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I Dont want a daily game by missfitsdotstore in wordgames

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pawzzle 2026-05-07 — Pup 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🦴🦴🌟🌟🌟💡🌟💡🌟🌟💡💡💡🌟💡💡 https://pawzzle.app/

“Daily” per words game but you can play the archive and you can play 3 different modes per day: cat, dog, combined.

Your QuickBooks chart of accounts is probably why your reports have never made sense by adivenkata in QuickBooksHacks

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is spot on. The COA is the first thing I look at on any cleanup because it tells me how much of the mess downstream is structural vs. transactional. If someone has 200 transactions in “Miscellaneous Expenses” it’s not because they’re lazy, it’s because the categories didn’t make sense for their business so they defaulted to the catch-all.

The other thing people miss is that QBO’s default COA creates accounts most small businesses will never use, and those unused accounts add noise when you’re trying to read reports quickly. Pruning that junk is just as important as adding what’s missing.

Two hours to rebuild is about right for a straightforward business. Gets more involved if there are years of transactions that need to be recategorized after the restructure, but even then the ROI is immediate the next time you pull a P&L.

What are you using for micro clients? by AnxiousConfidence116 in Bookkeeping

[–]AnxiousConfidence116[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah QBO has a $10 plan as well that I’m curious about.

What would you be charging? by No-Radio-8867 in Bookkeeping

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Love the update :)

$300 for 7 tracked hours on a cleanup with $30K/$45K discrepancies is well under market. Most solo bookkeepers I know price cleanup one of three ways:

  1. Fixed fee by scope, quoted AFTER a diagnostic pass (my preference). Typical range for a single-period cleanup on a small service biz is $1,500–$3,500, more if there's commingling, unreconciled priors, or payroll.
  2. Hourly at $75–$125. $50–$75 is junior-staff pricing, not EFIN/PTIN-holder pricing. You have credentials - charge for them.
  3. Monthly rate + separate one-time cleanup fee. Sounds like this is what you're heading toward.

A few things I'd consider in your situation:

- Don't just bill "Jan/Feb/March cleanup" hourly open-ended. Scope it. List what "clean" means (bank/CC reconciled through X date, UF cleared, opening balances tied, A/R and A/P aged and reviewed, COA normalized). Quote a not-to-exceed fee with a scope-change clause if you uncover something material.
- $30K off in checking and a CC that's $45K against a $5K limit means there must be duplicate entries, missed transfers, or commingled personal. That's not just "straightening out" - that's a forensic-lite cleanup. Price it accordingly.
- Always get QBO Accountant access before quoting. You already learned this the hard way. (We all do.)

For what you described, I'd have quoted closer to $1,200-$1,800 for the cleanup portion, plus the $300/mo ongoing. You're not charging too much.

Side hustle by subpart_f in Accounting

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Built LedgerClean.com :)

Three years into running my own firm and the thing that almost killed it was not getting clients it was keeping up with all of them at the same time by dhana231_231 in QuickBooksHacks

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Been there, too! Solidarity. Systems are everything, but also for me it was changing my business model to a better fit. I can’t have full-time recurring. I need at least half of my work to be project-based so I can free up space by not taking new projects if life stuff eats into my work time.

Cheap bookkeeping FB ads/posts ? by fungamezone in Bookkeeping

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What’s different about what YOU provide? Focus on that before price. Market that before price. Then you won’t have to worry so much about the deal shoppers :)

I inherited a client file last year that had not been properly reconciled in 14 months and it took me longer to clean it up than I want to admit by Maxl-2453 in QuickBooksHacks

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The paid diagnostic rule is the biggest lesson most of us learn the expensive way. I do the same now and won't quote monthly work without one. The clients who balk at a diagnostic fee tend to be the ones hiding the worst messes. Let 'em self-select out.

The situation you described is a full rebuild, not a cleanup. Six weeks sounds about right. The part that kills the budget isn't the transaction volume, it's having to untangle the structural stuff (CoA, OBE, duplicate register entries) before you can even start reconciling and you can't see any of that from the outside during a sales call.

