Independent bookkeeping & advisory firm · Serving clients nationwide, remotely
Cleanup is forensic work, not data entry — so it’s priced for untangling, not by the hour. QuickBooks cleanup runs $1,200–$15,000+, bookkeeping cleanup $1,200–$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 what produces your exact number, in writing, within 3 business days.
Or send the details insteadIf your file needs our paid diagnostic first, its fee is credited in full against the cleanup. Either way, you get a fixed fee in writing before any work starts.
QuickBooks cleanup is a one-time fixed fee of $1,200–$15,000+ in three tiers, and bookkeeping cleanup runs $1,200–$15,000+. Cleanup = months in the period × 25–35% of the monthly fee for the same volume and accounts × the file's condition (1.0 reconciled, 1.25 partly reconciled, 1.6 never reconciled), from $1,200.
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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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
All eight drivers, why each moves the fee and what to have ready: what drives the cleanup fee.
QuickBooks cleanup is sized to what the file actually needs, and the free file review tells you which tier fits. Catch-up bookkeeping is priced separately, by how many months 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 to under $3,000 |
| Standard cleanup | Several stacked issues, or books several months to about a year behind. | $3,000 to under $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, over 2–10 weeks. | $2,000–$20,000+ |
From $1,200 for one contained QuickBooks issue (the Focused tier); from $1,200 for a full single-year cleanup on any software. Every catch-up is priced at 60–90% of your monthly fee for each month behind, from $2,000; the written scope fixes the number.
A cleanup or catch-up is quoted in writing within 3 business days of the free file review. When a file cannot be scoped without working inside it, we propose the paid Focused QuickBooks diagnostic (from $450) first and say so before you commit. The diagnostic fee is credited in full against the cleanup. A file that’s both badly tangled and years behind is scoped as one combined cleanup-plus-catch-up project with a single fixed fee.
Estimate yours: cleanup and catch-up cost estimator.
QuickBooks cleanup ($1,200–$15,000+) and bookkeeping cleanup ($1,200–$15,000+) fix books that exist but are wrong. We reconcile each bank and credit-card account to source statements, investigate unmatched balances, document corrections and hand over a period-by-period exception register. 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, over 2–10 weeks. 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.
Whatever the figure, every cleanup or catch-up project carries these.
The review 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.
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.
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.
Forensic correction and reconstruction handled by a QuickBooks ProAdvisor .
We correct your existing QuickBooks file — your data, your audit trail — never a parallel rebuild you can’t reconcile against.
Once the books are current, the project can transition straight into recurring monthly bookkeeping so they never drift again. No obligation to continue.
we read the file first
within 3 business days
no hourly billing
A senior bookkeeper
Catch-up is 60–90% of the monthly fee for each month behind, from $2,000.
$450 for one company file and up to 12 months, plus $150 for each further 12 months, plus $450 for each further company file, plus $300 for a Desktop or Enterprise file with integrity errors; never more than $2,000; credited in full against the cleanup. Most files are scoped on the free file review; the paid diagnostic is proposed only when a file cannot be scoped without working inside it.
For example, 14 months × 30% of an $800 monthly fee × 1.6 (never reconciled) = $5,376. The fixed fee is confirmed in writing before work starts.
How other firms price cleanup and catch-up, as their own pages state it. We list the basis, not their prices, which change within a quarter.
| Firm | How they price | Source · checked |
|---|---|---|
| House of Bookkeepers | One-time QuickBooks cleanup packages defined by transaction count and accounts. | houseofbookkeepers.com/quickbooks-clean-up · 2026-09-26 |
| Bookkeeper360 | Prior bookkeeping quoted per project at onboarding. | bookkeeper360.com/pricing · 2026-09-26 |
| Xendoo | Catch-up bookkeeping as a monthly add-on. | xendoo.com/xendoo-pricing · 2026-09-26 |
| Bench (Mainstreet) | A fractional bookkeeper by the hour, plus a one-time onboarding fee. | bench.co/pricing · 2026-09-26 |
| Pulse by Xenett (cost guide) | A market summary: cleanup priced by the months involved and the condition of the file. | pulse.xenett.com · 2026-09-26 |
| Wurthy (cost guide) | A market summary: catch-up and cleanup priced by the months involved and the condition of the file. | wurthy.co · 2026-09-26 |
| TechBrot | The months involved and the condition of the file, read from the file itself after the free file review; one fixed fee in writing. | this page |
R45-D (R5-S-11, ruling 79 onward): the basis each firm’s own pages state, never its price. Competitor prices go stale within a quarter and a wrong one is a liability, so none is reproduced here; Intuit’s prices are never quoted. Each row carries the date it was checked; the four newest rows were checked 2026-10-17 against the outlet named, the others against the firm’s own pricing page on September 26, 2026.
