Plan a catch-up bookkeeping project for neglected books
Scopes and sequences cleanup of months or years of unreconciled books, with a document list, estimate, and quality checks.
The prompt
Help me plan catch-up bookkeeping for a business whose books are behind.
Business: [type, entity type, size, transaction volume per month]
How far behind: [e.g. "nothing reconciled since last March", "last tax return filed for 2023"]
What exists: [bank feeds imported but uncategorized / partial spreadsheet / nothing]
Accounts involved: [bank, credit cards, loans, merchant processors, payroll]
Deadline driving this: [tax filing, loan application, sale of business, investor request]
Last known good balances: [e.g. "last filed tax return's balance sheet"]
Plan:
1. Starting point: which balances to anchor to (last filed return or last reconciled period) and how to confirm them.
2. Document list to request from the client, prioritized.
3. Sequence: bank and card reconciliations first, then payment processors and loans, then payroll, then AR/AP and accruals if accrual basis, then review.
4. Common traps: transfers booked as income, loan proceeds booked as revenue, owner personal spending, duplicated bank feed imports, merchant deposits recorded net of fees.
5. Quality checks before handing over: every account reconciled, suspense/uncategorized at zero, balance sheet reasonableness.
Return:
1. A phased work plan with estimated hours per phase (show your assumptions so I can adjust).
2. The client document request list.
3. A short scope paragraph I can put in a quote, with exclusions.
4. Risks to flag to the client up front (e.g. amended returns may be needed - [REFER TO TAX PREPARER]).
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Finance & Accounting prompts
What to fill in
- type, entity type, size, transaction volume per month
- bank, credit cards, loans, merchant processors, payroll
- e.g. "last filed tax return's balance sheet"
- REFER TO TAX PREPARER
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
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