Bookkeeping Cleanups
We provide professional QuickBooks cleanup services for businesses in Teaneck, NJ—helping you fix errors, organize your books, and regain confidence in your financials.
These are the most common indications that your file needs a QuickBooks cleanup service:
- QuickBooks doesn't match your actual bank account balance -
- Uncategorized transactions keep accumulating
- Duplicate transactions exist, or transactions posted to the wrong accounts
- Your accounts receivable has paid invoices dated months ago
- Your accountant is refusing to file your taxes until you correct the issues
The last one is a pretty common situation.
One of our clients in Teaneck, a contractor, called us last Spring. His CPA was holding up his tax return until the books were correct. This guy had a lot of income that he was incorrectly entering into QuickBooks. It made revenue look inflated, and his receivables were out of whack.
So nine times out of ten it's pretty much the same thing. Someone set up QuickBooks in a well-meaning way, but life happened. Transactions didn't get processed. Transactions pulled in from bank accounts that were never touched and reviewed. The result is you're staring at 6-12 months of data that nobody can make sense of anymore. So is your bookkeeping file that bad? Ask yourself this: If you hired a new accountant today, would you feel confident giving them access to your books? If you would not, then that is your signal that you need a bookkeeper to get your financial house in order. Several of our clients near Glenpointe have told us how frustrating this is. They stopped looking at their data because it just looked bad. They knew it needed fixing but didn't know where to start. This is exactly when cleanup services help the most. By giving you a fresh set of books to work from, all of the reports that are generated from then on will have accurate, useful data in them. ## What a QuickBooks Cleanup Service In Teaneck Involves When people contact us at a QuickBooks Cleanup Service in Teaneck, they usually think they just need a little help. But once we log in, we often find twelve months of data that was never processed by anyone, uncategorized transactions, duplicate transactions, and transactions that pulled into QuickBooks from a bank account back in March. That's not a little help; that's a QuickBooks cleanup service. Our full bookkeeping services can be found here
What does the process look like?
During a QuickBooks Cleanup, these are the things we focus on:
**Bank and credit card reconciliation** of every account back to the last reconciled month
- Uncategorized transactions are sorted and assigned to the correct accounts
- Duplicate transactions are deleted so your income and expenses are reported accurately
- Wrongly classified transactions are reclassified, such as owner draws posted as an expense or personal expenses lumped together with business expenses
- Accounts receivable and payable transactions are corrected, so outstanding invoices and unpaid bills equal the correct amounts You'd be surprised how often we find this. For example, we found that a contractor near Glenpointe had $40,000 worth of 'uncategorized expenses' hanging around their file. They could not use their Profit & Loss Report, and their accountant would not be able to do a return without having to guess a good chunk of the numbers. This is something we fix. Beyond fixing the transactions, we also examine your chart of accounts. 9 times out of 10 there are duplicate accounts created by mistake. For example you will find 'Office Supplies' and 'Office Supply' and both have dollars in them. These will be merged together.
-We will rename accounts that don't make much sense for your business but are only standard options for QuickBooks.
-Once your books are cleaned up, the books' balance sheet is going to balance, your Profit & Loss is going to show what your real business income and expenses are, and your bank accounts are going to tie out exactly with no difference.
-You will feel comfortable sending the Profit & Loss to your CPA or your lender, knowing they are accurate.
Not sure if your books need this much attention?
Not really sure if your numbers are correct?
Most businesses are not sure how incorrect their numbers are until somebody looks at them. If you are interested in learning more about everything we do in a bookkeeping relationship, you might want to check out our bookkeeping services page first
How to Prepare for a bookkeeping cleanup
There is nothing you need to do on your end before the cleanup begins. That's what we do. But there is some small amount of prep work you can do that can help us get up and running quicker. The biggest prep work you can do is to gather all your logon information. We are not going to be able to do anything if we do not have access to your QuickBooks Online logon and we need read-only access to your bank account login. Nine times out of 10, when clients in Teaneck call, they tell us they have not looked at QuickBooks in many months. This is perfectly fine, just make sure you can get to your QuickBooks Online logon or reset your password before you have a phone chat with us.
Other things that will help us hit the ground running include:
1. Download your bank statements for the past 12 to 24 months from your bank. PDF's are fine.
2. Locate your last tax return. That will tell us what your accountant worked with for the last return.
3. Create a list of all the bank and credit cards accounts you are using for business. Checking, savings, Credit Cards, Paypal, Venzmo, etc.
4. Indicate if you run payroll or charge sales tax. Both are addressed in our bookkeeping cleanup process and we like to know up front if this is part of the scope.
5. List anything that's on your mind. Double entries, unexplained charges, or an unfamiliar-looking account.
The last of these is, but often overlooked. You know what your business should look like. If a number looks odd to you, it is. That gives us insight on where we should start digging.
Glenpointe area business owners and Teaneck business owners often put off a book cleanup because they think they need to be organized before you contact us. Not so. We would love to see your book exactly as they sit in the present, disorganized and unorganized, and we would much rather spend time fixing issues you didn’t have time to fix yourself.
The final note here:
If you have a CPA or other tax preparer, let them know that we will be going through your book. We work with accounting firms very often, and it helps your tax prep process down the road if everyone is working with the same information. That's it. We don't need binder after binder filled to the brim with receipts and paperwork. We don't need spreadsheets or complicated accounting files. We need access and a quick overview of what went wrong
Breakdown of the Process
The process begins with a review of what is broken before we even get started. We have cleaned up books for many clients in Teaneck, including the contractors near Glenpointe and businesses on Cedar Lane. While the problems are varied, the methodology is the same.
