Unreconciled accounts
Bank and credit-card accounts that no longer agree with statements, or whose reconciliation history is broken.
The books exist, the months are filled in and the reports can be printed. But balances do not match the bank, categories are inconsistent and nobody is sure which numbers to trust. AS Consulting Group helps Texas businesses correct existing records before they are used for decisions, financing or tax work.
Catch-up deals with periods that were never finished. Cleanup deals with periods that were finished, but cannot be relied on. The work, the starting point and the first question are different.
| Comparison | Catch-Up Bookkeeping | Bookkeeping Cleanup |
|---|---|---|
| What is wrong | Months were never recorded or were left unfinished. | Months are recorded, but balances, classifications or reconciliations cannot be trusted. |
| Starting point | The last reliable period, then forward. | A review of which periods, accounts and balances are reliable and where the records break down. |
| Typical work | Reconstruct missing activity and reconcile period by period. | Correct duplicates, misclassifications, reconciliations and account structure inside existing records. |
| Goal | Books completed through an agreed current date. | Records dependable enough to support reports and the work that follows. |
A backlog can also sit on top of historical errors. When that happens the business may need both. See Catch-Up Bookkeeping →
The exact scope is confirmed after reviewing the books. These are the problems cleanup is typically designed to find and correct.
Bank and credit-card accounts that no longer agree with statements, or whose reconciliation history is broken.
Entries repeated or absent inside periods that otherwise look complete.
Activity recorded in the wrong accounts, which distorts every report built on top of it.
Starting or historical balances that cannot be traced to reliable support.
Activity parked in holding accounts and never resolved.
Duplicated or overlapping accounts that make the books hard to read and harder to compare.
Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports that do not reliably represent the underlying activity.
Cleanup is not a blind rework of every transaction. The first step is to establish which periods, accounts and balances hold up and where the records start to drift, so the effort goes into the actual problem.
Corrections are made in a defined order, so each fix is checked against underlying records instead of being layered on top of another assumption.
Scope is confirmed after the existing books have been reviewed.
Open WhatsAppIdentify the accounts, periods and reports involved, and where the records stop agreeing with outside support.
Separate reconciliation breaks, duplicates, misclassifications and unresolved items so each can be handled on its own.
Adjust the records and reconcile the affected accounts against statements and supporting documents.
Check that the Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reflect the corrected records and make sense together.
Decide whether the books move into monthly bookkeeping, catch-up work or tax preparation.
Use the condition of the books, not the label, to decide. If it is not clear, the first review answers it.
Balances do not match, categories are inconsistent or reconciliations are broken.
This pageThe books have a last reliable month and work moves forward from there.
Explore Catch-Up Bookkeeping →Starting balances cannot be trusted and recent months are also unfinished.
Ask which comes first →These resources explain the difference between missing work and unreliable work, and what the books should look like before tax preparation begins.
Use the condition of the books—not the label—to determine whether the work is missing, wrong or both.
Read Guide → Bookkeeping & Financial RecordsSee what should be current, reconciled and supportable before the tax-preparation process begins.
Read Guide →Cleanup is for records that already exist but cannot be relied on because balances, classifications or reconciliations are wrong. Catch-up is for missing or unfinished periods. Many businesses need some of both.
Not necessarily. A diagnostic review first identifies which periods, accounts and balances are reliable, so the work can focus on what is actually wrong. Scope is confirmed after that review.
Opening and historical balances are among the first things reviewed, because an error there carries into every later period. Correcting them may require prior-period statements or other supporting records.
No. They are separate services. Cleanup brings existing records to a more dependable condition so tax work can start from information that can be supported.
There is no universal timetable. It depends on the number of accounts, transaction volume, the periods affected, the condition of the records and the supporting documents available.
No. The first review is meant to show what is reliable and what is not, so you do not need to correct or reorganize the books beforehand.
Describe the accounts involved, the periods affected and what stopped matching. We can use that to determine whether the next step is cleanup, catch-up or a combination of both.