Home/How It Works
How this actually works
Five steps, and the first one costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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STEP 01
You book a review
About thirty minutes. Nothing to prepare, no forms to complete beforehand. If you can give us read access to your file before the call, we will have looked at it by the time we speak, which makes the conversation considerably more useful.
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STEP 02
We tell you what we found
Not a pitch. A straight read on what is accurate, what is not, how far back any problems go, and what it would take to fix. If the honest answer is that your books are fine and you do not need us, that is what you will hear.
You can take that assessment and do whatever you like with it, including handing it to somebody else. It is yours.
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STEP 03
You get a proposal with real numbers
Cleanup quoted as a fixed price with a timeline. The ongoing monthly fee and which tier it sits in. The setup fee and how it is spread. An engagement letter, and a retainer, because that is how professional work is done.
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STEP 04
Setup, and a short list of things we need
Five things, not fifty. A fifty item request list guarantees nothing gets sent, so we ask for what actually blocks the work and go from there.
- Read-only access to your bank and credit card accounts
- Access to your accounting file
- Statements for anything that cannot be connected directly
- Payroll reports, if you run payroll
- Loan documents for anything on the balance sheet
We set up and share the folder you drop documents into. Clients never do, and then it sits in somebody's own drive unshared.
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STEP 05
Then it runs
Your month closes on schedule. Reports arrive. You get a short list of questions on the transactions only you can identify, and that list gets shorter every month as we learn your business.
When something looks wrong, you hear about it from us, at the point we notice it, rather than at year end or from a letter.
What we will not do
We will not categorize something we do not understand just to clear the queue. If we cannot tell what a transaction is, it comes to you as a question. A guess that looks tidy is worse than an open item, because nobody goes back to check it.
We will not quote cleanup on a file we have not opened.
We will not tell you the books look fine when they do not. That conversation is uncomfortable roughly once a year and it is the single most valuable thing in the engagement.
Questions about getting started
How long until my books are current?
If you are current already, the first clean month lands at the next close. If you are behind, it depends entirely on how far back it goes and what condition the file is in. You get a timeline with your quote, before you commit.
What access do you need?
Read-only bank and credit card access wherever the institution supports it, and access to your accounting file. Read-only means we can see the activity and cannot move money, which is how it should be and how we prefer it.
Will I have to chase you?
That is the failure mode this entire process is built to avoid, so we would rather be judged on it than promise it. Your close lands on a schedule, and if something is going to be late you hear it from us first.
What if I go quiet on you?
It happens, everyone gets busy, and we will follow up rather than silently stall. But client responsiveness is genuinely the biggest factor in how fast onboarding goes. The parts only you can answer are the parts that hold everything else up.
Start with a look at your actual books.
No cost, no obligation, and no sales pitch. You get a straight answer about where your books stand, and you can do whatever you want with it.
Prefer to talk first? (833) 653-7545 or hello@gotomybookkeeper.com