A collection of educational QuickBooks cleanup articles designed to help business owners understand, repair and maintain accurate financial records
Full Cleanup Case Study Reconstruction When Cleanup Is Not an Option This file did not fail because of one mistake. It failed because multiple structural failures were allowed to coexist for too long. By the time it was reviewed, cleanup was no longer corrective. It introduced risk. Start With a…
Case study When Cleanup Is No Longer the Right Answer This file did not fail because of one mistake. It failed because multiple structural failures were allowed to coexist for too long. By the time it was reviewed, cleanup was no longer corrective. It was risky. Start With a Diagnostic…
Cleanup Fundamentals When a File Stops Telling the Truth Most accounting files do not fail because of one big mistake. They fail when small structural decisions quietly pile up until the numbers no longer reflect reality. This breakdown is one piece of a larger failure pattern explored in the full…
Project Setup The Cost of Starting in the Wrong Structure Most cleanup work begins long after the real mistake was made. The issue is rarely maintenance. It is almost always how the file was set up from the start. This breakdown is one piece of a larger failure pattern explored…
Multi-Entity When Multiple Entities Share One Mess Multi-entity problems are rarely caused by growth alone. They happen when structure fails to adjust as the business expands, allowing errors to spread instead of staying contained. This breakdown is one piece of a larger failure pattern explored in the full cleanup case…
Cleanup Liabilities When Liabilities Never Clear, Something Is Broken Liabilities are not supposed to linger. They are supposed to resolve. When they do not, the issue is almost never timing. It is structure. This breakdown is one piece of a larger failure pattern explored in the full cleanup case study…
Bank Reconciliations Reconciled Does Not Mean Correct Reconciliation is often treated as a finish line. In reality, it is a control. When that distinction is lost, files can be reconciled and still completely wrong. Reconciliation is a verification process. It answers one question only: does the activity in the file…
Chart of Accounts When the Chart of Accounts Stops Reflecting the Business The Chart of Accounts is not a list. It is a model of how a business operates. When that model breaks, reports stop describing reality. This breakdown is one piece of a larger failure pattern explored in the…
Transaction Review Transaction Review Is Where Broken Files Reveal Themselves Most broken files do not look broken at the account level. They reveal themselves transaction by transaction, where structure either holds or collapses. Transaction review is not proofreading. It is behavioral analysis that determines whether activity belongs in the period,…
Bank Feeds Bank Feeds Do Not Keep Your Books Accurate Bank feeds were designed to move data, not verify it. When verification stops, QuickBooks files can drift quietly while appearing active and up to date. This breakdown is one piece of a larger failure pattern explored in the full cleanup…
Cleanup Fundamentals Your Books Are Not Wrong. Your Structure Is. When the numbers look fine but never feel right, the problem is not the data. It is the system underneath it slowly breaking down. When a business owner tells me their books look fine, it usually means they are judging…
Chart of Accounts Why Your QuickBooks Reports Don’t Make Sense Reports stop making sense long before a wrong number appears. They break when the chart of accounts loses structure, logic, and alignment with how the business actually operates. Most people assume their reports look strange because of categorization mistakes, feed…
Most QuickBooks files look fine on the surface but fall apart under the hood. Learn the structural red flags that expose a file that needs cleanup and how to get clarity fast.
Case Studies When QuickBooks Lies to Your CPA A consulting firm learned the hard way that “looking fine” is not the same as accurate. Their QuickBooks file was hiding seventy five thousand dollars in errors that would have caused a tax season disaster. You hire a CPA to protect your…
QuickBooks Cleanup Case Study: Fixing a Washington Marketing Agency’s Books When Creative Chaos Bleeds Into the Books… Why Was My QuickBooks Such a Mess? And How We Fixed It for a Washington Marketing Agency Scaling a marketing agency is exciting. You’ve got clients, campaigns, and a growing remote team. But…
Summit Transfer and Environmental had unreconciled accounts, untracked liabilities, misclassified payroll, and over 1.3 million in fixed assets without depreciation. This case study shows how FTLOBS rebuilt their entire financial structure.
Seaboard Equipment and Supply struggled with mismatched books and tax filings, disorganized records, and a broken chart of accounts. This case study shows how FTLOBS rebuilt their financials and aligned their data with their CPA.
Summit Claims & Adjusting had a QuickBooks file that did not match reality. Bank feeds were missing, the chart of accounts was a maze, and taxes were filed on the wrong method. Here is how FTLOBS rebuilt their file the right way.
Case Studies The Complete Check That Rebuilt Blue Harbor Design Co.’s QuickBooks File Blue Harbor knew their QuickBooks file wasn’t telling the truth. Revenue didn’t match the work performed. Deposits didn’t line up. Reports contradicted their actual projects. The Complete Check uncovered the structural failures underneath the transactions and rebuilt…
Misclassified income, duplicate payments, and overlapping revenue categories inflated revenue beyond reality. This case study shows how structural cleanup restored accuracy.
A case study explaining how redundant expense accounts, scattered subaccounts, and misclassification created confusion and how restructuring the chart of accounts restored clarity.
A transaction review case study showing how 186 unmatched Amazon Business transactions distorted purchasing records and how cleanup restored structure and accuracy.
A case study showing how incorrect owner equity accounts, duplicate owner pay accounts, and missing contribution and distribution structure created inaccurate reporting and how cleanup restored the correct equity framework.
A detailed case study showing how a negative Washington State Department of Revenue balance and a misclassified prior year check indicated structural liability errors and how cleanup corrected them.
A detailed case study showing how misposted sales receipts, incorrect partner loan balances, and uncategorized asset errors distorted a marketing company’s balance sheet and how cleanup restored accuracy.
Case Studies When Payment Processors Aren’t Reconciled, Nothing Makes Sense: A Cleanup Case Study Payment processors are not set and forget accounts. When Stripe, Square, and PayPal are ignored, the balances drift, the reports distort, and the financials stop telling the truth. This marketing company relied on multiple payment processors…
Case Study When Revenue Stops Matching Reality in QuickBooks A marketing agency’s QuickBooks file revealed a breakdown in revenue behavior, mismatched timelines, and balances that no longer reflected how money actually moved inside the business. The issue wasn’t one mistake. It was a structural pattern. When revenue starts behaving strangely…
A deep dive into the structural accounting failures inside a staging and design firm’s QuickBooks file, including missing documentation, misclassified expenses, sales tax issues, and reconciliation inconsistencies.
Ahoy, tech enthusiasts and financial adventurers! Are you strapped in and ready for a deep dive into the thrilling world of QuickBooks Online cleanup? Today, we’re spotlighting our legendary “Complete Check” at Not the Droids Tech Solutions, where we unearthed some hidden financial treasures (and a few ghostly ghouls) lurking…
Most COGS issues come from a broken chart of accounts setup in QuickBooks Online. Here is how to structure COGS correctly and eliminate the inaccuracies that distort your financials.
Slug: fix-cogs-quickbooks-online-chart-of-accounts