Price the catch-up job before it eats your month. Free, no signup.
Editable starting points. The minimum stops one-month disasters; the margin covers the surprise mess you cannot see yet.
Honest check: see what your gut price pays you per hour.
Catch-up bookkeeping jobs die on the "quick cleanup" flat fee. One number for the whole project ignores how many months behind, how many accounts, how many thousands of transactions, the missing statements, the prior-year errors, and the client question rounds. Start with your bar (65), a minimum project fee ($750), and a profit margin percent (20). Pick a mess preset: Simple, Messy e-comm, or Years behind, each filling months behind, account count, transactions per month, and the slower-work toggles as editable starting points. Tick missing statements, prior-year errors, starting from scratch, and multiple entities to price the real difficulty. The pace card takes your minutes per transaction, recon minutes per account per month, research hours, client question rounds, closeout hours, and the hours per week you can spare. Results show total transactions, categorize and reconcile hours, true hours, true cost, dollars per month of history, the recommended flat quote (cost plus margin, rounded up to $50, never below the minimum), and the verdict. The gut check shows what your instinct fee pays per hour and your unpaid hours at your bar, and the schedule check converts the project into calendar weeks. No signup; runs on your phone.
Example only, not typical pricing. Simple preset at a $65 bar with 20 percent margin: 6 months behind, 2 accounts, 200 transactions per month, 2 minutes per transaction, 20 recon minutes per account per month, 3 client question rounds, 1.5 closeout hours. Total transactions are 200 x 6 = 1,200. Categorize hours are 1,200 x 2 / 60 = 40.0; reconcile hours are 2 x 6 x 20 / 60 = 4.0; client hours are 3 x 0.75 = 2.25; closeout is 1.5. Total true hours are 47.75. True cost is 47.75 x 65 = $3,103.75. Recommended quote is max(750, ceil(3,103.75 x 1.20 / 50) x 50) = $3,750, or $625.00 per month of history. The verdict grades the recommended quote: $3,750 / 47.75 = $78.53 per hour clears the bar, so it is PRICED RIGHT. A $1,500 gut quote would pay $31.41 per hour, leave $2,250 on the table, and cost you 34.6 unpaid hours at your bar. The schedule check turns 47.75 hours at 10 hours a week into 4.8 weeks and flags it: anything over a month gets called out in the proposal.
Why does the verdict grade the recommended quote and not my gut quote?
The verdict answers one question: is the recommended quote healthy? Your gut quote gets its own report, pays-per-hour, shortfall, and unpaid hours, in the planner card, so both numbers are graded, just in different places.
What counts as a client question round?
One cycle of you sending questions, waiting, and getting answers back, priced at 45 minutes. Chasing receipts is real labor; the tool counts it before the client disappears for two weeks.
How do missing statements change the price?
The toggle multiplies reconciliation time by 1.4, because reconciling without statements is slower detective work. It shows up as hours, then as dollars, in true cost.
Is the dollars-per-month-of-history a price to charge?
No, it is a reference. The breakdown shows your effective price per month of history so you can compare against the rough industry reference of about $300 a month, but the quote comes from your true hours and your bar.
What does the schedule check flag?
It converts true hours into calendar weeks at the hours per week you can spare. Cross four weeks and it tells you to flag it in the proposal, because a month-long project needs different expectations than a weekend job.