Bookkeeping › Reconstruction
The records are gone. The books come back anyway.
Published price from $3,500
A lost file, a vanished bookkeeper, a dead drive, years never kept — we rebuild the books from the records your bank, processor, and payroll provider still hold. Every month reconciled, every estimate flagged and documented. Fixed fee, scoped before any work starts.
Recovery checked before rebuilding is quoted — if your file is recoverable, you'll hear that instead. Your CPA stays your CPA.
Reviewed before delivery means a documented check runs before anything reaches you: every bank and card account tied to its statement, open items listed in writing. How the review works.
Quick answer
Reconstruction applies when the source records themselves are gone, not merely disorganized. The rebuild uses copies that banks, processors, payroll providers and vendors still hold, so its pace depends on how quickly those parties respond. Anything that can't be proven from a third-party record is flagged in writing rather than estimated silently.
Reconstruction is published from $3,500; the exact fee is quoted once the review has seen which records survived. What the published ranges cover.
Why owners call
Books go missing in very human ways.
None of these means the history is lost — every dollar that touched a third party left a copy somewhere. These are the common ways it happens.
Your bookkeeper disappeared — and so did the books.
The person who kept the file is gone and won't respond. We check the recovery doors first — QuickBooks Online's cloud copy, your CPA's accountant's copy — then rebuild from third-party records if the file is truly gone.
Free reconstruction review File lost or corruptThe QuickBooks file is corrupt / the drive died.
A dead computer, a failed drive, a file that won't open. If data recovery can't bring it back, the books rebuild from the records your bank, processor, and payroll provider still hold.
Free reconstruction review Never really keptHonestly, there were never real books — just a shoebox.
Years of business with no accounting system at all. We build the first real file from statements, oldest month first, reconciled as it goes — so the history finally exists.
Free reconstruction review Bought a businessYou bought a business and got no usable books with it.
The records that came with the purchase are thin, wrong, or missing. We reconstruct the operating history you actually need to run and report on what you bought.
Free reconstruction review Lender or CPA needs historySomeone needs financials for years you can't produce.
A lender, the SBA, or your CPA needs statements for periods with no books behind them. We rebuild those periods from source, reconciled, so the numbers are defensible — your CPA handles what gets filed.
Free reconstruction review Partner or legal disputeA dispute needs the real history on paper.
A partnership split or disagreement where the books must be rebuilt honestly from source. We reconstruct operational books and document every basis — and we're plain about where forensic-CPA work begins.
How we scope it honestlyWhatever went missing, start with a free review that checks the recovery doors, counts what survives, and puts a fixed fee in writing.
How reconstruction runs
Recovery first, collection second, rebuild proven.
Free review & recovery check
We check every door that could shrink the job — cloud copies, accountant's copies, backups, recoverable drives — then count the accounts and years genuinely gone. The fixed fee and timeline are put in writing before any work begins.
Batch the records requests
Every bank, card issuer, processor, payroll provider, and key vendor gets its request at once — so the waiting happens once, not serially.
Build the scaffold
A clean file: lean chart of accounts, opening balances anchored to the earliest reliable statement — facts first, structure before transactions.
Rebuild oldest-first, reconciled
Each month reconstructed from the collected records and reconciled to its statements before the next — deadline-critical periods sequenced first when a filing or loan is driving.
Deliver proven books + the flag schedule
Per-period statements tied to source, the documented schedule of anything estimated, and an optional handoff to a monthly close so this is the last rebuild.
Scope is honest and specific to your gap — one lost year of one account and five shoebox years across payroll are different jobs. The free review tells you exactly which, and what the fixed fee is.
Record-source recovery
Who still holds your records, and the order we use them in.
All the requests go out together at the start, so the waiting overlaps. The records are then put to work in this order, with every source checked against the one above it.
| Order | Record | Who holds it | What it settles in the rebuild |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The old file itself | The QuickBooks Online subscription, a backup drive, or your CPA's accountant's copy | Whether a rebuild is needed at all; a recovered file turns the job into a cleanup or catch-up. |
| 2 | Bank and card statements | Your banks and card issuers, from their statement archives | Cash moved month by month, and the opening balance on the earliest statement. |
| 3 | Payout and fee reports | The card processor or sales platform | Gross sales, fees and refunds hiding behind the net deposits. |
| 4 | Pay registers and payroll filings | The payroll provider | Wages, withholdings and the payroll liabilities falling due. |
| 5 | IRS account transcripts | The IRS, pulled by your CPA or from your business tax account | What was actually filed and paid, so rebuilt years can be compared with the returns. |
| 6 | Vendor and lender histories | Suppliers, landlords and lenders | Bills, loan balances and interest the bank shows only as outgoing payments. |
Anything no third party holds, such as cash that stayed out of the bank, goes on the flag schedule rather than into the books as a guess.
