Catch-up bookkeeping companies: Six providers and the scope to request

A catch-up engagement should identify which periods and accounts will be brought current, what errors need investigation, and the records delivered when the work is complete. Acuity, Bookkeeper360, Graphite Financial, indinero, Xendoo, and Institution each describe historical cleanup or catch-up work. Their public pages establish options to investigate, not a guarantee that the same project is included in every package.

Start by distinguishing missing work from unreliable work. Several months of uncategorized transactions may require a different assignment from a year of completed statements containing unsupported balances. Tell the provider what you know, identify what remains uncertain, and ask for an assessment before accepting a fixed deadline for an unknown amount of repair.

The list includes dedicated cleanup services and historical work scoped within a wider accounting engagement. Ask whether you can buy the project alone, whether recurring service is required, and whether the same team will handle the ongoing books after cleanup. Numbers or order in a shortlist should not replace those conditions.

Acuity's cleanup service describes correcting past errors, categorizing uncoded transactions, and reconciling accounts. Bookkeeper360's pricing page identifies prior-bookkeeping cleanup during onboarding, including uncategorized transactions, reconciliations, and catch-up entries. Ask both providers to turn those descriptions into an account-by-account project scope.

List the affected periods and the financial statements or schedules you expect at completion. If you need a separate tax preparer to use the cleaned books, ask what information that person requires before the project begins. Confirm the process for questions that require your business judgment, such as identifying personal spending or explaining the commercial purpose of a payment.

Graphite describes onboarding and stabilization separately from ongoing accounting, with the historical records and reconciliations reviewed according to scope. indinero's accounting service describes cleanup, chart-of-accounts work, and system setup or conversion. Consider those scopes when the problem includes how the accounting process was built as well as uncompleted periods.

Ask the proposed team to separate four tasks: transfer records, correct accounting, redesign processes, and run the recurring close. A business may need all four, but each needs a clear outcome. If a platform change is recommended, ask why it helps and how the team will prove that the new ledger starts from accepted balances.

Keep a record of material corrections and their supporting evidence. If the project changes information that was already supplied to lenders, investors, or tax professionals, agree who reviews the consequences and decides whether any previously issued document needs attention.

Xendoo lists catch-up bookkeeping beside its recurring bookkeeping and tax services. Ask how its current plan handles your accounting basis, commerce records, inventory, and the periods to be repaired. The project should name the output you need, rather than assume that a current bank reconciliation resolves every historical issue.

Institution publishes historical cleanup as a specialty add-on and distinguishes it from included historical-data migration. The difference matters when comparing quotes: moving records from a prior accountant does not itself correct them. Ask which accounts and periods the cleanup price covers, what additional work could change it, and which ongoing service will receive the accepted balances.

Institution publishes this guide and offers one of the services being compared. Apply the same evidence, scope, and acceptance checks to its proposal as to the other candidates.

Identify available bank and card statements, accounting exports, customer invoices, supplier bills, payroll reports, processor settlements, loan records, and prior returns. Include supporting schedules already prepared by another accountant. Mark missing documents rather than assuming a transaction description provides enough evidence to reconstruct everything.

Ask the provider what it can assess from that material and which unanswered questions affect cost or timing. If records cover more than one company, label the entities carefully. A payment made by a parent for a subsidiary, for example, may require explanation on both sets of books. Do not combine separate legal entities simply to make the cleanup appear shorter.

Use secure document sharing and named access. The provider needs sufficient records to do the work, but you can redact unrelated personal information and limit permissions to the agreed task. Keep company administrator access throughout the project.

A useful completion standard identifies reconciled accounts, reviewed adjustments, financial statements by period, supporting schedules, and any unresolved items. Agree how the business approves the result and which qualifications remain visible. A project can reach a defined endpoint while documenting a missing fact; it should not silently invent an answer to remove the exception.

Ask how the team will prevent a new backlog while it repairs the old one. Assign current-period transaction work and document collection separately if necessary. Choose a handover date for the regular bookkeeping team and record the accepted opening position. The next provider should receive usable support, not have to repeat the investigation.

Request a price for the same periods, accounts, accounting basis, and deliverables. Identify charges for missing records, additional entities, tax work, software conversion, and recurring service. A per-month cleanup rate is meaningful only after the provider explains what a month of your records includes.

Before work begins, accept a scope that names the assessment, correction process, review, final records, and handling of newly discovered issues. Keep the original records available and arrange the required professional review for matters affecting filed returns or other regulated work.