Bookkeeping Catch Up Cumming, GA

Week one is diagnostic. We get read access to your QuickBooks file (or set up a new one if you are starting from a spreadsheet), pull every available bank, credit card, and loan statement, and assess the scope. Within five business days you have a fixed quote covering exactly how many months we are rebuilding, what the deliverable looks like, and when it will be done. No surprises later.

Weeks two through four (or longer for bigger projects) are the rebuild. We work month by month, in chronological order. Each month: import the bank and card transactions, categorize everything to the chart of accounts, reconcile every account back to the matching statement, post adjusting entries for things like depreciation, owner draws, and accrued payroll. By the end of each month's rebuild, that month is done and locked.

The final week is wrap-up. Final reports get generated. Tax-ready financial statements get assembled if year end is in scope. Any open questions you flagged during the project get resolved. You receive a closeout summary explaining what was rebuilt, what assumptions we made, and what to do going forward to stay current.

The previous bookkeeper quit, got fired, or just stopped responding. This is the most common one. The file is in some state of incomplete, nobody really knows what was finished and what was not, and the owner inherits the mess. We pick up wherever the file actually stands and rebuild forward.

DIY hit a wall. Many Cumming small business owners start out doing their own books in QuickBooks or a spreadsheet, run fine for a few months, then fall behind during a busy season. By the time they admit they need help, six to twelve months are sitting unreconciled. Totally normal, totally fixable.

Tax season is two weeks away. The CPA called, asked for the books, and the file does not exist in any usable form. This is the urgent version of catch up. We can usually rebuild a year of books inside two to three weeks if the bank statements are accessible and you can get us source documents fast. We have done this for clients in March every year for years.

Loan or sale incoming. A bank wants two years of financials before they will close on a loan. A buyer wants three years before they will make an offer. Catch up plus tax-ready financial statements gets you there.

Bank, credit card, and loan statements for every month being rebuilt. Most Cumming-area banks (Truist, Bank of America, United Community, Renasant, Pinnacle) make 24+ months available online instantly, which is the easy path. For older periods or for accounts at smaller credit unions, you may need to request statements from the bank. We will tell you exactly what to ask for.

Access to your QuickBooks file (or permission to create one), your payroll provider if you have one, your point-of-sale system if you run retail or restaurant, and your merchant processor accounts (Stripe, Square, PayPal). Most of this can be set up via a single onboarding call.

Your time for occasional questions. We do most of the heavy lifting independently, but we will check in for clarification on unusual transactions (the $14,000 transfer in March, the random $850 deposit from a customer name that does not match anything in your A/R). Quick text-message responses are usually enough.

Catch up is quoted as fixed scope, not hourly. After the diagnostic, you know the total cost up front. Pricing scales with months, transaction volume, and the complexity of any cleanup involved. Most Cumming small business catch-up engagements land between $1,500 and $8,000 depending on size and timeframe.

The cost of catch up is almost always less than the cost of not doing it. CPAs charge premium rates to clean up books mid-tax season. Lenders deny loans (or offer worse terms) on incomplete financials. Owners who cannot read their own numbers make worse decisions in the meantime. Catch up clears all three problems at once.