Bookkeeping Cleanup Help keep the file, or hand it over

Some files should stay with the owner. The test is whether the next month will actually get closed. If the last matched month is recent and the missing pieces are a handful of receipts, you can keep the file. We show the order. You do the match, or we do one month beside you so the next one is yours. The point is a month that locks, not a spectator tour.

The failure mode is a file that stays in your login while nothing moves. A full calendar can still leave the month unlocked. If two promised weeks pass and the month is still open, the honest move is to hand it over rather than to restart the same plan.

You still say which charges were personal. You still say which account is operating. You still approve a payroll company if one is not in place. We do not guess those from the feed. A feed can show a grocery store. It cannot show whether that run was for the shop or for your kitchen.

Statements have to be reachable. Read-only access is enough. We do not need your password written into a note. If a bank will not give a clean export, the PDF statement still works, and the month waits until that PDF is in the folder. A week you can name is a better plan than a stretch you hope will quiet down. If the next two Fridays are already spoken for, say that on the form. We will not pretend a busy calendar is the same as a closed month.

The feed is many months behind and each attempt starts over. A notice has arrived and nobody can find the page it names. Payday was never set up on a provider, so people are paid from the operating account with no register. Or you have stopped opening the file because the first screen makes the week feel worse.

Each of those is a state of the file, not a verdict on the owner. A long gap is a project. A notice is a date. A missing payroll setup is a setup. Avoidance is information. Say it while the call is still the first one, before a later month of work finds it.

You do not lose the bank. You do not lose the payroll company. You do not hand us a blank check to recode your life. Until a letter spells out the months and what they cost, nothing is engaged. Until that letter is signed, the note on the form is only a note. We do not pull a feed from a sentence.

If the honest answer is that the file is not as far behind as it feels, we will say that and send you back to keep the file. A handoff that is not needed is a worse outcome than a short plan you can finish.

Bring the notice if one is on the counter, even if you have only read the first line. The form number and the year it names are enough. We can sort the rest on the call without you translating the page first.

You keep the logins, the payroll company, and the call on what was personal. We never need to become the owner of an account. Read-only access or a statement PDF is the ordinary path. You keep the payroll login and you remain the employer. You decide whether a charge was personal. You decide whether a worker is an employee or a contractor when the facts are close, with the right advice beside you. We will not make that call from a payee name.

You also keep the right to stop. An engagement ends in writing. Records we were given come back. Fees cover the work done to that date. Nothing in a cleanup is a reason to hold your own file hostage.

A matched month should leave a short pack. The bank reconciliation, the card reconciliation, the payroll tie-out, and the holding line with its open questions. That pack is how the next month starts in an hour instead of a day. It is also how a return preparer, including us when we get there, can see the year without re-investigating it.

We do not keep a secret set of books. If a number is in the pack, it is in the file you can open. The holding line is in the file too, on purpose, so an open question cannot hide inside profit. Ask for the pack in plain words if you want to see it before you decide. A sample of one closed month tells you more than a promise about the whole year. You can stop after that month.