Catch-Up Bookkeeping
Cleaning up and bringing current past months or years of bookkeeping. We rebuild your records from bank statements, receipts, and whatever else you have so your books are accurate and current.
The Situation
You have been running jobs, paying crews, buying materials, and collecting checks for months or years without keeping up with the books. Maybe you started a QuickBooks file and stopped using it. Maybe you never started one at all. Either way, you know the records are a mess and you have been putting off dealing with it.
This is extremely common with contractors and trade businesses around Long Beach and the South Bay. The work comes in, the days get long, and bookkeeping falls to the bottom of the list. Then tax season shows up and you are scrambling to piece together a year’s worth of transactions from bank statements and shoe boxes of receipts.
Months Behind
Months Behind
You kept up for a while and then fell off. Maybe three months behind, maybe six. The bank feeds piled up in QuickBooks and now everything needs to be reviewed, categorized, and reconciled before your books mean anything again.
Years Behind
Years Behind
You never really had books to begin with. You filed taxes based on rough numbers or whatever your previous accountant could pull together. Now you need clean records, whether for a loan application, a tax issue, or just because you are tired of guessing where your money is going.
What It Costs You
Messy books are not just an administrative problem. For trade businesses they are a direct hit to your bottom line. When your records are incomplete, your CPA has to work with incomplete information at tax time. That means legitimate business deductions get missed. Material costs, equipment purchases, vehicle expenses, subcontractor payments. If it is not in the books, it probably is not making it onto your return.
Beyond taxes, you cannot make real decisions without real numbers. Should you take on that bigger project? Can you afford to hire another crew member? Is that truck purchase going to stretch cash too thin? Without accurate financials these are just gut calls. And gut calls get expensive when they are wrong.
Missed Deductions
Missed Deductions
Construction and trade businesses have significant deductible expenses every single month. Tools, fuel, materials, insurance, licensing fees. When your books are behind, these expenses are not properly tracked and categorized. That translates directly into paying more tax than you owe.
Loan and Bond Roadblocks
Loan and Bond Roadblocks
Banks want to see clean financials before they lend. Bonding companies want to see organized records before they increase your capacity. If your books are a mess you are stuck explaining why instead of growing your business. Catching up removes that obstacle.
How We Fix It
We start with whatever you have. Bank statements, credit card records, invoices, receipts, old QuickBooks files. We pull it all together and rebuild your books month by month. Every transaction gets categorized correctly. Every account gets reconciled. When we are done, your financials are accurate and current.
Because we work specifically with contractors, trades, and service businesses, we already understand how your expenses should be classified. We know what job costs look like for a plumber versus a general contractor. We know how to handle subcontractor payments and material purchases. You do not have to explain your business to us before we can start cleaning things up.
The Rebuild
The Rebuild
We go through every bank and credit card account for the period that needs work. Transactions get categorized properly. Duplicates and errors get cleaned out. Reconciliations get completed for every month. At the end you have a complete and accurate set of books you can actually trust.
The Handoff
The Handoff
Once the catch-up is done, your books are ready for tax filing, for lender requests, or for ongoing bookkeeping going forward. If you want us to keep the books current from that point on, we can transition you into our full-service bookkeeping. If you want to take it from here, we will make sure you are set up to do that.
Long Beach's CPA for Contractors and Trades
The Next Step:
A Quick Conversation
Tell us about your business and where you need help. We'll ask a few questions, let you know what we can do, and give you a quick quote.