If you have got as far as searching for this, you have already done the hard part, which is admitting the books need outside help. That admission is genuinely uncomfortable for most business owners, because it feels like a verdict on how you have run things. It is not. Falling behind on bookkeeping is what happens when a business grows faster than its admin, which is to say it is what happens to businesses that are working.
AliCat Solutions is a bookkeeping practice based in Cedar Park, serving the surrounding twenty-mile ring: Round Rock, Leander, Georgetown, Liberty Hill, Pflugerville, Lakeway, Bee Cave, and greater Austin. Cleanup and catch-up work is a core part of what we do, under CPA supervision, and as of 2026-08-19 we hold a 4.8 star rating across 20 Google reviews.
That said, the useful thing this page can do is help you judge any provider, including us. Cleanup is a category where the work is hard to evaluate from outside and the cost of choosing badly is high, because a half-finished cleanup is worse than none: you end up paying twice and trusting the result less.
Below is what cleanup actually covers, what it does not, how to tell a serious local provider from a hopeful one, and what to have ready before you make the call. Prices depend on how far behind you are and how complex the business is, so this page does not quote one, and neither should anybody else before they have looked.
Estimated reading time: 12 min read
Overview
Bookkeeping cleanup means bringing historical records up to a state you and your CPA can rely on: every transaction categorized, every account reconciled, prior errors corrected, the chart of accounts restructured where it needs to be, and the books tied back to your last filed tax return. Most cleanups run two to four weeks. Cost is normally the monthly package multiplied by the number of months behind, with a catch-up discount where ongoing monthly service follows, and it is quoted after a discovery call rather than off a price list.
What this guide covers
- What cleanup actually covers
- How to judge a local provider
- What to have ready before you call
- How cleanup is priced, and how long it takes
What cleanup actually covers
Cleanup is a defined piece of work rather than a vague tidy-up. This is what it covers at AliCat, and a provider you are considering should be able to describe their own version to you in equally concrete terms.
- Diagnostic review. Looking at what you have, identifying the gaps, and producing a plan before any work starts
- Transaction categorization. Every uncategorized transaction coded properly, with questions asked where the answer is not in the record
- Account reconciliation. Bank accounts, credit cards, loans and lines of credit, all reconciled and verified
- Historical correction. Errors from previous bookkeeping fixed, duplicates removed, missing entries added
- Chart of accounts cleanup. Accounts restructured so they make sense for your business and support reporting you would actually read
- Tax return reconciliation. Books tied back to your last filed return so the two agree
That last item is the one most often skipped and the one your CPA cares most about. Books that do not tie to what was filed create a problem in a future year, and reconciling them is much easier while somebody already has the file open.
What cleanup is not is a tax service. It produces the records; it does not prepare returns or advise on tax positions. A cleanup provider who starts offering opinions on your deductions is outside their lane, and that is worth noticing rather than being grateful for.
How to judge a local provider
Cleanup is bought under pressure, usually with a deadline behind it, and that is exactly the condition under which people choose badly. A few questions cut through it.
| Ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Will you look before you quote? | Cleanup scope depends on months behind, transaction volume, and how much source documentation survives. A number offered before anyone has looked is a number that will move. |
| What happens if it is worse than it looks? | There should be a named point where they come back to you rather than either absorbing it silently or issuing a surprise invoice. |
| Will you tie the books to my last filed return? | This is the step that separates a cleanup from a tidy-up, and it is the one your CPA will check. |
| Who does the work and who reviews it? | Cleanup involves judgment about historical transactions. Ask what supervision sits over it. |
| What happens after? | A cleanup that is not followed by maintenance recreates the same problem within a year. Ask what they recommend, and be suspicious of anyone who says nothing. |
| Can I keep my file if I leave? | Your records should be yours, exportable, and not held inside somebody’s proprietary system. |
On the question of local: the work itself can be done from anywhere and plenty of firms serve clients nationwide, ourselves included. What proximity actually buys you is accountability and the ability to sit down together when something is genuinely complicated. It also tends to mean the provider knows the jurisdiction, which for a Texas business often means franchise tax and sales and use tax. Whether either applies to you depends on your entity type and what you actually do, so it is worth asking a prospective provider how often they handle each rather than assuming both are relevant.
If you want the wider version of this question, our guide to finding a good bookkeeper in Austin covers choosing an ongoing provider rather than a cleanup one.
What to have ready before you call
You do not need to tidy anything before a first conversation, and you should resist the urge to. A provider needs to see the real state of things to scope the work honestly, and a partially cleaned file is harder to assess than an untouched one.
What genuinely helps is knowing the answers to a few factual questions, because they determine the shape of the job.
- Roughly how many months or years behind you are
- Which accounting software you use, and whether you still have access
- How many bank accounts, credit cards, loans and lines of credit are in play
- Whether payroll is involved, and whether you use contractors who need 1099s
- When your last tax return was filed, and by whom
- Whether anything has a deadline attached: a loan, a sale, an IRS notice, a partner exit
That last one changes sequencing more than anything else on the list. A cleanup running toward a financing deadline is ordered differently from one that simply needs to be right, and saying so at the start is worth more than saying it in week three.
