Catch-up bookkeeping for books months or years behind

Who does the work: a Chartered Professional Accountant prepares and reviews your file and answers your questions, from the first quote to the filed return. About EverStone CPA.

Why books fall behind, and why that is not the story

Books fall behind for ordinary reasons: a bookkeeper who left, growth that outpaced the admin, illness, bereavement, divorce, a bad year, software that stopped syncing. Accountants see all of these. For a counselling practice it is usually unmatched Jane or Cliniko reports and insurer deposits; see practice books for counsellors.

If the returns themselves are outstanding, see what to do when you are behind on taxes.

What matters now is that the gap stops growing and someone tells you honestly where you stand. Only avoidance gets more expensive; the work never becomes impossible, just larger.

What actually happens in a catch-up

The process is deliberately unglamorous. There are no surprises built into it:

1. An email enquiry. You explain roughly how far behind you are and what still exists. You will not be asked to justify anything. The point of this call is to size the work, not to assess you.
2. A written scope and a fixed quote. Once the size of the job is clear, you get the scope in writing with a fixed price attached, before any work starts. You decide from there, in your own time.
3. Records are gathered. Mostly bank statements, credit card statements and any payroll or sales records. Missing receipts are normal and are worked around rather than treated as a dead end.
4. The ledger is rebuilt. Period by period, in cloud accounting software, reconciled against the bank so the numbers actually tie out rather than merely looking tidy.
5. Filings are brought current. GST returns, payroll remittances and outstanding year ends are prepared and filed in the right order, oldest first, so the CRA sees a business coming back into compliance rather than one still missing.
6. You get told where you stand. A plain-English summary of what was found, what is now filed, and what is still outstanding, including any balance owing, so there are no unpleasant discoveries later.
7. It stays current. Optional, but this is the part that stops the same conversation happening again in three years: monthly bookkeeping so the ledger never accumulates a backlog.

Backlogs clear slower when personal and business spending share an account. Separating the two first speeds up the rest.

Who you are dealing with

Questions people ask before they call

Related reading

Guides and tools that go deeper on what this page covers.

The forms and the dates

Deadlines set the order: overdue GST/HST returns first, since the CRA withholds refunds and assesses unfiled periods; then T2s, with a 5% plus 1% a month penalty; then T4 and T5 slips. For unassessed late years, the Voluntary Disclosures Program can remove penalties if the disclosure is complete and made before the CRA asks.

Who this is for in the Fraser Valley

The catch-up files are Fraser Valley businesses: an Abbotsford contractor whose bookkeeper left, a Chilliwack shop that outgrew its spreadsheet, a Langley or Surrey corporation that never filed, a Mission owner with three years of statements in a drawer. Each gets the same work: periods rebuilt in order, reconciled and filed, quoted first.

What sets the fee

Catch-up is quoted per period after a free look at the bank statements, which shows how many months, accounts and entries are involved. Transaction volume and how far back the unfiled returns go set the fee. The quote is written, fixed and separate from the monthly fee that starts once the books are current.