We estimated a recent clean-up project at under two weeks. That estimate matched the actual work.
Two months later, we're still waiting on the last of the bank and credit card statements we need to close it out.
Many people assume delays like this are our fault, but that’s not the case here. It also wasn't the complexity of the books or some hidden mess we uncovered halfway through. We reconciled every account we could, and we did it quickly. The accounts still open are open because we're missing the documents needed to verify them, and we can't manufacture bank statements.
Why This Happens More Than You'd Think
A clean-up estimate is really an estimate of two different things: how long the accounting work will take, and how long it'll take to gather everything we need to do that work. We're usually pretty accurate on the first one. The second one is almost entirely out of our hands.
Banks can take a while to respond to statement requests. Old credit card accounts get closed, and pulling historical statements from a closed account is a whole process in itself. Sometimes the client genuinely means to send something over, and it just falls to the bottom of a busy week, then another, then another.
None of that reflects badly on anyone. It's just the reality of clean-up work: we can only reconcile what we can verify against a source document.
What This Means If You're Considering a Clean-Up
If you're gathering statements for a bookkeeping clean-up, the fastest way to speed up your own timeline is to pull everything up front, all the statements for every account, even the ones you think might not matter. Old accounts, closed accounts, personal accounts that had business activity running through them at some point. Whatever exists.
The accounting work itself moves fast. The paperwork almost always sets the pace.
About Fruitful Enterprises: We handle bookkeeping clean-ups from start to finish, and we'll always tell you what's holding a project up. Reach out today for your free financial review.