Tier 01
Single-year cleanup
$1,500–$3,500
For: smaller New York businesses, 1 year, 2–3 bank accounts, no payroll or simple payroll.
- 12 months of reconciliation
- Categorization & bank rules
- P&L, balance sheet, cash flow
- Written summary of adjustments
New York · Bookkeeping Cleanup
New York bookkeeping cleanup — messy books are common, and fixable.
Reconstruct accurate, reconciled books from any starting point — categorization mistakes, missing reconciliations, broken bank feeds, multi-year backlogs. NYC and New York sales tax verified against your filed returns. Most cleanups deliver in 2–8 weeks, fixed-fee, all 62 counties.
- Most deliver in
- 2–8 wks
- Pricing
- Fixed-fee
- Coverage
- 62 counties
The short version.
A New York bookkeeping cleanup is a project-based engagement that reconstructs accurate financial records from a messy or unreconciled state — real bank reconciliation against actual statements, categorization corrections, clearing undeposited funds, fixing duplicate or missing transactions, correcting prior-period errors, verifying payroll and New York sales tax entries, and producing CPA-ready financial statements. Most cleanups take 2–8 weeks, priced fixed-fee against a written scope ($1,500–$15,000+ by complexity). Cleanup is distinct from QuickBooks file cleanup (which fixes the file itself) and from ongoing monthly bookkeeping (which keeps clean books clean). We run the books in QuickBooks and coordinate with your CPA — we’re not a CPA firm. All 62 New York counties, NYC to upstate.
Quick answers
New York bookkeeping cleanup, in five questions.
- What is bookkeeping cleanup?
Bookkeeping cleanup reconstructs accurate financial records from a messy or unreconciled state — reconciliation against real statements, categorization fixes, clearing undeposited funds, resolving duplicates and gaps, correcting prior periods, verifying payroll and NY sales tax, and producing CPA-ready statements.
- How long does it take?
Most cleanups take 2–8 weeks. A single-year cleanup with 2–3 accounts runs 2–3 weeks; a multi-year cleanup with payroll or multiple entities can take 6–10. The timeline is fixed in writing before work starts.
- What does it cost in New York?
Priced by scope, not by hour: $1,500–$3,500 single-year, $3,500–$8,000 standard 12–24 months, $8,000–$15,000+ multi-year. Fixed-fee against a written scope, always.
- Cleanup or QuickBooks cleanup — which do I need?
Cleanup fixes the books; QuickBooks cleanup fixes the file. Broken feeds and file errors are QuickBooks cleanup; bad reconciliations and miscategorized history are bookkeeping cleanup. Many engagements need both.
- Will my CPA accept the cleaned-up books?
Yes — cleanup produces CPA-ready, lender-ready statements reconciled to source documents with documented adjustments, designed to hand straight to your CPA or lender. We do the books; your CPA files.
Is cleanup the right starting point?
If any of these sound familiar, the answer is yes.
Cleanup engagements are common for New York businesses. Most land in one of these six situations — you don’t need to know which is yours; the diagnostic call sorts that.
You haven’t reconciled in months — or years.
Bank feeds drift over time. Without real reconciliation against actual statements, the books quietly diverge from reality. Cleanup brings them back into agreement, line by line.
Your CPA flagged the books before tax season.
A common path. Your CPA needs reliable numbers to file accurately. Cleanup produces statements the tax preparer can work from without rework.
A lender or buyer asked for clean financials.
SBA loans, lines of credit, business sales, and capital raises all require reconciled books. Cleanups are routinely scoped to a specific lender or buyer deadline.
Your previous bookkeeper left things in disarray.
Miscategorized transactions, duplicate entries, broken bank rules, undeposited funds open for months. Cleanup unwinds the mistakes and rebuilds correctly.
A NY sales-tax notice exposed a books problem.
When the sales-tax liability in the books doesn’t match what was filed, a notice often follows. Cleanup reconciles the accruals so the numbers line up.
You ran the books yourself and need a professional reset.
Many New York owners start with their own books, run for a year or two, then realize the structure isn’t holding. Cleanup gives you a clean foundation and a real chart of accounts to grow into.
What’s included
What a New York cleanup actually delivers.
Every TechBrot cleanup covers these eight workstreams. Specific scope is tuned to your file during the diagnostic.
