Catch-Up Bookkeeping & Cleanup Pricing Calculator (2026)

What catch-up bookkeeping costs in 2026

The seven firms below that charge per month behind start at $75 to $400 for each month. For a full year of backlog, published starting prices run from $360 at House of Bookkeepers to $4,800 at AliCat Solutions, which charges its monthly rate, from $400, for every month you're behind.

The cheap end comes with limits. House of Bookkeepers' $360 year covers up to 1,440 transactions on one bank account and one card. Sleek's £750 UK year covers up to 100 transactions, and Maxim Liberty's $75 month covers up to five hours of work. Bigger jobs get bigger flat quotes: Peacock Bookkeeping lists $1,800 to $5,000 or more once the mess passes a year.

A month of catch-up usually costs no more than a month of ongoing bookkeeping. Four firms clearly price per month behind and also publish a monthly fee, and all four charge at or below it: Merritt $200 against $250, Heard $99 against $129, and AliCat and Maxim Liberty the same as their monthly rate.

These are starting prices for simple books, so read them as floors. The calculator starts from them. For a sole proprietor with one account, no payroll, and 50–150 transactions a month, it prices US catch-up at $175–$350 per month behind, or $2,050–$4,100 for a year. Payroll, extra accounts, and a corporate entity add to that.

Published cleanup and catch-up prices, by firm

What a cleanup costs you, if you're the business owner

Budget from the months you're behind and how busy your accounts are. At the published per-month starting rates above, six months behind on simple books comes to roughly $450 to $2,400. Payroll, several bank and card accounts, or a high transaction count push it up.

To check a quote, enter your situation in the calculator with the pricing tier on Standard. It opens on a heavy job, a year of cleanup for an S-corp with payroll and three accounts, so change the inputs to match your books first. A quote well under your range may carry a cap, the way House of Bookkeepers' and Sleek's do, so ask how many transactions and accounts it covers. A quote above it should come with a reason, like missing statements or years of backlog.

Ask for the scope in writing: what's included, what isn't (tax filing usually isn't), and what would change the price. The scope sheet under the calculator shows what that looks like. A quote that's one number with no scope is worth questioning before you sign.

Some firms waive catch-up if you sign up for monthly bookkeeping. Bench catches up the current year for free on an annual plan at $399 a month, and Heard is waiving its $99-a-month catch-up fee for 2026 books. Compare the year's total, catch-up plus twelve months of service, not the catch-up fee alone.

What to charge for a cleanup, if you're the bookkeeper

Start from the monthly rate you'd charge this client, then price each month of backlog against it. That's how the firms above do it: AliCat multiplies its monthly package by the months behind, and Merritt takes 20% off its monthly fee for catch-up months. Work out the ongoing monthly rate first, then use the calculator for the backlog. It shows the cost per month of backlog next to the monthly rate so you can see the ratio.

Price cleanup above catch-up. Catch-up is entering what was never recorded. Cleanup is finding and undoing what was recorded wrong, and that takes longer per month.

Quote a range, and put the transaction and account limits in writing, the way House of Bookkeepers caps its $360 year at 1,440 transactions. When the books turn out bigger, the cap turns "the job was bigger than I thought" into a change order.

Take a deposit. Affordable Tax Prep & Bookkeeping takes the full fee upfront, and Bookkeeping Clean and Simple takes half upfront for backlogs of six months or more. The calculator defaults to 50%.

Cleanup cost per month of backlog, by region

The calculator prices in five currencies. Each band below is one month of cleanup at the Standard tier for a sole trader with one account and no payroll. Entity type, payroll, and extra accounts scale it from there, and catch-up is 85% of the cleanup figure. The US bands are set on the per-month prices the firms above publish. The pricing guides in the last column quote wider ranges because theirs already include payroll, messy files, and corporate entities, which the calculator adds separately.

