You know you’re behind. You don’t need someone to tell you that. Maybe it’s been three months since anything was reconciled. Maybe it’s been a year. Maybe you just got a letter from the IRS and realized the books that were supposed to be done aren’t even close.
It happens. A lot. You were busy running crews and chasing draws, and the financial side just didn’t keep up. We hear this story every week, and we’ve never once judged someone for it. We just get to work.
What Cleanup Looks Like
Financial cleanup isn’t just categorizing a pile of old transactions. It’s reconstructing your financial picture so the numbers are accurate, your reports are usable, and you have a clean foundation going forward.
Transaction catch-up. We go through every bank transaction, credit card charge, and deposit for the period you’re behind. Everything gets categorized, coded to the right job where applicable, and reconciled against your bank statements.
Account reconciliation. Bank accounts, credit cards, loans, lines of credit. We reconcile every account and track down discrepancies. Duplicate entries, missing deposits, payments that hit the wrong account; we find them and fix them.
Chart of accounts restructure. If your chart of accounts was set up wrong from the start, catching up on bad structure just gives you clean bad data. We restructure your accounts for construction if needed so the reports actually tell you something useful once they’re current.
Job cost reconstruction. If you have jobs that need cost data allocated after the fact, we do that. It’s not perfect retrospectively, but we can get you close enough to know which jobs made money and which ones didn’t.
Tax-ready deliverables. If the reason you’re catching up is a tax deadline, we prioritize getting your books to a state your CPA can work with. Clean P&L, balance sheet, and supporting schedules delivered on a timeline that keeps you out of trouble.
How Long It Takes
That depends on how far behind you are and how messy things got. But here’s a general guide:
A few months behind with decent records? Usually two to three weeks to get you caught up and running on a clean monthly cycle.
A year or more behind with a shoebox of receipts? More like four to six weeks. We’ll triage the most urgent items first, especially if there’s a tax deadline or an IRS notice involved, then work through the backlog systematically.
Either way, you don’t have to do the heavy lifting. You send us your bank logins, your QuickBooks file, and whatever records you have. We take it from there.
What Happens After the Cleanup
Getting caught up is only useful if you stay caught up. Once your books are clean, we set you up on a monthly accounting cycle so you never fall behind again. That might mean transitioning into our ongoing monthly accounting service, or it might mean getting your books to a state where you or your existing bookkeeper can maintain them properly going forward.
We’ll be honest with you about which option makes more sense for your situation.
You’re Not the First Contractor to Call Us in a Panic
We’ve taken calls from contractors who found out their bookkeeper hadn’t filed payroll taxes in over a year. We’ve worked with contractors who were about to lose a bond line because they couldn’t produce financial statements. We’ve cleaned up books that were so far behind the bank was threatening to call a note.
None of those situations are comfortable. But every single one was fixable. And every single one started with a phone call that sounded a lot like “I’m behind and I don’t know where to start.”
You start by reaching out. We handle the rest.
Let’s Get You Caught Up
Tell us where things stand. No judgment, no lectures. We’ll look at your situation, tell you what the timeline looks like, and get to work.