Months behind on your books? We'll get you current.
Catch-up and cleanup bookkeeping for contractors and growing businesses across the GTA. Fixed quote before we start, no lecture about how far behind you are.
Nobody plans to fall behind. It happens because the work got busy, the bookkeeper left, the software stopped reconciling, or a year went by where every month you told yourself you would deal with it next month. By the time most owners call us, they are anywhere from four months to three years behind, and the reason they finally called is a CRA letter, a lender asking for statements, or a deal that fell through because they could not produce a clean balance sheet.
Catch-up work is its own discipline. It is not the same as monthly bookkeeping done late. Bank feeds only reach back so far, receipts are scattered across a truck, a phone, and three email accounts, and the prior year may have been filed on numbers that no longer tie to anything. Doing it properly means rebuilding from source documents, not guessing at categories to make a reconciliation close.
We quote catch-up work as a fixed project before we touch anything, so you know the number up front. Once you are current, you can decide whether to keep it that way with a monthly plan or take the clean file elsewhere. Both are fine.
What makes Catch-Up Bookkeeping different.
The penalties compound while you wait
Late-filing penalties, instalment interest, and HST arrears do not sit still. Every month you delay adds cost, and CRA interest is charged on the penalties themselves. The cheapest version of this problem is the one you deal with today, not the one you deal with after the next demand letter.
Bank feeds expire
Most Canadian institutions only expose 90 days to a year of transaction history through an accounting integration. Beyond that window, catch-up means statement PDFs, CSV exports, and in the worst cases a branch request. The longer you wait, the more of the work becomes manual, and the more it costs.
A prior return filed on bad numbers does not fix itself
If last year's T2 or T1 was filed from a set of books that were wrong, the opening balances for this year are wrong too. Cleanup often surfaces a prior-year error that needs an adjustment or an amended return. We tell you when we find one and what your options are, rather than quietly rolling it forward.
Cleanup is where the money usually is
In almost every catch-up file we take on, we find deductible expenses that were never claimed and HST input tax credits that were never recovered. It is common for the recovered amounts to offset a meaningful share of the project fee. It is not a guarantee, but it is common enough to be worth mentioning before you decide to keep putting this off.
What we handle.
- Rebuild your books from source documents, not from guesses that make the bank reconciliation close
- Reconcile every bank, credit card, and loan account for the full catch-up period
- Recover missed HST input tax credits and unclaimed deductible expenses
- Identify and flag prior-year errors, with a plain explanation of your options
- Prepare and file outstanding HST returns, T4s, T5s, and T5018s
- Deliver a clean, lender-ready balance sheet and income statement at the end
- Set up a chart of accounts that will actually hold up going forward
- Hand you a monthly plan if you want one, or a clean file if you do not
Questions, answered.
How far behind is too far behind?
There is no such thing. We have taken on files three years behind and files where the corporation had never filed at all. What changes with time is cost and complexity, not whether it can be done. The one thing we will tell you honestly: if you are more than two years behind and CRA has already issued an arbitrary assessment, that is a different and more urgent conversation, and you should call rather than email.
What does catch-up bookkeeping cost?
It is quoted as a fixed project, separately from any monthly plan, because the work is driven by volume and condition rather than by month count. The two things that move the number most are the number of transactions and whether source documents exist. A year of a single bank account with organized receipts is a very different project from three years across four accounts with no records. We give you the number before we start, and it does not change unless the scope does.
Do I have to sign up for monthly bookkeeping afterwards?
No. Plenty of owners hire us for cleanup, get current, and go back to handling it themselves or with an in-house person. We would rather do good catch-up work and have you refer someone than lock you into something you do not want. If you do want ongoing support, our monthly plans start at $400/month, and the clean file we just built makes that transition straightforward.
Ready for clean numbers?
Book a free consultation. We'll review where your books stand and lay out a clear path. No pressure, no jargon.
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