Here is how we typically do things:
1. **Complete file review**. Once you grant us access, we go through your file in its entirety. Chart of accounts, outstanding invoices, uncategorized transactions, and bank feed imports. This gives us a broad view of what has gone wrong.
2. **Reconcile bank and credit card accounts**. These transactions form the backbone of your books. We match every transaction in QuickBooks with a transaction from your bank and credit card statements, usually month by month. If a business hasn't reconciled in 6 months, it will take 6 months to reconcile. The same is true for 2 years or any duration.
3. **Update uncategorized/mis-categorized transactions**. The majority of the problems we uncover are the result of mis-categorized transactions. Expenses posted in the wrong accounts, owner draws coded as business expenses, deposits entered twice. We fix them so the report makes sense and is accurate.
4. **Organize vendors and customers**. Duplicates, misspellings, and old entries. We fix these so your records are more accurate.
5. **Adjustments**. Sometimes a manual adjustment or reclassify of an entire set of transactions is needed. We make the entry and document what was done.
6. **Final review and reporting**. After all the above, we generate your profit and loss statement, your balance sheet, and the other reports you ask for. We walk through the reports with you so you know what you're looking at. This process can usually be completed within one to three weeks depending on the scope of the work required.
We see this happen often.
A business owner from Teaneck will call because their accountant found errors during tax season or because their bank account and QuickBooks do not match by thousands. Most importantly though, by the end, your books will be clean, reconciled, and ready for your CPA. No more wondering what is going on with your accounting data, no more opening QuickBooks and not knowing if you can trust it: that is what a QuickBooks cleanup service is all about. You are back to the point where you understand what your numbers say. ## Keeping Books Clean After Cleanup After a client in Teaneck finishes our QuickBooks cleanup service, we remind them: the hardest thing is cleaning the books. The easy thing is keeping them clean, but only if the business owner establishes proper habits. Too often, after a business owner's books get cleaned, they feel great for the first month or so, then six months later, the books go right back to what they were before. Transactions pile up, bank feeds break, uncategorized expenses are everywhere. That does not need to happen to you.
How to Keep Books Clean
The most important thing you can do to maintain an accurate general ledger is reconcile your bank accounts and credit cards every month.
Do not do that once a quarter or whenever you get around to it.
You need to reconcile the accounts monthly.
This keeps mistakes and misclassified transactions from snowballing and saves you another major cleanup in a year or two.
We have many Teaneck area business owners with small business operations where transactions are moving quickly.
Reconciling those monthly keeps things organized. In addition to reconciling the bank accounts, some other practices that can make a difference include:
- Check your bank feeds once a week so that you can quickly assign uncategorized transactions to the correct accounts
- Reconcile all the deposits and payments immediately as you enter them into QuickBooks
- Do not mix up personal and business charges, ever
- Review a profit and loss report once a month to catch any anomalies
In nine of the ten situations when we see clients fall out of shape with bookkeeping, it is because they do not take ten to fifteen minutes once a week to review their bank feed and catch uncategorized transactions.
Let us be clear, you are trying to run your Teaneck company, take care of the customers, finish work for clients, and pay the bills, and it is not always going to be fun doing QuickBooks work.
Because of that, many of our cleanup customers sign up for monthly QuickBooks bookkeeping services.
Once we finish with their QuickBooks cleanup service, we can provide ongoing support for your accounting work, so you no longer have to worry about bookkeeping.
But that does not mean you can manage bookkeeping on your own as well. We will make sure everything is ready: chart of accounts, rules, categories, and such, and you will be good to go. The goal is for the company not just to repair a QuickBooks mess but to keep it clean and well organized.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if my QuickBooks file actually needs a cleanup?
Your books need a cleanup when your QuickBooks balance does not match your bank statement. Other clear signs include uncategorized transactions piling up, duplicate entries, or old paid invoices still showing as open. If you would not feel comfortable handing your books to a new accountant today, that is your answer. Many Teaneck business owners reach this point after just a few busy months of ignoring the data.
What does a QuickBooks cleanup service actually do to my file?
A QuickBooks cleanup fixes your books from the inside out. We reconcile every bank and credit card account, remove duplicate transactions, and sort uncategorized expenses into the right accounts. We also fix your chart of accounts by merging duplicates like 'Office Supplies' and 'Office Supply.' When we are done, your balance sheet balances, your Profit and Loss is accurate, and your CPA can actually use the numbers.
Do I need to organize anything before the cleanup starts?
You do not need to fix anything before we start. That is our job. The one thing that helps most is having your QuickBooks Online login ready. Also pull 12 to 24 months of bank statements, locate your last tax return, and list every business account you use including PayPal or Venmo. Teaneck business owners who have these items ready help us get started faster and finish sooner.
How long does a QuickBooks cleanup take for a small Teaneck business?
Most small business cleanups take one to two weeks depending on how many months of data need fixing. A file with 12 months of uncategorized transactions takes longer than one with just a few errors. Businesses near Glenpointe with multiple bank accounts or credit cards may take a bit more time. We will give you a clear timeline after we review your file so you know exactly what to expect.
Will my accountant be able to file my taxes after the cleanup is done?
Yes, that is exactly the goal. Many Teaneck business owners come to us because their CPA refused to file until the books were corrected. After a cleanup, your Profit and Loss report shows real income and real expenses. Your bank accounts tie out with no difference. You can send those reports directly to your accountant or lender and feel confident the numbers are right.
Can you clean up QuickBooks if I have not looked at it in over a year?
Yes, we handle this situation all the time. Most clients in Teaneck tell us they stopped looking at QuickBooks months ago because the numbers looked wrong. That is completely normal. We log in, review what is there, and work backward to fix every month that needs attention. You do not need to understand what went wrong. We find it, fix it, and explain what happened in plain language.