Bookkeepers Near AustinHow far behind the file can be
Open months are countable. The read names how many have to close before a normal month means anything.
Count the open months
Behind is a count, not a mood
Owners apologize for the state of a file as if the apology were the useful part. The useful part is a count. How many months have no statement tie. How many accounts feed the file and have never been looked at. How many balances are leftovers from a prior bookkeeper, a prior software, or a year nobody wanted to open. That count is the scope. A vibe is not a scope.
Reaching back several years is ordinary when the bank statements still exist. The feed, the statements, and your memory of the odd transfers are enough to rebuild a stretch that has nothing trustworthy left in it. What changes with depth is the time, not the method. We would rather tell you the depth on the first page than discover it in month three and rename the job.
Where a repair usually starts
It starts at the bank. If the cash does not tie, nothing downstream is worth reading, because profit, sales tax, and the loan balance are all stories told on top of cash that may be wrong. Once cash ties for a period, the cards get the same treatment, then the accounts that should be quiet. A loan should match a statement. Sales tax payable should match what you have been collecting and remitting. If those drift, the drift is the work.
We stop at the first period that will not tie and say why, instead of pushing a balance forward and hoping the next month explains it. A month that will not close is news. It is the kind of news you want in the week we find it, while the receipt or the transfer is still something you might remember.
Open months stretch past the week you meant to finish them. We count those months first and write the plan before anything moves. The count comes before any promise of a monthly rhythm. Nothing in the file is rearranged until that written plan is the one you accept.
A month that will not tie is still a count you can hold. We write that count in the plan, and the monthly rhythm waits until the count is the one you accept. The picture on this page is a purchase order with line items and a total. A count of lines is still a count, and the monthly rhythm waits on the same kind of list.