Catch-up bookkeeping starts with the bank. Every sale you were paid for and every bill you paid went through an account, so the statements are the most complete record you have of the months you fell behind on.
The trouble is getting them into your books. When you connect a bank to QuickBooks Online, some banks send the last 90 days of transactions and others up to 24 months, and anything older has to come from a file. For a year you skipped, or an account you closed, the PDF statement is often the only file there is.
Here is how to go from a stack of PDFs to books you can trust.
1. List what you are missing
Make a short table: one row for each account the business used, checking, savings and any second account, with the first and last month your books already cover. The gap between them is what you need.
Then download every statement in the gap from your online banking, as PDFs. If the account is closed, ask the bank for the statements. Most banks keep them for years.
2. Check that no statement is missing
Line the statements up in date order. Each one's beginning balance should equal the ending balance of the one before it. Where the two do not match, a statement is missing, or the bank sent two that overlap. Find it now, not after you have reconciled eleven months.
3. Convert them
- Drop the first PDF in on our home page, and we show you its first page converted before you sign up.
- Sign up with your email address to download it. You do not need a card. The free trial converts up to 5 pages of a statement, 15 pages in all.
- If the columns look right, take a plan for the rest. Each page of PDF uses one page of credit, so a year of four-page statements is about 50 pages. On the Standard and Plus plans you can upload several statements at once.
You get an Excel workbook for each statement. For QuickBooks Online and Xero, you also get a file in the shape they import, with every date in full and one signed amount: select (US dates) beside the Xero / QuickBooks download. You get this file on the free trial and on the Standard and Plus plans. Lite gives Excel and CSV.
Some US statements list deposits, withdrawals and checks in separate sections, with no running balance. We cannot convert those yet, and you see that on the first page, before you sign up.
4. Check each statement before it goes in
Your Excel download has a Ledger column that checks each balance against
the row before it. Filter it for break, and compare those rows with the PDF.
Why a balance breaks
explains what to look for. A wrong figure is easy to fix in a spreadsheet and
slow to find in a reconciliation.
5. Bring them in without duplicates
Before you upload anything, find the oldest transaction your books already have for the account. Upload only the rows before that date. If the account is also connected to the bank, the feed and your file can overlap: delete the overlapping rows from the file, not from QuickBooks.
How to upload the file to QuickBooks Online has the steps, and what to do with a statement over 1,000 transactions.
If you keep the books in a spreadsheet, paste each month's rows under the last, keeping one header row, and add a Category column.
6. Reconcile month by month
Reconcile each month against its statement, oldest first, with the statement's ending date and ending balance. A month that reconciles is finished, and the next one starts from a balance you can trust. If you work in Excel, our free bank reconciliation template does the same check.
For bookkeepers
A catch-up job is usually several accounts and a year or more of statements, often with the client's PDFs as the only record. Ask for the statements in step 1, check them in step 2, and send the client the list of any that are missing before you start. It is the one question that holds up the whole job.