Pricing · Cleanup & catch-up
What cleanup and catch-up actually cost.
Cleanup is forensic work, not data entry — so it’s priced for untangling, not by the hour. Cleanup runs $1,500–$15,000+ and catch-up $2,000–$20,000+, each a one-time fixed fee against a written scope. Where you land depends on how far behind the books are and how badly they’re tangled. The free file review is the diagnostic that produces your exact number, in writing, within 3 business days.
Cleanup $1,500–$15,000+ · catch-up $2,000–$20,000+ · one-time fixed fee · written scope before work begins · no hourly billing · exact fee quoted in writing within 3 business days of a free file review · often transitions to monthly bookkeeping after.
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Cleanup & catch-up cost, in five questions.
How much does a QuickBooks / bookkeeping cleanup cost?
$1,500–$15,000+ as a one-time fixed fee against a written scope — no hourly billing. The figure reflects how far behind and how tangled the books are. Cleanup scopes into three tiers: focused $1,200–$3,000, standard $3,000–$7,500, complex $7,500–$15,000+. Your exact fee is quoted in writing within 3 business days of a free file review.
How much does catch-up bookkeeping cost?
$2,000–$20,000+ as a one-time fixed fee. Catch-up records books that were never done — the cost is driven mostly by how many months or years are behind, because each period is reconstructed from source documents in sequence. The free file review produces the exact written figure.
Why is cleanup priced higher than data entry?
Because it isn’t data entry. Cleanup is forensic work — tracing where the numbers went wrong, deciding what’s recoverable, rebuilding the trail, and proving it ties out. Errors compound the longer they sit, so the cost reflects untangling, not transaction count.
How fast do I get the cleanup price?
Within 3 business days of a free file review. The file review is the diagnostic — it reads the actual state of your books and is what makes a written fixed fee possible. No-obligation, no hourly meter.
Is cleanup a one-time fee or ongoing?
A one-time fixed-fee project with set start and completion. It often transitions into recurring monthly bookkeeping afterward so the books stay current — but that’s optional and quoted separately.
How cleanup and catch-up are priced.
Cleanup and catch-up are one-time fixed-fee projects, not hourly engagements. Cleanup runs $1,500–$15,000+ and catch-up $2,000–$20,000+, each quoted as a single written fixed fee before any work begins. The figure is driven by two things: how far behind the books are (how many months or years) and how badly they’re tangled (broken reconciliations, miscategorized history, a corrupted or restructured file, multiple entities). It’s priced as forensic work — untangling what’s there — not as data entry, because the hard part is diagnosis and reconstruction, not typing. The free file review is the diagnostic: it reads the actual condition of your file, and your exact fixed fee is delivered in writing within 3 business days. Cleanup and catch-up often transition into monthly bookkeeping once the books are current. Tax filing isn’t included — your CPA handles that.
Cleanup is forensic, not data entry.
The instinct is to price cleanup like typing: so many transactions, so many minutes each. That’s not what the work is. By the time a file needs cleanup, the damage has usually compounded — a reconciliation that drifted six months ago has been quietly throwing off every month since, miscategorized transactions have flowed into reports that informed real decisions, and a forced reconciliation has buried the discrepancy instead of resolving it. We call this Compounding Reconciliation Drift: each unresolved error breeds more error downstream, so the cost of fixing it grows the longer it sits.
Catch-up carries its own version. Months or years of unrecorded activity isn’t neutral — it’s Historical Accounting Debt: every period left undone has to be reconstructed from source documents, in order, before the next one can close, because each month depends on the one before it being right. You can’t shortcut the sequence.
So the work is diagnosis and reconstruction, not transcription. We trace where the numbers went wrong, decide what’s recoverable, rebuild the trail, and prove the result ties out — the same way an investigation works, not a keyboard. That’s why it’s priced as a forensic project with a written scope, and why the file review comes first: you can’t price an untangling you haven’t looked at.
Four things drive the figure.
Where a cleanup or catch-up lands in its range comes down to these — surfaced in the free file review, priced in the written scope.
How far behind
How many months — or years — of activity are unrecorded or unreconciled. Each additional period is another month to reconstruct and reconcile in sequence, so depth of history is the single largest lever on a catch-up fee and a major one on cleanup.
Severity of the issues
A single drifted reconciliation in otherwise-current books is one thing; a chart of accounts that needs rebuilding, undeposited-funds pileups, miscategorized history flowing into filed reports, or a corrupted file is another. Tangle, not transaction count, sets the tier.
Accounts & entities
Each bank and credit account is its own reconciliation; each entity is its own set of books. A multi-account, multi-entity file takes more tracing and more proving-out than a single-account sole proprietorship at the same depth.
