Guide · Books Cleanup
Most answers online are round guesses. These are our real 2026 rates, the full formula we quote from, and three worked examples, published so you can price your own backlog before you ever talk to us.
By Tristan Albach, Intuit QuickBooks ProAdvisor · Updated
The short answer
A bookkeeping cleanup costs $0.50 to $1.00 per transaction, plus a $250 discovery fee, plus 10% for each full year the books are behind. The formula prices typical scenarios between $600 and $6,200. A typical two-year backlog with about 2,000 transactions comes to roughly $2,460.
If you search this question, you'll find ranges like "$750 to $3,500" with no explanation of where your business falls inside them. That vagueness isn't dishonest. It's just what happens when pricing runs on gut feel instead of a formula.
We price cleanups by the transaction, because transactions are the actual unit of work. Every deposit, charge, transfer, and check has to be categorized, matched, and reconciled. Count them, score the complexity, and the price stops being a mystery.
Clean, well-separated books with bank data available earn the base rate.
Four things make records slower to untangle: personal and business spending mixed in one account adds $0.25, banks that only provide PDF statements add $0.15, frequent unlabeled transfers or checks add $0.10, and inventory or job costing adds $0.25. Even if factors stack past it, the rate never exceeds $1.00.
A flat, one-time fee covering account review, scope definition, and your itemized quote.
Older records cost more to reconstruct: statements get harder to retrieve, unlabeled transactions get harder to identify, accounts close, vendors disappear. Two years behind adds 20% to the whole project.
| Scenario | Transactions | Complexity | Years behind | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Side business, tidy records | 600 | None: rate stays $0.50 | 1 | $605 |
| Typical two-year backlog | 2,000 | Commingling + PDF-only bank: $0.90 | 2 | $2,460 |
| Heavy rebuild with inventory | 4,500 | All four factors: capped at $1.00 | 3 | $6,175 |
Math for the typical case: 2,000 × $0.90 = $1,800, plus $250 discovery = $2,050, plus 20% age adjustment = $2,460.
The complexity factors aren't punishments. They're work you can take off the table yourself:
A cleanup gives you a clean baseline. Keeping it clean is a monthly habit: monthly bookkeeping starts at $150, priced by the same published-formula approach, with response times written into your engagement terms. A cleanup pairs naturally with monthly service, so you never pay cleanup prices again.
Reconstruction gets slower with age. Statements are harder to retrieve, nobody remembers what that $900 check was for, accounts get closed, vendors disappear. The 10% per year covers that reality.
The quote is itemized in writing before work starts, built from your transaction count and complexity factors. If scope changes materially, it's discussed and re-quoted first, never billed as a surprise.
If the backlog is a few months and one account, honestly, maybe. Past a year, or with commingled spending, DIY cleanups tend to create a second mess on top of the first. That's the point where handing it off costs less than the rework.
An estimated transaction count for the period, how many years are behind, and honest answers to four questions about commingling, bank data, unlabeled transactions, and inventory. The intake form collects all of it in about five minutes.
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