Bank & credit card reconciliation
Every account reconciled against actual bank and credit-card statements, line by line, period by period. No “reconciliation” against bank feeds alone.
Transaction categorization
Every transaction reviewed and categorized to the correct account. Uncategorized expenses cleared. Bank rules rebuilt to prevent regression.
Undeposited funds & clearing accounts
Old undeposited funds investigated and cleared. Clearing account balances reconciled to zero or to documented open items.
Duplicate & missing transaction resolution
Duplicates identified and removed. Missing transactions reconstructed from source documents — statements, receipts, payroll records.
Prior-period error correction
Identified errors in closed periods corrected with documented journal entries. Adjustments mapped clearly for your tax preparer.
Payroll & New York sales tax verification
Payroll liabilities reconciled to filed returns. New York and NYC sales-tax accruals verified against your NYS filings. Discrepancies escalated and resolved.
Chart of accounts review
Chart of accounts evaluated against your New York business model. Structure simplified, redundant accounts merged, missing accounts added. CoA setup →
Financial statements & documentation
Reconstructed P&L, balance sheet, and cash-flow statements. Written summary of every adjustment made, signed off by the operator.
How engagements work
From first call to clean books.
Every TechBrot cleanup follows the same four-phase sequence — same shape for a single-year cleanup or a multi-year recovery.
01
Diagnostic & scope
A 30-minute call to review your file, statements, and payroll records. Within 3 business days you receive a written fixed-fee scope — deliverables, timeline, pricing, the standard we’re holding to.
02
Reconciliation & correction
Real reconciliation against actual statements. Categorization, undeposited funds, duplicates, prior-period corrections, payroll and New York sales-tax verification. The work happens here.
03
Statements & review
Reconstructed financial statements produced. Quality review against the operating standard before delivery. Every adjustment documented for your records.
04
Handoff & ongoing
Clean books delivered with a written summary of corrections. Continue with the same bookkeeper on monthly bookkeeping, or hand off to your existing CPA.
Before & after
What changes when the books are clean.
The outcome of a cleanup isn’t cosmetic. Reconciled, accurate books unlock decisions you couldn’t make on bad data.
Dimension
Before cleanup
After cleanup
Bank reconciliation
Months behind, drifting from statements
Every account reconciled, every period
Categorization
Uncategorized expenses, miscoded transactions
Every transaction in the right account
NY sales tax
Books don’t match what was filed
Accruals reconciled to NYS returns
Financial statements
Unreliable, can’t share with CPA or lender
CPA-ready P&L, balance sheet, cash flow
Tax filing readiness
Tax season is a fire drill
Books filed-from, not fixed-during
Lender / buyer readiness
SBA / lender / due diligence not viable
Statements stand up to lender review
Owner confidence
Don’t trust the numbers
Books reflect the business
Pricing scope
Fixed fee, written scope, no hourly billing.
Every TechBrot cleanup is priced against a written scope before work begins. Most New York engagements fall into one of three tiers. Final pricing depends on transaction volume, account count, payroll, and complexity.
Tier 02 · Most common
Standard cleanup
$3,500–$8,000
For: active New York businesses, 12–24 months, payroll, multiple bank and credit accounts, NY sales tax.
- 12–24 months of reconciliation
- Categorization, bank rules, undeposited funds
- Payroll & New York sales-tax verification
- Chart of accounts restructure
- CPA-ready financial statements
Tier 03
Multi-year cleanup
$8,000–$15,000+
For: New York businesses 2+ years behind, multi-entity, inventory, multi-state sales tax, complex payroll.
- Multi-year historical reconstruction
- Multi-entity consolidation
- Inventory & COGS verification
- Multi-state tax reconciliation
- Full statement set per year
Ranges are typical engagements; final pricing is determined by the diagnostic. See New York pricing for ongoing monthly engagement pricing after cleanup.
The advisory line
Automation handles the data entry. We handle the judgment.
Bank feeds can import a transaction; they can’t tell you which prior-period entry is wrong, why a clearing account never zeroes, or that a sales-tax accrual won’t survive a New York audit. Reconstructing clean books is judgment work, not data entry. Once your New York books are solid, ongoing monthly bookkeeping keeps them that way and fractional-CFO advisory turns them into decisions.
Who performs the work
A named, credentialed Certified ProAdvisor — not an anonymous offshore team.
