Catch-Up Bookkeeping to Dig You Out and Keep You Out
If you are reading this, some part of you has been putting it off for a while. The bank feed nobody has touched in months. The receipts building up in a drawer. The returns you know are late, and the low hum of dread every time you think about them.
Being behind is more common than the industry lets on, and it is fixable. We start where your books actually are, not where they should be. Catch-up bookkeeping is a one-time dig-out that reconciles every account, corrects what is wrong, and rebuilds the months you are missing, then rolls straight into the monthly bookkeeping rhythm that keeps you from landing here again.
However far behind you are, you are not the worst we have seen
We do not judge business owners for falling behind. Running a company is relentless, the books are the easiest thing to defer, and the shame that builds up around them keeps people stuck far longer than the actual work would take.
So there is no lecture here, and no version of your file that makes us wince. Whether you are three months out or three years, you are describing a situation we handle regularly, not a verdict on you as an owner. The only thing that matters is starting, and the hardest part of starting is usually just deciding to hand it over.
You do not have to figure out where to start
The reason catch-up feels impossible is that you are standing inside the mess, and every entry point looks like it depends on ten others. That paralysis is normal, and it is exactly the part you get to hand off.
You do not diagnose anything. We begin with a full audit of what exists: your accounts, your statements, your current file, and the gaps between them. From that we build the actual sequence of work:
- Reconcile account by account
- Correct misclassified transactions
- Reconstruct the missing periods in order
You are not managing the untangling. You are handing us the knot.
Every month you wait costs more than catching up now
Here is the math a working tax accountant laid out about a real client who had not filed since 2016 and had not reconciled the books either:
| Approach | What it cost |
|---|---|
| Years behind, then a cleanup | roughly $15,000, one time |
| Simply keeping current | about $600 a year bookkeeping, plus $800 returns |
That gap is the true price of waiting. Penalties compound, interest accrues, and a small backlog quietly becomes a five-figure emergency. Catching up now is not the expensive option. It is the one that stops the meter, closes the exposure, and turns an open-ended liability into a fixed, one-time project you can actually see the end of.
Unfiled GST/HST, PST, and CRA deadlines handled before they get worse
Sales tax is where a backlog turns dangerous fastest. The GST you collected was never your money, it is the government’s, held in trust, and unremitted balances rack up penalties whether or not the business is profitable. Late corporate filings do the same.
We identify what is outstanding, reconcile the periods behind the numbers, and bring your GST/HST, PST, and corporate returns current so the filings actually reflect reality. Then we handle the CRA correspondence that comes with getting caught up. The point is to close the open loops on your record before a letter arrives, not after.
Once you are caught up, you stay caught up
A cleanup that ends with a clean file and no system just resets the clock on the next backlog. That is not the outcome we are after. The dig-out is the beginning of a rhythm, not a one-off rescue.
The day your books are current, you move onto a monthly cycle: reconciled, closed, and delivered on a set date, every month. The mess does not get to rebuild, because nothing is left to pile up. You go through this once, and then you never have to read a page like this one again.
Catch-Up Bookkeeping FAQs
A month, a quarter, or several years. Long gaps are one of our most common engagements, including files where nothing has been reconciled and returns have gone unfiled for years. However deep the hole is, the process is the same: audit what exists, reconcile every account, and rebuild the periods that are missing until the file is whole again.
No. Sorting the mess is the work you are hiring us to do, so please do not spend a weekend trying to pre-organize it. Hand over what you have: bank and credit card statements, whatever receipts exist, and access to your accounting file. We take it from there and come back to you only for the specific gaps we cannot fill on our own.
Staying behind is the bigger risk. Unfiled returns and unreconciled books are exactly what accumulate penalties and interest and draw CRA attention. Getting current, with accurate numbers and outstanding GST/HST, PST, and corporate filings brought up to date, moves you toward compliance rather than away from it. We prepare the file to stand on its own and handle the correspondence that comes with it.
It depends on how many months are missing and how complete your records are. We scope it after a short review of where your books actually stand, so you get a realistic timeline instead of a guess. Most engagements begin with a full audit, move through reconciliation and reconstruction, and end with a clean file handed to your accountant.
It is a one-time project priced on volume: how many months, how many accounts, and how usable your records are. You get that number upfront after the review, not a surprise later. Once you are current, you move onto a monthly package starting at $500 per month, so the cleanup is a one-time cost, not a recurring one.
