Clean-Up Bookkeeping
Your books exist, but the numbers do not hold up. Miscategorized transactions, unreconciled accounts, duplicates, and balances nobody believes. I review what is there, correct what is wrong, reconcile every account, and hand your practice back books it can finally trust.
Books That Were Kept, Just Not Well
Something has been happening in your accounting file every month. Transactions came in, categories got assigned, reports can be run. The problem is that the reports say things you know are not true. A profit number that does not match what is in the bank. An expense category that swallowed half the year. A balance sheet with a line on it nobody can explain. So you stop opening the reports, and the file keeps going anyway.
This is different from books that were never done at all. If you have missing months or years with nothing recorded, Catch-Up Bookkeeping is the page you want. The plain version of the difference is this. Catch-Up is for work that was not done. Clean-Up is for work that was done wrong. Plenty of practices need a little of both, and I will tell you which one you are looking at after I see the file.
How It Usually Happens
How It Usually Happens
You set QuickBooks up yourself between sessions and did your best with categories you were guessing at. Or you hired someone cheap who never reconciled anything. Or a bookkeeper left mid year and the person who took over used a different system of their own. None of that makes you bad at business. It makes you a clinician who had a full caseload and did the part of this you could.
What Messy Actually Looks Like
What Messy Actually Looks Like
Deposits entered by hand and imported from the bank, so income counted twice. Your EHR subscription filed under office supplies one month and software the next. Owner draws sitting in expenses. Credit cards never reconciled. A big uncategorized pile from last spring. Opening balance equity holding a number someone plugged in to make the file balance.
How the Clean-Up Goes
It starts with a look, not a lecture. You give me access to the file and the bank and credit card statements for the period in question, and I go through what is there. I want to know how far back the trouble goes, which accounts have never been reconciled, where income got double counted, and whether the chart of accounts even fits a mental health practice. Then I tell you what I found in plain language and what it will take to fix it.
Pricing is per engagement because no two messes are the same size. A single year with a category problem is a very different job from three years of duplicates across four accounts. You get the scope and the number before I start the corrections, so there are no surprises partway through.
Finding and Fixing the Errors
Finding and Fixing the Errors
I work period by period rather than guessing at the whole file at once. Duplicates removed. Miscategorized transactions moved where they belong. Personal spending pulled out of practice expenses. Categories rebuilt so that revenue, clinical costs, software, rent, and insurance each land in a place that makes sense for the way your practice actually runs.
Reconciling Every Account
Reconciling Every Account
Reconciliation is where a clean-up either holds up or falls apart later. Every bank account and every credit card gets matched to the real statements, month by month, until the balances agree. When that is done, the numbers in your reports are tied to money that actually moved, which is the whole point.
Books You Can Believe Again
At the end you have a file that reconciles, reports that hold together, and a real answer to what your practice earned and what it spent. Your books are tax-ready for whoever prepares your return, and that person stops sending you questions you cannot answer. I do not prepare tax returns, and I do work so your preparer has clean records to start from.
The other thing worth saying out loud is that nothing about your file is going to embarrass you in front of me. I spent more than fifteen years as a licensed nurse in mental health before I ever did this work. I know the vocabulary, I know what a week in a private practice looks like, and I have never once thought less of an owner for having messy books. You work directly with me, start to finish.
Keeping It Clean From Here
Keeping It Clean From Here
Most practices move straight into Full-Service Bookkeeping once the clean-up is finished, so the file stays reconciled and the reports keep arriving every month. That is the part that keeps you from paying for another clean-up in two years, and it is how you get honest visibility into profitability going forward.
Start With a Conversation
Start With a Conversation
Book a consultation with me and tell me what you are seeing in your file. If it turns out you need Catch-Up instead, or a fresh QuickBooks setup before anything else, I will say so. You will leave the call knowing what shape your books are in and what it takes to make them trustworthy again.
Helping the People Who Help Others
Let's Start With
a Short Conversation
Tell me where your books stand right now, even if the honest answer is that nobody has looked at them in a year. I'll ask a few questions and give you a clear idea of how I can help.
