How big is the catch up, really?
Four figures and what makes it complicated. You get the transactions to process, the hours behind them, and the deadline it is running at.
THE SET
What makes it harder than a clean month?
Tap any that apply. Sixty transactions an hour assumes the bank feeds connect and the rules get built in the first month. Change it if you know better.
A SECOND OPINION
Is it a catch up or a rescue?
Send the size of it with two facts about the business and we reply within one business day with the order to do it in.
A catch up quote is scope: months behind, transactions, accounts to reconcile, and what makes it messy. This turns that scope into hours, so you can read a quote instead of guessing. Every assumption is editable.
What decides the size
Months behind
Counted from the last month that was reconciled, not the last month somebody looked at. Those are usually different.
Transactions in them
Every line on every bank and card statement. This is the figure that decides the hours, and it is the one people underestimate.
Accounts to reconcile
Each bank account, card and payment gateway is its own reconciliation. Four accounts is four times the closing work, not one.
What makes it harder
Payroll, inventory, more than one currency and unfiled sales tax each add real time, because each one has its own rules and its own deadline.
Why the number you want is hours, not a price
Everybody searching this wants a price, and every page answering it gives a range wide enough to be useless, because the right answer depends on things the page cannot see. What a firm is really quoting is scope: how many lines there are to process, how many accounts to reconcile, and what about the set makes it slower than a clean month.
So the useful thing to know first is your own scope. A business twelve months behind with ninety transactions a month and two accounts is a different job from one six months behind with eight hundred a month, payroll and inventory, even though both say the same sentence on the phone.
Once you have the hours, any quote can be read. A quote far below the hours is somebody who has not looked at the set. A quote far above it is either a firm that has seen something you have not, which is worth asking about, or one pricing the panic rather than the work.
The other half of the answer is the deadline. A catch up that has to be done before a filing date is a different job from one that merely should be done, because the order changes: the months that feed the return come first and the rest follows.
Questions we get
How do I count the transactions?
Open one representative month of bank and card statements and count the lines, then multiply. It does not have to be exact. Being out by twenty per cent moves the hours by twenty per cent, which is still a far better starting point than a guess at a price.
Why does the number of accounts matter so much?
Because reconciliation is per account, per month. Four accounts across twelve months is forty eight reconciliations regardless of how few transactions sit in any of them, and each one has to agree to the statement before the month can close.
Is it cheaper to start fresh instead?
Sometimes, and it is a real question rather than a dodge. If the prior years are closed and filed and only the current year is a mess, a clean rebuild of this year can be faster than repairing it. If a lender, a buyer or a tax authority will ask about those months, they have to be right rather than new.
Does this tell me what you would charge?
No, and deliberately. It tells you the size of the job, which is what anybody quoting it is looking at. Bring the number to any firm, including this one, and the conversation starts from the same place.
Does anything get sent anywhere?
No. It runs in your browser, nothing is transmitted and there is no sign up. Close the tab and the answer goes with it.
More in the guides and every answer in one place.
Shaheer leads the work, with engineers, writers, filers and analysts behind him. C-suite operations for a San Francisco AI company, Six Sigma on the process side, Anthropic certified on the Model Context Protocol, ten years across eight industries. See what we have built