---
title: "Restaurant catch-up: 24 months in 12 days | Ledgerbrook"
source: https://ledgerbrook.com/results/restaurant-catch-up/
description: "A single-location restaurant with two years never entered into QuickBooks, caught up in twelve business days."
---

[Results](/results/) / restaurants

Illustrative example

# Two years never entered, caught up in twelve business days

A single-location restaurant with two years never entered into QuickBooks, caught up in twelve business days.

Months behind

24

restaurants

Business days

12

From access and statements in hand

Engagement

Catch-Up

per month of backlog

Fixed fee

$1,901

24 months at $99, 20% off

The situation

A single-location restaurant had connected its bank feeds to QuickBooks Online two years earlier and then stopped. Every transaction since was sitting in the review queue. Payroll ran through an outside provider, and its journal entries had never been matched to the provider’s reports.

Sales tax had been filed from the point-of-sale system every period, but nobody had tied what was collected to what was paid. The owner needed two years of statements for a lease renewal.

Before and after

## What was wrong

- Two years of bank and card transactions sitting uncategorized in the bank feed
- Payroll journal entries never matched to the payroll provider's reports
- Sales tax collected was never reconciled against filed returns

## What was handed back

- All 24 months categorized and reconciled to the statements
- Payroll entries matched to the provider's reports
- Sales tax collected tied to the returns that were filed
- A written summary for the tax preparer

Reconciliation

## Every account, every month

Each square is one account for one month. On day one nothing had been entered, so there was nothing to reconcile.

Day one

Handed back

- Reconciled to the statement
- Never entered

Show as a table

| Account | Reconciled, day one | Reconciled, handback |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Operating checking | 0 of 24 | 24 of 24 |
| Payroll checking | 0 of 24 | 24 of 24 |
| Business credit card | 0 of 24 | 24 of 24 |

Progress

## Uncategorized transactions, to zero

Uncategorized transactions by review period, falling from 640 to 0 across 4 checkpoints.

Uncategorized transactions remaining, by review period

| Checkpoint | Uncategorized |
| --- | --- |
| Day 1 | 640 |
| Day 5 | 410 |
| Day 9 | 150 |
| Day 12 | 0, settled |

Timeline

## Where the 12 business days went

1. 1. Access and statementsDays 1 to 2
2. 2. Categorize 24 monthsDays 3 to 8
3. 3. Reconcile each monthDays 9 to 10
4. 4. Payroll and sales tax tie-outDay 11
5. 5. Review and summaryDay 12

Cost

## What it cost

$1,901

24 months of catch-up 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 [catch-up](/quickbooks-catch-up-bookkeeping/) sets out the scope. From 12 months that figure is the ceiling: a real backlog this long gets [a custom quote with a larger discount](/contact/?from=results%2Frestaurant-catch-up).

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%2Frestaurant-catch-up)

Other examples: [Contractor cleanup: 9 months in 8 days](/results/contractor-cleanup/) · [Online retailer cleanup: 5 months in 6 days](/results/ecommerce-monthly-catchup/)

**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