Rescue & Catch-Up Bookkeeping

If your bookkeeping has fallen behind — a few months, a year, sometimes longer — you are not the first business we have helped get back on track, and you will not be the last. We call it rescue bookkeeping, or catch-up bookkeeping if you would rather; either way, it is the same job: going back through however much time has piled up, correcting what is wrong, and handing you a set of books you can actually trust again.

It usually starts small. A bank account that is never quite reconciled properly. A BAS lodged in a hurry that turned out to have the wrong figures in it. Someone you trusted with the books who, it turned out, did not really know what they were doing. None of that is unusual, and none of it is something to be embarrassed about — it is just what happens when running the business takes priority over the admin, which it usually does.

What we are actually looking for

When we take on a rescue job, this is what tends to show up: bank and credit card accounts that do not reconcile with the real statements, old transactions sitting unpresented in the file, debtors and creditors that do not match the balance sheet — sometimes invoices marked as still outstanding that were actually paid months ago — and BAS that was lodged with figures that do not hold up. Payroll categories set up incorrectly are a common one too, since that quietly throws out payslips, leave accruals, tax tables and super calculations all at once, usually without anyone noticing until it is a much bigger mess to unpick.

The reason this matters beyond just tidiness: if the numbers are wrong, you could be paying the wrong GST, tax or super without knowing it, you are exposed to penalties and interest on top of whatever you already owe, and any decision you make based on those figures — hiring, pricing, buying equipment — is a decision made on bad information.

How we get you back on track

We start every rescue and catch-up job with what we call a Health Check — a proper look through your file to see exactly what state it is actually in, not just what it looks like on the surface. From there we tell you plainly what we found and what it will take to fix it: reviewing what is there, correcting the records, sorting the paperwork, and settling any overdue GST, PAYG or super. If there is ATO tax debt involved, we can help work through that too.

Get in touch and we will take a look.