---
title: "Contractor cleanup: 9 months in 8 days | Ledgerbrook"
source: https://ledgerbrook.com/results/contractor-cleanup/
description: "A general contractor's nine months of miscoded job costs and unreconciled loans, cleaned up in eight business days."
---

[Results](/results/) / general contracting

Illustrative example

# Nine months of miscoded job costs, cleaned up in eight business days

A general contractor's nine months of miscoded job costs and unreconciled loans, cleaned up in eight business days.

Months behind

9

general contracting

Business days

8

From access and statements in hand

Engagement

Cleanup

per month of backlog

Fixed fee

$713

9 months at $99, 20% off

The situation

A general contractor running two crews had kept its own books in QuickBooks Online. The file was current, in the sense that transactions were going in, but nobody could say what any job had cost. Every material purchase sat in one expense account, owner draws were booked as expenses in five of the nine months, and two equipment loans had never been checked against the lender.

Checking and the credit card had been reconciled for the first few months and then stopped. The loans had never been reconciled at all. The firm’s tax preparer wanted job-level margins before filing, which the file could not produce.

Before and after

## What was wrong

- Job material purchases coded to one generic expense account instead of by job
- Owner draws recorded as business expenses in five of the nine months
- Two equipment loan balances never tied to the lender's statements

## What was handed back

- Job material purchases coded to the job they belong to
- Owner draws moved out of expenses and into equity
- Both equipment loans tied to the lender's statements, principal split from interest
- Every account reconciled through the last month in scope
- A written, month-by-month summary of what changed

Reconciliation

## Every account, every month

Each square is one account for one month. On day one the early months had been reconciled and the rest had not.

Day one

Handed back

- Reconciled to the statement
- Entered, never reconciled

Show as a table

| Account | Reconciled, day one | Reconciled, handback |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Operating checking | 3 of 9 | 9 of 9 |
| Business credit card | 2 of 9 | 9 of 9 |
| Equipment loan, excavator | 0 of 9 | 9 of 9 |
| Equipment loan, truck | 0 of 9 | 9 of 9 |

Holding accounts

## What was parked, and where it went

$29,150 sitting in holding accounts on day one. Each was cleared into the account it belonged in, or carried with a written reason.

Show as a table

| Account | Day one | Handback |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Uncategorized Expense | $18,640 | $0 |
| Undeposited Funds | $6,300 | $0 |
| Ask My Accountant | $4,210 | $0 |

Progress

## Uncategorized transactions, to zero

Uncategorized transactions by review period, falling from 380 to 0 across 4 checkpoints.

Uncategorized transactions remaining, by review period

| Checkpoint | Uncategorized |
| --- | --- |
| Day 1 | 380 |
| Day 4 | 190 |
| Day 6 | 60 |
| Day 8 | 0, settled |

Timeline

## Where the 8 business days went

1. 1. Access and statementsDay 1
2. 2. Recode job costsDays 2 to 4
3. 3. Reconcile accounts and loansDays 5 to 6
4. 4. Clear holding accountsDay 7
5. 5. Review and summaryDay 8

Cost

## What it cost

$713

9 months of cleanup at $99 per month of backlog, with 20% off the whole job for a backlog of 6 months or more. The same rate is on [the pricing page](/pricing/), and [cleanup](/quickbooks-cleanup/) sets out the scope.

Next

## A file like this one?

The free file review counts the months and says which engagement applies, in writing, before anything is quoted.

[Get a free file review](/contact/?from=results%2Fcontractor-cleanup)

Other examples: [Online retailer cleanup: 5 months in 6 days](/results/ecommerce-monthly-catchup/) · [Restaurant catch-up: 24 months in 12 days](/results/restaurant-catch-up/)

**About this example**

Client engagements are confidential, so we can't share real client data. These examples are illustrative: composite figures built from typical engagements of this size, priced at the same published rates a real engagement would be.

Published September 25, 2026