QuickBooks cleanup is $1,200–$15,000+ (Focused $1,200 to under $3,000 · Standard $3,000 to under $7,500 · Complex $7,500–$15,000+); bookkeeping cleanup is $1,200–$15,000+; catch-up is $2,000–$20,000+. Each is one fixed fee, written after the free file review and before any work starts. There is no hourly rate.
Some published packages are priced to a volume ceiling — a transaction count, one bank account, one card. Our fee is set after someone has read your actual file, and it covers the diagnosis, the corrections and the tie-out to your statements. The total is in writing before work begins and changes only if you approve a written re-scope. An hourly option prices the same work by the clock instead, so the total is known only at the end.
If your file is current, low-volume and fits one of the published packages, that package may be the better buy. The free file review will tell you which side of that line you are on.
The same engagement, written for the state’s own rules — sales-tax, payroll and registration wrinkles included. Delivered remotely in your own QuickBooks file; every state is served from the state directory.
By industry: SaaS · Agency · Retail · not sure where your file stands? Start with the free QuickBooks file review · moving off Desktop? QuickBooks Desktop to Online migration.
Because the work isn’t transcription — it’s diagnosis and reconstruction. By the time a file needs cleanup, errors have compounded: a drifted reconciliation has thrown off every month since, miscategorized history has flowed into filed reports. Untangling that is forensic, so we price the whole project as one fixed fee against a written scope. Hourly billing would penalize you for the difficulty of the mess; a fixed fee puts the risk on us.
Four things: how far behind the books are (months versus years), how severe the issues are (one drifted reconciliation versus a rebuilt chart of accounts or a corrupted file), how many bank/credit accounts and entities are involved, and the state of the source records. The free file review surfaces all four and the written scope reflects them — which is why we look before we quote.
QuickBooks cleanup ($1,200–$15,000+) and bookkeeping cleanup ($1,200–$15,000+) fix books that exist but are wrong — the work is correction. Catch-up ($2,000–$20,000+) records books that were never done — the work is reconstruction. Many files need both, and when they do the file review scopes them as one project with a single fixed fee, sequenced so the foundation is sound before the backlog is built on top of it.
Within 3 business days of a free file review. The review reads the actual condition of your QuickBooks file, which is what makes a fixed fee possible. You can’t price an untangling you haven’t looked at, so the review always comes first; then the exact number arrives in writing, with no hourly billing. When a file cannot be scoped without working inside it, we propose the paid Focused QuickBooks diagnostic (from $450) first and say so before you commit; the diagnostic fee is credited in full against the cleanup. Prefer to talk it through first? Call (877) 751-5575.
It’s a one-time fixed-fee project with defined start and completion dates. Once the books are current and CPA-ready, the project can transition straight into recurring monthly bookkeeping so they never drift back — but that’s optional, quoted separately, and runs month to month with no long-term lock-in.
No. TechBrot is a bookkeeping and advisory firm, not a tax-filing one — cleanup and catch-up get your books CPA-ready, and your CPA or tax preparer files the return. We’re also independent of Intuit: TechBrot’s senior reviewer holds current QuickBooks certifications, and we use QuickBooks software, but TechBrot is not owned, employed, or operated by Intuit.
QuickBooks cleanup is a fixed fee in one of three tiers: $1,200 to under $3,000, $3,000 to under $7,500 or $7,500–$15,000+, set by how many months, accounts and problems the file holds. The free file review tells you which tier applies before anything costs money. If the file cannot be scoped without working inside it, the paid diagnostic is from $450 for one company file and is credited in full against the cleanup. If the full cleanup is more than you can take on now, ask for a phased scope: the periods your CPA or lender needs first, each with its own fixed fee in writing.
You contract with TechBrot, Inc., a Delaware corporation, under one written scope. You always pay TechBrot, Inc. directly, by ACH or wire. TechBrot invoices every engagement. No one on our team will ask you to pay through a personal link, a gift card or cryptocurrency. TechBrot is an independent firm and is not affiliated with Intuit.
Tell us what’s wrong with the books. We’ll tell you whether cleanup, catch-up or monthly bookkeeping fits.
Or send the details instead