If you are not yet sure whether you need this at all, our shorter diagnostic on the signs your books need a cleanup covers the symptoms.
Ready to find out how far behind you actually are? See how a cleanup starts
How cleanup is priced, and how long it takes
AliCat prices cleanup as your monthly bookkeeping package multiplied by the number of months you are behind. That is our published model rather than an industry standard, and other providers price differently; the reason to understand it is that it makes the arithmetic predictable, in a straight line rather than a surprise. Ask any provider you speak to how theirs works before comparing quotes.
We offer a catch-up discount where a client commits to ongoing monthly service afterwards, which reflects something real rather than being a sales device. A cleanup followed by maintenance is a problem solved. A cleanup followed by nothing tends to become the same problem again, and no provider enjoys doing it twice.
In our experience most cleanups take two to four weeks once they start, though that depends heavily on how quickly questions get answered. The limiting factor is usually response time at your end rather than capacity: some transactions cannot be categorized correctly until someone tells us what they were.
What determines your specific number is transaction volume, the number of accounts, complexity, and how much source documentation still exists. That is why the sequence is a discovery call, then a look at the file, then a quote, rather than a price on a page. Our bookkeeping cleanup and catch-up page sets out the process in full.
Questions Austin-area owners ask about cleanup
Q: Do you serve my area?
A: We are based in Cedar Park and work throughout the surrounding twenty-mile ring, which covers Round Rock, Leander, Georgetown, Liberty Hill, Pflugerville, Lakeway, Bee Cave, and greater Austin. We also work with businesses across the United States virtually, so being outside that ring is not a barrier. The practical difference for local clients is the option of sitting down together when something is complicated enough to be worth it.
Q: How much does a bookkeeping cleanup cost?
A: At AliCat it is priced as your monthly bookkeeping package multiplied by the number of months you are behind, with a catch-up discount for clients who continue with ongoing monthly service. That is our model rather than a universal one. What it comes to for you depends on transaction volume, the number of accounts, complexity, and how much source documentation survives, which is why a quote follows a discovery call and a look at the file. Some firms publish ranges or minimums for marketing purposes; a firm number for YOUR file before anyone has seen it is the thing to be cautious about.
Q: How long will it take?
A: In our experience most cleanups take two to four weeks from the point work starts. The variable that moves it most is response time on questions rather than bookkeeping capacity. Some transactions cannot be categorized correctly until someone at your end says what they were, so a cleanup where those questions sit unanswered for a week at a time will take considerably longer than one where they are handled in batches every couple of days.
Q: Should I tidy things up before I call?
A: No, and it can make things worse. A provider needs to see the actual state of the file to scope the work properly, and a partially reorganised file is harder to assess than an untouched one because it is unclear which changes were yours and which were original. Bring it as it is. Nobody is going to be shocked.
Q: What happens after the cleanup is finished?
A: That is the question worth asking before you start. A cleanup with nothing after it recreates the same position within a year or two, which is why the pricing usually rewards continuing into monthly service. Whether you continue with the same provider is a separate question, but somebody should be maintaining the file monthly once it is right. Our monthly service delivers financial statements by the 15th with questions answered within one business day, and the point of naming those commitments is that you can hold any provider to something equally specific.
Working with us
AliCat Solutions has been doing this since 2013 and now works with more than 100 clients, under the supervision of Alicia Hoffman, CPA, who has been a CPA since 1996. As of 2026-08-19 we hold a 4.8 star rating across 20 Google reviews. Cleanup work starts with a discovery call and a look at your file, and you get a plan and a quote before any work begins.
Citations
- Recordkeeping (Internal Revenue Service). The federal guidance on what business records are for and the principle that you may use any recordkeeping system that clearly shows income and expenses. It is general guidance rather than a cleanup standard, and is included here because restoring records to a usable state is what cleanup work is doing. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/recordkeeping
- Texas Sales and Use Tax Frequently Asked Questions, Keeping Records (Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts). The Texas retention requirement of at least four years for sales and use tax records, including support for any deduction or exclusion claimed, which is often what a cleanup has to reconstruct. https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/sales/faq/records.php
- Texas Franchise Tax (Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts). The Texas franchise tax obligation, which applies depending on entity type and activity rather than to every Texas business, and is a common reason Austin-area owners discover their records are further behind than they thought. https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/franchise/
More on cleanup
- How do I know if my books need a cleanup?
- How much does a bookkeeping cleanup cost?
- How do I catch up on years of unfiled bookkeeping?
- How do I find a good bookkeeper in Austin?
- Bookkeeping services in Cedar Park, TX
Let’s look at where your books actually stand
Our promise is specific and in writing: CPA-checked accuracy, your monthly financials by the 15th, and answers within one business day.
Schedule a discovery call, no obligation.
About the author: Alicia Hoffman, CPA is the founder of AliCat Solutions. A CPA since 1996 with two decades in corporate finance, mostly at Dell, and a BBA from Texas A&M, she built AliCat to bring corporate-grade bookkeeping discipline to small service businesses across Central Texas, backed by a written 3-Point Guarantee.
