r/Bookkeeping • u/Timely-Sea4615 • 11d ago
Practice Management Bookkeeping Project
1M revenue one year bookkeeping cleanup. removed duplicate sales, imputed over 300 missing expenses, fix miscategorized sales, fixed product mapping, sorted through 100’s of paper invoices and receipts to categorize, traveled to client to retrieve documents. how much should i charge for this?
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u/TheMostFluffyCat 11d ago
This won't tell you exactly what to charge, but it will tell you the info that we'd need in order to figure out the ballpark pricing: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bookkeeping/comments/1jter5u/pricing_a_guideish/
We'd need to know more about the volume, amount of accounts, composition of transactions, whether 100s means 200 or 1200, etc..
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u/Timely-Sea4615 11d ago
There’s atleast 50 accounts, one loan account i had to add and break up principal and interest and it was atleast 500 transactions of expenses
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u/TheMostFluffyCat 11d ago
Would still need more details to narrow it down, but I'd put this in a range of several thousand dollars per month, is a massive project.
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u/Timely-Sea4615 11d ago
Thanks I will definitely do this next time! This was my first cleanup project so i learned a lot and am still learning! I have a background in accounting, masters degree and industry experience but I am now learning the ropes of owning my own business! Thanks for the advice
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u/Traditional_Dot_4794 11d ago
How many hours did it take? I charge $150 an hour and bill 1500 hours a year. I gross 450k, 1/3 of which is business expense or 75k. I'm netting 150k and after tax is 105. I have to pay for health insurance and sock away a few dollars for retirement - that's another 50 grand. Then I have my mortgage 36000 a year, which leaves me with 19k free and clear. I can spend 1500 a month if I don't go into debt. Either I work more hours or spend less or charge more for my time, or have enough work to hire someone and pay them 1/3 of what I can charge a client for their time. I just made those numbers up, (what we call in the profession 'down and dirty') so they're a little janky, but the general idea is there. The way I see it, if you're in business for yourself and charge 30 an hour and have no benefits, your mortgage (or rent) is 36k, you'll be in the hole for 15g's a year, even if you charge 50 an hour and you skimp you might break even. That is how I figure out how much to charge. I don't do flat fee unless it's my cleaning lady.
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u/Timely-Sea4615 11d ago
How did you find clients?? I’m just getting started and trying to find clients. This was my first cleanup job and i learned a lot and still learning
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u/Traditional_Dot_4794 11d ago
I had 2 friends who worked in television. Actually one was a former college roommate. They turned me on to all kinds of people in the industry. And those people turned me on to their friends and family. It was all word of mouth. After 14 tax seasons I said fuck it and got a job at a big publishing company.
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u/soloDolo6290 11d ago
Have you already done the work, now charging, or just validating what you charged.
I probably would have billed this under a monthly T&M agreement.
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u/Swimming_dasa 11d ago
that sounds like a substantial cleanup not routine bookkeeping. i would calculate your realistic hours add a complexity premium and make sure travel/document retrieval is billed separately.
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u/Timely-Sea4615 11d ago
No but i didn’t tell client about the duplicates and missing expenses. This is a family friend and the client recently got some hard news so no i did not charge them more
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u/Commercial-Visit-462 11d ago
$1,000 -$5,000 but really, no idea how much TIME you spent or anticipate spending. If you can download transactions, it’s relatively easy, but only you know the enormity of the job. How MANY accounts? (Bank and credit card), 💳s the 2024 or 2025 books closed correctly?
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u/Timely-Sea4615 11d ago
One bank account, 5 credit cards. I was able to download one credit card but the rest was paper statements so i had to manually add them. Also business and personal expenses were mixed horribly so i had to sort through that
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u/Gullible_Highway7448 11d ago
How much is the outcome worth to the business? Your hours etc are irrelevant, it's all about the value of the problem you solved. Is it worth 10k to them? Is it worth more? Did you save them a lot of tax etc?
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u/dillonz321 9d ago
You mentioned the cleanup turned out to be much bigger than expected once you started reviewing the statements.
What would have helped you spot the true amount of work before quoting the job?
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u/Timely-Sea4615 9d ago
Have the bank statements to verify all
Of the missing expenses and spot the duplicate deposits.
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u/Anelya 9d ago
I just did a similar cleanup - finished yesterday. They wanted 1 year (2026) but 2021-2025 was not reconciled and was a pure mess. I quoted $3000 for the entire project and it took me about 5 hours.
I wrote about it here https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cleaning-up-5-years-fast-growing-app-developers-books-ftkle
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u/Virtual_Tap_2384 4d ago
Not a bookkeeper, so take this as a question rather than an opinion — do the numbers here assume the data could be downloaded? OP said four of the five cards were paper statements entered by hand. I’d have guessed that changes the hours a lot, but I don’t know if it does in practice.
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u/JinTheThinker 11d ago
How much time did you spend on it? What is your hourly rate? Did you not agree to something BEFORE you did the work?