Catch-Up Bookkeeping
Cleaning up and bringing current past months or years of bookkeeping. We reconstruct your financial records so everything is accurate, organized, and ready for tax filing or day-to-day decision making.
How It Happens
It usually starts the same way. You open your business, you focus on getting customers and doing the work, and the bookkeeping falls behind. A few weeks turn into a few months. Then tax season arrives and you realize you have a shoebox of receipts, a pile of bank statements, and no clear picture of where your money went.
This is extremely common with small business owners in the Tampa Bay area, especially in trades and service businesses where the owner is out in the field all day. Nobody starts a roofing company or a dental practice because they love categorizing transactions. The bookkeeping gets pushed to the bottom of the list because there is always something more urgent. But eventually it catches up with you.
Months Behind
Months Behind
Maybe you stayed on top of things for a while and then had a busy season that threw you off. Three or four months of unreconciled transactions pile up fast. Bank feeds get stale, receipts go missing, and the longer you wait the harder it becomes to remember what each charge was for.
Years Behind
Years Behind
Some businesses come to us with two or three years of unfiled books. They have been operating off their bank balance alone, guessing at profitability, and dreading tax season. At that point the cleanup is a bigger project, but it is absolutely fixable. We have done it many times.
What It Costs You
The most obvious cost is at tax time. Your CPA cannot prepare an accurate return without accurate books. If you hand over a mess, the preparer either has to spend billable hours sorting through it or they work with incomplete information. That means you either overpay on your taxes because legitimate deductions get missed, or you file something inaccurate and hope nobody notices.
The less obvious cost is in your daily decisions. Without current books you do not actually know if you are profitable. You do not know which jobs or services make money and which ones drain it. You cannot apply for a business loan or line of credit because lenders want financial statements. You are running your business blind, and that is a hard way to grow.
Tax Exposure
Tax Exposure
The IRS and Florida Department of Revenue do not accept “I was too busy” as a reason for inaccurate filings. If your books are wrong, your returns are wrong. That creates risk for audits, penalties, and interest charges that could have been avoided with clean records.
Missed Opportunities
Missed Opportunities
Business owners with messy books tend to make conservative decisions because they are not sure what they can afford. They skip equipment purchases, delay hiring, and turn down growth opportunities because they do not trust their own numbers. Clean books give you the confidence to act.
How We Fix It
We start by gathering everything. Bank statements, credit card statements, receipts, invoices, loan documents, and anything else that tells the financial story of your business. Then we go through it period by period, categorizing every transaction, reconciling every account, and building a clean set of books in QuickBooks Online.
Once the catch-up work is complete, you have accurate financial statements for every period we reconstructed. That means your tax preparer has what they need, your loan applications have supporting documents, and you finally have a clear picture of how your business has actually been performing. From there, we can transition you into ongoing monthly bookkeeping so you never fall behind again.
Complete Reconstruction
Complete Reconstruction
Every transaction gets properly categorized and reconciled against your bank and credit card statements. We sort out owner draws from business expenses, identify missing deposits, and flag anything that needs your input. When we are done, the books are audit-ready and accurate.
A Path Forward
A Path Forward
Catch-up bookkeeping solves the past, but the real value is what comes next. With a clean starting point you can move into a regular monthly rhythm where your books stay current and your financial reports actually mean something. That is where the real benefit begins.
Tampa Bay's Small Business CPA Firm
First Step:
A Short Conversation
Tell us about your business and where you need support. We'll walk through your situation, answer your questions, and give you a clear quote.
