Catch-up
What catch-up bookkeeping costs, and why quotes vary
How catch-up pricing is built, the five factors that move the number, and how to compare two quotes that look nothing alike.
The short answer
- Catch-up is normally priced per month behind, at a rate close to the ongoing monthly fee.
- Volume, account count, payroll, inventory and missing documentation are the five price drivers.
- A fixed quote requires an assessment first; hourly quotes without one usually grow.
- Recovered deductions often offset a meaningful part of the fee.
How the price is built
Start with the ongoing monthly rate for a business your size, then adjust for complexity and multiply by months behind. Older months usually cost slightly more because documentation is harder to retrieve.
The five drivers
These are what an assessment measures before a quote is issued.
- Monthly transaction volume across all accounts
- Number of bank, card, loan and merchant accounts
- Payroll periods and whether filings were made
- Inventory or job costing requirements
- How much documentation still exists
Comparing quotes
Ask what happens if a month takes longer, whether reconciliation of every account is included, and whether the price covers balance sheet cleanup or only categorization. Most cheap quotes exclude the last one, which is where the real work is.
A typical catch-up quote build
- Ongoing monthly rate for this size
- $425
- Complexity adjustment (3 cards, payroll)
- ×1.2
- Adjusted monthly catch-up rate
- $510
- Months behind
- 9
- Total fixed quote
- $4,590
- Deductions recovered in this engagement
- $14,900
What this tells you: The engagement paid for itself in recovered deductions, which is common where personal and business spending were mixed.
What you see inside LedgerDude
One page with your money in and money out, your cash on hand, and a short list of questions when we need your help.
Questions people ask
Why is it priced per month rather than hourly?
A fixed per-month price makes the total knowable up front and puts the risk of a messy month on us instead of you.
Is there a discount for many months?
Usually yes, because rules and vendor patterns built in early months speed up later ones.
Do I have to catch up before monthly service?
Yes in practice. Starting monthly work on unreconciled history just carries the errors forward.
Keep reading
How far back should catch-up bookkeeping go?
How to decide how many years to rebuild, what tax filings require, and when older periods are not worth the money.
How catch-up bookkeeping actually works
The order of operations for rebuilding months of missing books, what documentation is required, and how long each stage takes.
All catch-up guide library guides
Every guide in this library.
All guide libraries
Accounting, QuickBooks and catch-up.
Our services
Hand the whole thing to us instead.
Want your books handled for you?
We read your receipts, match your bank activity, and close your books every month. You get one short list of questions and a dashboard that always tells the truth.