The US and Canadian bands sit close to the per-month rates their sources publish. The Australian bands start in line with Scale Suite's figures and run higher at high volume. None of the UK or EU sources publishes a per-month rate, so those bands are scaled from published monthly fees and one-off project prices. The EU row is the thinnest: it rests mostly on German fees, so set the pricing tier to Budget for Eastern Europe.

Cleanup vs. catch-up: why they price differently

They sound the same but aren't. Catch-up bookkeeping means the transactions were never recorded and you're entering them from scratch, which is closer to steady data entry. Cleanup means the books exist but are wrong: miscategorized transactions, duplicate entries, unreconciled accounts, a balance sheet that doesn't tie out. Each error has to be found before it can be fixed, so a month of cleanup takes longer than a month of entry.

That's why the toggle at the top matters. The calculator prices a month of catch-up at 85% of a month of cleanup. If a job is both (some months never recorded, others recorded badly), price it as a cleanup, since the error-fixing work sets the pace.

How to scope a cleanup so you don't underquote

Most cleanup money is lost in the gap between what you quoted and what you actually did. The fix is an explicit scope: state what the price assumes, what's included, what's excluded, and the conditions that change the price. The calculator builds this scope sheet from your inputs so you can put it in front of the client before you start.

Name the re-scope triggers up front

The estimate should change if the actual transaction volume exceeds the assumed band, if extra bank or credit-card accounts surface, if there's more backlog than stated, if statements are missing, or if there are multiple entities or inter-company transfers. Putting these in writing turns a painful "the job was bigger than I thought" conversation into a pre-agreed change order.

Exclude tax work explicitly

Tax return prep and filing, sales-tax and payroll-tax catch-up, and prior-year amendments are separate engagements. If you don't exclude them in writing, clients assume a "cleanup" includes getting them filed. The scope sheet lists these exclusions by default.

Bookkeeping cleanup checklist

Pricing a cleanup well means knowing the work it involves. This is the standard sequence for a QuickBooks or Xero cleanup, the same steps the scope sheet above is priced against:

1. Gather every bank, credit-card, and loan statement for the period.
2. Reconnect or refresh bank feeds and import any missing transactions.
3. Reconcile each bank and credit-card account, month by month, against statements.
4. Categorize uncategorized transactions and correct miscategorized ones.
5. Find and remove duplicate transactions.
6. Clear out Undeposited Funds and any clearing or suspense accounts.
7. Match deposits to invoices and clean up accounts receivable.
8. Match payments to bills and clean up accounts payable.
9. Review the chart of accounts and merge duplicates.
10. Reconcile loans, credit cards, and payroll liabilities to statements.
11. Verify opening balances and tie out to the prior period.
12. Scan the balance sheet for anomalies: negative assets, stale balances, mystery equity.
13. Produce and review the corrected P&L and balance sheet for the period.
14. Document assumptions and set up the ongoing monthly process.

The deeper the mess at each step, especially reconciliation and categorization, the more hours the job takes. That's what moves the transaction-volume band and the effort estimate in the calculator.

Turn the cleanup into a monthly client

The client whose books were a mess is the one most likely to need ongoing bookkeeping, and they've just seen what clean books are worth. That's why the calculator shows a recommended monthly rate next to the one-time fee.

Quote the two together: "Here's the one-time fee to get current, and here's the monthly rate to keep it that way." Several firms above already sell it as a package. AliCat discounts the cleanup if monthly service follows, and Bench waives current-year catch-up on an annual plan.

How the calculator works

Each month of backlog starts from the band for your region and transaction volume in the table above. The calculator then scales it by the things that add work: up to ×1.2 for the entity type, ×1.15 for payroll, 8% more for each extra bank or card account (capped at 40%), ×0.85 for catch-up instead of cleanup, and ×0.72 or ×1.35 for the Budget or Premium tier. The months behind multiply the result. Transaction volume is a band because it's the one number you rarely have before seeing the books.

Hours run from 0.75 to 10 per month of backlog depending on volume, and don't change with region or tier. Everything is an estimate: confirm the number once you've reviewed the books. Tax preparation and filing are excluded throughout.

Frequently asked questions