Every TechBrot cleanup is delivered by a vetted Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor working under TechBrot’s brand, standards, and infrastructure. You’ll know exactly who is working on your books, how to reach them, and what credentials they hold.
Quality review backs every engagement. David Westgate, a 40+ year accounting practitioner, reviews TechBrot’s published standards. If continuity is ever a question, the team handles the transition without losing the file context.
Cleanup questions
New York bookkeeping cleanup questions.
Bookkeeping cleanup is a project-based engagement that reconstructs accurate financial records from a messy or unreconciled state. For a New York business it typically includes real bank and credit-card reconciliation against actual statements, categorization corrections, clearing undeposited funds, fixing duplicate and missing transactions, correcting prior-period errors, verifying payroll and New York sales-tax entries, and producing CPA-ready financial statements. It is distinct from QuickBooks file cleanup, which fixes the file itself.
Most cleanup engagements take 2 to 8 weeks. A single-year cleanup for a small New York business with 2 to 3 bank accounts typically takes 2 to 3 weeks. Multi-year cleanups involving payroll, inventory, or multiple entities can take 6 to 10 weeks. The timeline is fixed in a written scope before any work begins.
Cleanup is priced by scope, not by the hour. Small single-year cleanups typically range from $1,500 to $3,500. Standard 12 to 24 month cleanups fall between $3,500 and $8,000. Multi-year cleanups involving payroll, inventory, or multi-entity structures typically range from $8,000 to $15,000 or more. Every TechBrot cleanup is fixed-fee against a written scope. See the pricing scope section above for tier details.
Cleanup bookkeeping fixes the books — reconciliation, categorization, prior-period corrections, and CPA-ready statements regardless of platform. QuickBooks cleanup fixes the QuickBooks file itself — broken bank feeds, file corruption, list and version problems. Many New York engagements involve both: repair the file, then reconstruct the books on top of it.
Catch-up bookkeeping brings behind-but-structured books up to date by entering missed transactions and completing reconciliations through the current month. Cleanup is deeper: it corrects errors, fixes categorization, resolves reconciliation discrepancies, and reconstructs accurate records from a messy state. Many New York engagements combine both — clean up the existing periods, catch up the missing months, then transition to monthly bookkeeping.
Yes. Multi-year cleanups are one of the most common engagements. Even when a file hasn’t been reconciled in three or more years, an experienced Certified ProAdvisor can reconstruct accurate books using bank statements, payroll records, and source documents. The process is methodical and the outcome is reliable financial statements you and your CPA can file from.
Yes. Cleanup verifies sales-tax accruals against your filed New York returns and reconciles the liability in the books — including NYC’s 8.875% combined rate where it applies, and destination-based rates for businesses selling across New York. We prepare accurate numbers; your CPA or you file the return through NYS Web File.
Yes. TechBrot cleanup produces CPA-ready, lender-ready financial statements — reconciled to source documents with documented adjustments — designed to be handed directly to a tax preparer, lender, or buyer without rework. TechBrot is a bookkeeping and QuickBooks ProAdvisor firm and coordinates with your CPA, who files; we do not file tax returns.
Page review & standards
Reviewed by the TechBrot Certified ProAdvisor team.
This page is reviewed and maintained by the accounting team at TechBrot Inc., an independent Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and bookkeeping firm serving New York businesses. Cleanup pricing reflects TechBrot’s New York engagement ranges; the NYC sales-tax reference (8.875% combined) reflects New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and NYC Department of Finance rules current as of the date below and is reviewed periodically. TechBrot performs bookkeeping and QuickBooks work and coordinates with your CPA, who files.
Reviewer
David Westgate · 40+ years operational accounting experience
Standards
Fixed-fee, written scope · No tax-filing or representation claims (out of scope) · NY facts reviewed periodically · No fabricated data
Last reviewed: June 2026
Let’s see what your New York file actually needs.
Book a 30-minute diagnostic call. We’ll review your QuickBooks file, scope the work honestly, and tell you what cleanup will cost — in writing — before any work begins. No pitch.
TechBrot is an independent Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor firm serving New York remotely. We provide bookkeeping, cleanup, QuickBooks, payroll, and advisory services and coordinate with your CPA or EA. We do not file tax returns or represent clients before tax authorities. New York tax figures are educational and current as of the review date. QuickBooks is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc.; TechBrot is not affiliated with Intuit Inc.