigger than one account.
Each of these points at the ledger as a whole. Any one of them is reason enough for a scope check.
Last year's profit changed, and nobody touched last year.
Entries keep landing in periods that were already filed. Until a starting line is agreed and protected, every month after it floats.
Free books review Unexplained balancesThe balance sheet carries lines nobody can explain.
Old suspense amounts, an equity account nobody meant to create, loans that disagree with the lender. Those are whole-ledger symptoms, not one bad account.
Free books review CPA adjustmentsYour CPA sent back a page of adjusting entries.
When the year-end package needs heavy correcting before a return can be prepared, the ledger underneath needs rebuilding rather than another round of patches.
Books not ready for a CPA Numbers contradictThe P&L swings for no operating reason.
Costs jump one month and vanish the next because of how they were coded, not because of anything the business did. Recoding against a sound chart of accounts settles it.
Signs your books need cleanupNot sure which description fits your file? A no-cost look at the file sorts that out and finishes with a written scope.
Outside the scope
The work a cleanup hands to someone else.
A cleanup is bookkeeping work, not CPA work. It produces the ledger that tax and assurance work depend on; it doesn't do that work itself. When you need a CPA, we coordinate the handover so the corrected file and the fix log reach them together.
Returns, elections and tax planning
Your CPA decides and files. We structure the books so every figure they need can be traced.
Running payroll · a scoped add-on
We correct how past pay runs were recorded. Processing payroll and filing payroll-tax returns aren't cleanup work: they stay with whoever runs your payroll, or become a scoped add-on to monthly service.
Audits and attestation
No opinions or assurance reports. The ledger we deliver is organized so an auditor can test it.
Legal and personal financial advice
Outside a bookkeeping engagement. Those questions belong with the right licensed professional.
A ledger is only as reliable as its starting line. Settle that first, and every later month has something solid underneath it.
FAQ · Updated October 2026
What owners ask before a whole-ledger cleanup.
The pricing factors are laid out in full in what a bookkeeping cleanup costs. Leaving a bookkeeper who left the file like this? See how switching works.
Get a free books review
Find out what your ledger actually needs.
Share access to the file and a list of the accounts involved. We read it and tell you plainly whether it needs a whole-ledger rebuild or something narrower. The free books review closes with a written scope and one fixed fee; no price is guessed on the call. See a sample findings report, illustrated with an invented file.