It’s That Time Again: Year-End Cleanup Calls

Editor’s Note: This article is part 1 of a 2-part series on year-end cleanup season. View all of the articles in this series here: Year-end Cleanup  

December is crunch time for accounting professionals. Along with wrapping up year-end planning for clients, inboxes fill with urgent requests from business owners looking for miracles. What starts as a seemingly simple cleanup job often devolves into a full forensic project, one that challenges both your systems and your boundaries.  

In this two-part series, we’ll walk through a real-world example and offer a roadmap for presenting your cleanup options with clarity and confidence. 

An accounting tale as old as time

It’s December 15th at 10:47 AM, and my phone buzzes. Another potential client leaves a message: "I need help with my QuickBooks.  Nothing major.  I just want to get ready for taxes." 

Nothing major. Right. 

The discovery call was scheduled and paid for. I showed up ready to listen and ask him about his concerns. Then I walked through my questions: 

• "What year was your last filed tax return?"  

• "Why are you doing this now?"  

• "Why me?"  

• "If we don't do this, what would that mean for you?"  

• "If this is a successful relationship, what does that look like a year from now?" 

I liked his answers. He was serious. He had clarity. He understood he had a problem. 

On to the next step: reviewing his QuickBooks Online file together.  That's when I saw the eighteen bank accounts. 

Did I mention EIGHTEEN?  None of them reconciled. Not one. Not ever. 

Many of them had over 1,000 transactions in the bank feed, ready for review, with no matches and no rules set up, not to mention lots of checks. Could there be even more? He likes bank accounts just like my friend Valerie likes shoes!  Why does one business need eighteen bank accounts? 

By the end of the call, my head was spinning—and eggnog o'clock was hours away. 

The annual miracle request   

Let's be honest. This happens every single year. 

Somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas, business owners look at their books and have a moment—a realization. A holy-crap-I-need-an-accountant moment.  And they call you like you're some kind of accounting ER. 

"I know it's last-minute." But between the lines, you know they are really asking, “Can you fix twelve months of disaster in three weeks?" And "It’s not that hard, it should be easy."  And my favorite, "It shouldn’t take you that long, it’s only data entry, right? I just need someone to clean things up real quick..."  

And that’s when I looked at those eighteen unreconciled asset accounts and thought, maybe the previous accountant was a wizard with a method I haven’t seen before.  Knowing full well that we’ve got some cleanup ahead.  

Now the uncomfortable part   

Let's talk about the tax preparer who filed the 2024 return.  This prospect told me he had had his “tax guy” for years. They filed his 2024 taxes, and everything was supposedly fine. 

But here's what I'm looking at: Eighteen unreconciled bank accounts. Thousands of transactions that were never accepted. Balances that don't make sense. 

1. 1. The tax preparer reconciled everything in their own workpapers outside QuickBooks. 

1. 2. They made adjustments on the return. 

1. 3. They have some parallel universe version of the books that makes perfect sense. 

Or, maybe they just plugged numbers in and hoped for the best.  I don't know. And that is the problem. 

What I DO know: The client's QuickBooks doesn't match reality. Which means they’re building their entire 2025 on a foundation they cannot trust. 

The first step toward reconciliation ;)

When this happens, use these exact words: "I'm seeing 18 bank accounts that have never been reconciled in QuickBooks. Many of them have thousands of transactions that have not been accepted from the bank feed. I can't tell whether your tax guy prepared your return from amounts outside the system. What I can tell you is that your books, as they sit right now, don’t reflect accurate numbers. That creates risk for 2025 and beyond if we build on top of this." 

Then pause.  Let them absorb it. Don't fill the silence with "but maybe..." or "I could be wrong..." 

You're not wrong. The accounts show you are not wrong. 

If you're nodding along right now, you've probably been in this exact spot. You're likely staring at a mess and wondering how it got this far. It's not just fixing numbers; it’s also about restoring trust, protecting the client’s future, and setting boundaries that respect your time and expertise.  

Now, whether it’s 18 bank accounts or 18 months of cleanup, the end-of-year rush requires more than just QuickBooks skills; it requires calm confidence and a clear plan. In Part 2 of this series, we’ll look at the three cleanup paths and how to present each one with clarity, professionalism, and the boundaries your expertise deserves.