State of the source records
Whether statements, receipts, and prior filings are available and organized — or have to be retrieved and pieced together. Reconstructing from gaps is slower and more forensic than working from complete records, and the scope reflects it.
Cleanup is scoped in three tiers.
QuickBooks cleanup is sized to what the file actually needs. These are the canonical tier figures from the service pages — the free file review tells you honestly which tier fits. Catch-up bookkeeping is priced separately by how many periods are behind.
| Tier | When it fits | Fixed-fee range |
|---|---|---|
| Focused cleanup | One contained issue in otherwise-current books — a single drifted reconciliation, a bad bank-feed import, one period miscategorized. | $1,200–$3,000 |
| Standard cleanup | Several stacked issues, or books several months to about a year behind — the most common cleanup tier. | $3,000–$7,500 |
| Complex cleanup | Multi-year backlog, a corrupted or restructured file, or multiple entities to consolidate — scoped in phases. | $7,500–$15,000+ |
| Catch-up bookkeeping | Months or years of books never recorded — reconstructed period by period from source documents. | $2,000–$20,000+ |
Tier figures are the canonical ranges shown on each cleanup tier page. A file that’s both badly tangled and years behind is scoped as a combined cleanup-plus-catch-up project; the written scope states the single fixed fee. Your exact number follows the free file review within 3 business days.
Two different problems, two ranges.
Cleanup ($1,500–$15,000+) fixes books that exist but are wrong — reconciliations that don’t tie, miscategorized history, an undeposited-funds pileup, a chart of accounts that needs rebuilding, a corrupted or restructured file. The work is correction: finding the errors and proving the fix. The full QuickBooks cleanup service, with its three tiers, lives on the QuickBooks cleanup page; the bookkeeping-side detail is on cleanup bookkeeping.
Catch-up ($2,000–$20,000+) records books that were never done — months or years of transactions never entered, reconciled, or closed. The work is reconstruction: building each period from source documents, in order. The detail lives on catch-up bookkeeping.
Many files need both — the recent past was never recorded (catch-up) and what was recorded earlier was done wrong (cleanup). When that’s the case, the file review scopes them as one project with one fixed fee, sequenced so the foundation is sound before the backlog is built on top of it.
What the fixed fee always includes.
Whatever the figure, every cleanup or catch-up project carries these.
Free file review first
The diagnostic comes before the price. We read the actual condition of your file, then quote — you never get a number on a problem we haven’t looked at.
One written fixed fee
The whole project is a single fixed fee against a written scope, agreed before any work begins — no hourly billing and no surprise invoice mid-untangling.
CPA-ready result
The endpoint is books your CPA can file from — reconciled, categorized, and proven to tie out. Tax filing itself is your CPA’s, not ours.
Certified ProAdvisor delivery
Forensic correction and reconstruction handled by a Certified Intuit ProAdvisor — Intuit’s public ProAdvisor directory lists active ProAdvisors for verification.
Work inside your own file
We correct your existing QuickBooks file — your data, your audit trail — never a parallel rebuild you can’t reconcile against.
A clean handoff to monthly
Once the books are current, the project can transition straight into recurring monthly bookkeeping so they never drift again. No obligation to continue.
Four steps to a number in writing.
Free file review
the diagnostic
Written scope
within 3 business days
Fixed fee, in writing
no hourly billing
Work begins
named operator
Where to go next.
All pricing & ranges
The full canonical fixed-fee table across every service — bookkeeping, setup, migration, payroll, sales tax, and CFO.
Back to PricingQuickBooks cleanup service
The cleanup service itself — what we fix, how the three tiers work, and what CPA-ready means for your file.
QuickBooks CleanupCatch-up bookkeeping
Months or years behind? How we reconstruct unrecorded periods from source documents, in order, to current.
Catch-Up BookkeepingStart with the file review
The free diagnostic that reads your file and produces the exact fixed fee in writing within 3 business days.
Get the free file reviewQuestions about cleanup & catch-up cost.
How much does a bookkeeping or QuickBooks cleanup cost?
How much does catch-up bookkeeping cost?
Why isn’t cleanup priced by the hour or per transaction?
What determines where my cleanup or catch-up falls in the range?
What’s the difference between cleanup and catch-up pricing?
How fast do I get an exact cleanup quote, and how?
Is cleanup a one-time project or an ongoing engagement?
Does the cleanup fee include filing my taxes?
Start with the diagnostic
Get the file review, then the number.
The free file review reads the actual state of your books — how far behind, how tangled, what it takes to make them CPA-ready. That diagnostic is what produces your exact fixed fee, in writing, within 3 business days. No hourly billing, no obligation.