Three prep blocks before kickoff.
Walk through them before we start so the engagement is mechanical, not exploratory. None of these blocks require more than an afternoon per item — they are the difference between a catch-up that closes cleanly and a catch-up that uncovers a second shoebox inside the first one.
Block 01
Bank feeds.
Which accounts to connect, and how to grant read-only access so the contractor team can reconcile without ever moving money.
Operating, payroll, and tax accounts.
Why this matters — The trial balance has to close against the statements on every account the business actually runs through.
Action hint
List every business account still open, even the ones you barely use — a stale tax account with three uncleared deposits still has to reconcile.
Merchant-processor and payment-gateway accounts.
Why this matters — Stripe, Square, PayPal, Etsy, and platform payouts duplicate bank-side and create the most common reconciliation gap on catch-ups.
Action hint
Export the register from each gateway for the period being caught up so the team can match payouts against the underlying transactions.
Credit cards and lines of credit.
Why this matters — Card statements catch the spend the bank feed misses — reimbursables, owner charges, and the subscriptions nobody tracks.
Action hint
Forward the most recent statement PDF and the prior-period balance to a single inbox so reconciliation starts against a known starting point.
Owner and member loans and personal accounts used for business spend.
Why this matters — A card paid from a personal account is the single largest source of misclassified spend during a catch-up.
Action hint
Note which personal cards touched business spend in the period and pull the statements for the same months being caught up.
Block 02
Receipts.
How to gather loose shoebox contents into a single upload batch — physical, digital, and statements that arrive outside the file.
Physical (paper) receipts.
Why this matters — A shoebox of unsorted paper receipts is unrecoverable as-is — handwritten notes on what each one is get lost the moment the lid closes.
Action hint
Photo-scan the pile this week, drop everything into a single folder named "<business>-receipts-<year>", and flag any receipt over $200 with a one-line note on what it was for.
Digital receipts and email-forwarded orders.
Why this matters — Order confirmations, supplier invoices, and SaaS renewals live in email, not in the file — they only get categorized if they are surfaced for the team.
Action hint
Set up a forwarding rule to a single receipts inbox and forward the last six months of digital orders in one pass.
Vendor statements and recurring invoices.
Why this matters — Recurring vendors (processors, utilities, software) issue monthly statements that aggregate into what a single transaction hides.
Action hint
Pull statements for every recurring vendor you can name — the team needs the aggregate to spot where monthly transactions stop matching the running total.
Reimbursables you paid out yourself.
Why this matters — A business expense paid from a personal card or cash is the gap a bank feed cannot reach — it has to arrive labelled, or it gets missed.
Action hint
Write a single short list of any personal-card or cash business spend in the period, one line per item, with the date and the rough amount.
Block 03
Prior-period notes.
What the previous bookkeeper left undone, or what you remember as off — context the team cannot reconstruct from the file alone.
Reconciliations that stopped before present.
Why this matters — A bank feed that stopped reconciling in June tells the team a transaction was missed, not that June was clean.
Action hint
Open the file and flag the last cleared month on every bank and card account — the team will pick up from there.
Owner and member draws, or personal-card leakage.
Why this matters — Spend on the business card that should have been owner draws is the most common silent misclassification on a QuickBooks file.
Action hint
Scan the last three months of credit-card spend and flag anything you know was personal — even a one-line note on ten items is enough.
Vendors or categories mis-mapped.
Why this matters — A vendor that was filed as Office Supplies for two years will keep getting filed as Office Supplies unless the team is told the real category.
Action hint
List the vendors you know are wrong — five names and the right category for each is more useful than a 200-line vendor export.
Cash, tips, or inventory you handle outside the books.
Why this matters — Cash drawers, daily tips, and inventory counted at year-end exist outside the bank feed — they have to be surfaced or they stay invisible.
Action hint
Write a one-paragraph note on any cash flow that does not pass through the bank account — even a rough monthly number is enough to start from.
Ready when you are
Walk through these blocks, then send the intake.
Even partial prep is enough to start — intake takes two minutes, and we’ll come back inside 48 hours with a written scope and a flat-fee quote. Knotledger cleans the file; your CPA opens it on day one.