Once the catch-up is over, here is what changes.
A Knotledger engagement ends with a clean file in your hands and the books current again. This page describes what you receive at hand-back, the three ways the books can travel next, and what a steady-state month looks like once the backlog is gone — plus when it makes sense to come back for another pass.
Block 01 · Clean file delivery
What you receive at hand-back.
Three artefacts land together on the day the catch-up closes. The file is yours; the memo is for whoever opens it next; the reconciliation report is the proof it closes to the cent.
A clean QuickBooks or Xero file in your own licence.
Your subscription, your vendor, your login. We never migrate you off the software you already run — cleanup happens against the same chart of accounts your CPA is expecting to open.
Why this matters
No migration, no lock-in, no learning curve for whoever picks the file up next.
A written summary of what was caught up.
A one-to-two page memo naming what was caught up, what was written up (undocumented items, lost receipts, owner draws retitled), and what was restated. The CPA reads the memo before opening the file, so the story is already there.
Why this matters
Your accountant opens the file on day one already knowing the prior-period story.
A bank reconciliation report against every account.
Every account the trial balance closes against — operating, payroll, tax, merchant-processor, credit cards, owner-loan — reconciled to the current statement, signed off to the cent.
Why this matters
No manual journals to keep paying, no uncleared lines on the bank feed six months after we hand back.
Block 02 · Handoff options
Three named paths for the file to travel next.
The cleanup ends here. What runs the books after that is your call — three paths, all open, no upcharge for choosing the first two.
Pass to your existing CPA.
Hand them the file and the memo together. CPA opens willingly — ideally schedule a short 20-minute call before tax season so they have the context, not just the file. There is no fee from Knotledger for this path; the handoff call is on us, your CPA picks it up from there.
Transition to a long-term bookkeeper.
Same file + memo. The new bookkeeper inherits a closed file — no three-month backlog waiting on their first day. Knotledger is available for a one-page overlap note if the bookkeeper wants one, and we are not on the monthly invoice.
Knotledger's light-touch monthly close (not our core offering).
A small monthly retainer that does the month-end categorize + reconcile + review against the file we just delivered. This is deliberately NOT our core product — cleanup is — and we route prospects whose need drifts here to a partner where it is not a good fit. We keep this offering deliberately small so it never dilutes the catch-up work.
Honest framing
Honest framing: if you came to Knotledger for a cleanup, the cleanup is the conversation. Monthly close exists for the small number of clients who want continuity from us, not as a growth lever.
Block 03 · What changes month-to-month
The new bookkeeping rhythm, after the catch-up.
The new rhythm
Steady-state month-to-month — the inverse of the catch-up.
- Categorize as you go — transactions land in the right account the day they post, not at quarter-end.
- Monthly reconciliation against every statement on the chart of accounts we closed into — not just the operating account.
- Owner draws and personal-card leakage surfaced every month, not stacked into a single year-end adjustment.
- No quarter-end pile-up, no December shoebox, no "we will catch up next year" running joke.
Expected ongoing cost
Honest framing on price — not invented on this page.
If you picked the third path above (Knotledger’s light-touch monthly close), the retainer is priced well below the catch-up tier you just finished — flat against a month, not against the recovery. The specific number comes with a short intro call, because pricing it on this page would pretend we could quote it without knowing the shape of your monthly volume. We will not invent a number here that we have not set with you yet.
For comparison, the market for bookkeeping-as-a-service typically falls in the four-figure-per-year range for a small business. The cleanup you just finished will have been a multiple of that — so the recurring lever is the small number, not the big one.
What triggers a re-engagement
When a steady-state file drifts again, and what counts as a re-engagement.
Not exhaustive — but these are the ones we see most. Any of them is a signal to come back for another catch-up before the file drifts back into the backlog shape we just pulled it out of.
- The nested graph goes more than 30 days stale — reconciliations stop happening and the file drifts again.
- A new entity, a multi-currency switch, or a new merchant processor is added on top of what we cleaned.
- Ownership changes, a partner leaves, or the LLC elects to convert — anything that restructures the chart.
- A sale, a refinance, an outside audit request, or due diligence on the books — anything that needs a clean snapshot from the prior period.
- Your CPA flags a prior-period ambiguity that needs a one-week deep look rather than a one-line answer.
- A back-to-school or season-on / season-off pattern doubles the transaction volume for a quarter and the file falls behind again.
Next step
Decide where the file goes next.
If you are still scoping a first cleanup, send the intake and we will come back inside 48 hours with a written scope. If you are already a client and want to see what is on the file today, the dashboard is where steady-state lives.
For signed-in clients.