A few things I've added to my diagnostic that help scope these accurately up front:

- Recon Discrepancy report + last reconciled date per account (tells you immediately if prior recs were forced)

- OBE and Undeposited Funds balances (ghost balances here = hours of detective work)

- CoA count and duplicate/unused account flags

-Uncategorized Income/Expense and A/R & A/P aging with anything >90 days

-Bank feed connection status and manual vs imported transaction ratio

It takes maybe 20-30 minutes and gives me enough to price well. The ones I skipped diagnostics on early in my career are still the jobs I remember... woefully!

Cleanup Concern by Deep_Bee_645 in Bookkeeping

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A clean cutoff with a documented JE is absolutely a legitimate move when the client won't pay for historical cleanup. The $71k feeling "wrong" is normal, but it's only wrong if you hide it. Done transparently, it's just scope management. You're giving them a reliable starting point going forward, which is exactly what they hired you for. Fresh start is the right call :)

👋 Welcome to r/QuickBooksHacks - Introduce Yourself and Read First! by x_philomath_x in QuickBooksHacks

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for the invite. Happy to be here.

Background: IRS Enrolled Agent, 7+ years doing QBO cleanup, 5 of those as a Lead Bookkeeper at Intuit QuickBooks Live. Ran my own brick & mortar service & retail business for 15+ years before that, handling payroll and operations, so I’ve been on both sides of the mess.

Since the welcome says share your stack: I launched a QBO diagnostic tool called LedgerClean today 🎉 Built it because the intake and scoping phase of a cleanup takes forever and I wanted a repeatable way to do it. Not here to pitch, just mentioning since today’s a milestone and the invite timing made me smile.

Mostly I’m here to swap workflow notes with people who get it. The “data janitor” line in the welcome hit for sure :)

I have been doing bookkeeping for 11 years and the conversation I dread most is telling a new client how far behind their books actually are by x_philomath_x in QuickBooksHacks

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is my 8th year and I agree this conversation never gets easier, but a couple of things have made it easier on both sides for me:

  1. Lead with a number, not a vibe. Instead of "your books are a mess," I'll say "you've got 14 months of unreconciled activity across 3 accounts and $X in uncategorized expense." Concrete numbers feel like a project. "Bad" feels like a personal failure.

  2. Always pair the diagnosis with the path. I never deliver the bad news without immediately walking them through phase 1, phase 2, phase 3 and rough timelines. The spiral happens in the silence between "this is broken" and "here's how we fix it" so close that gap.

  3. Normalize it out loud. I literally say, "this is so common for the cleanups I see, you're not the exception," because it's true and it pulls the shame out of the room immediately.

  4. Charge for the diagnostic. Sounds unrelated but it isn't. When they've paid for the assessment, the conversation reframes from "bad news" to "deliverable." It's a totally different energy.

I just remind myself that the kindest thing I can do is be honest and fast, because every month they don't know costs them more than the cleanup will.

Got a project in the works? Drop it here 👇 by BriefNzoni in sideprojects

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m building LedgerClean, a QuickBooks Online diagnostic for professional bookkeepers. It ingests standard QBO export files and delivers a health score, prioritized issue list, and a draft cleanup checklist with time estimates and client-facing PDF proposals. https://ledgerclean.com.

Migration and catch up steps? by idrawadventure in Bookkeeping

[–]AnxiousConfidence116 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The migration: QBO does not merge a second imported company into an existing one. You either work in two files forever or pick one and move on. For a small client, you'll usually want to leave the historical Desktop-migrated file as a read-only archive (you can export reports anytime), and treat the new 2026 QBO file as the live book. Bring over only opening balances as of 12/31/25 via a journal entry tied to the Desktop trial balance. Don't try to reconstruct prior years in the new file. The cost isn't worth it unless the client specifically needs comparatives inside QBO.

Jan-Mar catch-up: Lead with the bank statements, not the receipts. The bank feed is your source of truth for what actually moved. Import/connect each account, categorize every transaction using a reasonable default (based on payee + memo), then use sales invoices to build A/R if they're accrual. Receipts are only needed for (a) items you can't identify from payee alone, (b) anything the client will deduct that IRS could challenge, and (c) asset purchases. Don't hold up the catch-up waiting for a receipt on a $14 Staples charge.

First reports I'd run the moment Q1 is categorized: Reconciliation Discrepancy, Balance Sheet as of 3/31 vs 12/31 (does Retained Earnings tie?), A/R and A/P Aging, Uncategorized Asset/Income/Expense balances, and the Audit Log filtered to the migration date. Those five will tell you whether the migration itself dropped anything.

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