Figure data as a table
| What still exists? | Then | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The old file itself | No rebuild needed | A recovered file turns the job into a cleanup or catch-up |
| Third-party records | Financial reconstruction | Rebuilt from bank, processor and payroll copies; scoped, from $3,500 |
| Nothing anyone holds | The flag schedule | Each item listed with its basis, not guessed into the books |
What's included
Everything a rebuild takes — line by line.
Grouped the way the work actually runs. Exactly which lines apply to your gap is written into the scope once the free review is done.
Recover & collect
The recovery sweep
Cloud copies, accountant's copies, backups, and recoverable drives checked before any rebuilding is quoted — the hour that can shrink the whole job.
The batched records requests
Every bank, card issuer, processor, payroll provider, and key vendor asked at once — the waiting happens once, not serially.
The account inventory
Every account the gap touched — including closed ones — listed from old returns and loan files, so a forgotten account is caught before tie-out rather than at it.
Rebuild & prove
The clean scaffold
A lean chart of accounts and opening balances anchored to the earliest reliable statement — structure before transactions, facts before entries.
Every month reconstructed and reconciled
Oldest-first, each month tied to its statements before the next — deadline-critical periods sequenced first when a filing or loan is driving.
Liability accounts rebuilt with extra care
Payroll and collected-tax accounts in the gap re-tied to filings and provider records — the accounts other parties depend on, held to a prove-it standard.
Deliver & document
Per-period statements that check out
P&L and balance sheet for every rebuilt period, reconciled to source — the history a lender or CPA can verify, not just read.
The flag schedule
Every estimate documented with its basis, delivered beside the books — the honesty layer your CPA works from, never buried in the numbers.
The handoff to a rhythm
Opening balances connected cleanly to the present and, if you want it, a monthly close afterwards, so this is the last rebuild.
Which job is yours?
What survived decides the service.
Reconstruction — records gone
File lost, bookkeeper vanished, drive dead, or years never kept. The raw material gets re-collected from third parties before bookkeeping can start. That's this page.
Catch-up — never entered
The records exist, but whole months were never recorded. The data is already in your feeds and statements — that's a catch-up of the missing months.
Cleanup — entered wrong
The months are there but miscategorized, unreconciled, or out of balance. Correcting and re-proving them is bookkeeping cleanup.
Real jobs mix all three — lost years reconstructed, the recent gap caught up, the surviving stretch cleaned. The free review scopes whatever combination yours is as one project, one fixed fee.
Operational standards
Four things every reconstruction holds to.
Recovery checked before rebuilding is quoted
If the file is recoverable or the job is really a catch-up, you hear that — we quote the smaller job and say why.
Proven, not approximated
Every rebuilt month reconciled to third-party source. A history that can't be checked isn't a history.
Estimates flagged, never invented
Unprovable items live on a documented schedule with their basis stated — visible to you and your CPA, never buried in the numbers.
Boundaries stated plainly
Operational books, rebuilt honestly. Forensic opinions, testimony, and filings belong with forensic CPAs and your CPA — and we say so up front.
Want the full method we run? It's published free: reconstructing financial records — the third-party rule rebuild →
Losing the books feels like losing the history of the business. It rarely is: your bank kept its copy, your processor kept its copy, your payroll company kept its copy. Our job is to collect what survived and rebuild the truth from it, month by month, honestly flagged where the paper runs out.
FAQ · Updated October 2026
When the records are gone: your questions.
Whatever the cause, it starts with a no-cost look at what survived.
Scope first, in writing
Get the history back — proven, not guessed.
Tell us what went missing and what's driving the timeline. We check the recovery doors, count what survives, and give you a fixed-fee scope in writing — including an honest "this is really just a catch-up" when it is.