Multi-Year Catch-Up

It happens more than anyone admits: a business runs hard for two, three, five years while the books and the filings fall further behind. The longer it goes, the scarier it feels, and the scarier it feels, the longer it goes. Here is the honest truth from a decade of these projects — every one of them is fixable, the process is systematic, and starting is the only hard part.

How reconstruction works

We rebuild each year from the records that always exist even when the bookkeeping doesn't: bank and merchant statements, POS exports, seed-to-sale system history, payroll records, loan documents, and vendor invoices. From those we reconstruct a real general ledger year by year — income, costs classified for §471 capitalization, inventory rolled properly between years — so the returns that follow are built on evidence, not estimates. Cash-heavy periods get documented methodology rather than hand-waving.

Then the filings, in the right order

Once a year's books stand, its returns follow: federal, state income, excise, payroll — whatever is missing. Sequence matters, because each year's ending inventory and basis feed the next. Filing voluntarily before the IRS initiates contact meaningfully improves every outcome that follows, including penalty relief; where notices have already arrived, this work plugs directly into our tax resolution practice.

What it costs you to wait

Behind on filings means no defensible position if examined, no financing, no clean diligence if a buyer appears, and penalties compounding monthly. Catch-up projects are quoted flat by scope after we see the records — no meter running — and clients consistently report the same thing afterward: the dread was worse than the project.

Common questions