The client
A family-owned contractor in the Kansas City area. It's taxed as an S-corporation, has a small crew, and runs several work trucks and pieces of heavy equipment.
The challenge
The owner came to us for what looked like a six-month cleanup, just enough to get current for the year. Once we opened the books, the problem turned out to be much bigger:
- The checking account and both credit cards hadn't been reconciled since early 2025. That's more than 18 months with no verified balances.
- The prior year's tax return was still unfiled, and the CPA needed clean books within weeks.
- Card payments and small purchases had been entered by hand and then again from the bank feed, so the same transactions showed up twice.
- One credit card's bank feed had been disconnected for months, so none of those transactions were in the books.
- Every loan payment had been booked entirely to principal. That meant the loan balances were wrong and no interest expense had been recorded.
- Major equipment, including a skid steer, a spray rig, and a work van, had never been recorded as assets. Without them on the books there was no depreciation, and the company was likely overpaying tax.
- The owner had paid some business expenses personally, and none of it had been recorded. He was missing credit for money he'd put into the company.
The bank feed only reaches back about 90 days, so this was a document-collection project before it could be a bookkeeping project.
What we did
- Rebuilt the paper trail. We identified 89 bank, card, and loan statements across seven accounts, built a tracker to collect them, and reconciled every account month by month back to January 2025.
- Entered the missing months by hand. We keyed in the statements from the disconnected card line by line and checked every one against the statement totals.
- Removed duplicates on both credit cards so the balances tie to the bank.
- Corrected the debt. We split every loan payment into principal and interest. For one lender whose statements show no interest detail, we worked out the split from the changes in balance.
- Put the equipment on the books. We added roughly $68,000 of equipment that had never been recorded, and built an owner worksheet to capture anything still missing.
- Recorded the owner's personal payments into the business so his contributions to the company are documented correctly.
- Found a compliance gap. Contractor payments weren't set up for year-end reporting. We flagged it for the CPA and put a fix in place for the coming year.
- Planned ahead on taxes. We gave the owner a year-end payroll plan to address his owner draws the right way before December 31.
- Automated the future. We turned on automatic statement imports and bank statement sharing so the books don't fall behind again.
The results
- Books reconciled through the most recent statement on every account
- A written report delivered to the owner, with a separate section of items for the CPA, ahead of the tax deadline
- Accurate loan balances, interest expense, and equipment records
- A clear list of open questions and next steps, including connecting the company's job-management software to QuickBooks
Doing right by the client
This project grew far beyond the original quote. The work had to go back a full extra year to get the numbers right. We kept the price we quoted. The owner hired us to fix his books, and a surprise invoice isn't part of that.
If this sounds like your business, start with the cleanup and catch-up page, or just book a call and tell me how far behind you are. There's no need to tidy up first.