Built from the work of fixing the books.

Candice Thompson brings 25 years of accounting experience to BrokenBooks. Through For The Love of Bookkeepers, she has developed a structured approach to investigating complex QuickBooks Online files, tracing problems to their source and defining the cleanup work they need.

BrokenBooks puts that diagnostic process into software and connects it to the work that follows.

An established diagnostic process. Not another workspace to build yourself.

Knowing what to look for is only the beginning.

A useful review also needs supported conclusions, clear unresolved questions and a plan another professional can follow. BrokenBooks builds that structure into the diagnostic: the reviewer works through the questions, and the answers drive the findings, report and cleanup plan.

Candice had already built extensive templates, automations, and workflows across her firm. Yet Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dubsado, Hubdoc, Asana, Planner, Outlook, spreadsheets, messages, and calls still had to be coordinated to move a single engagement forward. The client also needed a simpler experience: one place to see progress, answer questions, provide documents, and know what came next.

BrokenBooks brings the diagnostic and the surrounding engagement together.

Build the process in. Keep professional judgment with the firm.

The goal is to give bookkeeping and accounting firms a repeatable review process, with the context needed to carry the work forward:

BrokenBooks turns the review into connected reports and work, rather than leaving the firm to assemble each piece separately. The bookkeeper or accountant still evaluates the evidence, reviews the results and takes responsibility for the accounting.

Read the system before touching the system.

Candice has spent her career becoming the person people call when the accounting stops making sense.

Not always because the books were completely destroyed.

Sometimes the file technically worked. Sometimes it reconciled. Sometimes reports could still be produced. And sometimes that was exactly the problem: everything looked functional enough that nobody stopped to ask whether the accounting could actually be trusted.

Her background spans remote bookkeeping, corporate accounts payable, full-charge bookkeeping, construction accounting, interim controller responsibilities, management accounting, public-sector reporting, accounting transitions, systems design, complex QuickBooks cleanup, reconstruction, and stabilization.

Across all of it, the pattern stayed remarkably consistent: when the process was broken, Candice built a better one.

Different environments. Same instinct.

The work was connected. The software wasn’t.

Client answers, documents, diagnostic findings, proposals, assignments, and conversations existed in different places. Every handoff risked losing context. Candice wanted the firm to manage the entire engagement in one system—and the client to have one consistent portal instead of another trail of emails, links, and logins.

The goal was never to make the books look clean. It was to make the accounting trustworthy.

For The Love of Bookkeepers became Candice’s proving ground for a diagnostic-first approach to accounting work.

That means understanding what actually happened before deciding what to fix. It means tracing structural problems back to their cause instead of simply making the visible symptom disappear. It means documenting uncertainty instead of pretending certainty exists. And it means leaving behind accounting that can continue to function after the cleanup is over.

The practice has included balance-sheet reconstruction, chart-of-accounts rebuilds, intercompany cleanup, owner-loan and equity reconstruction, payroll posting corrections, inventory and COGS work, reporting stabilization, financing and sale preparation, and files that had already been “cleaned” multiple times without resolving the root problem.

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The whole engagement needed a home.

From initial contact through intake, diagnostic investigation, findings, scope, proposals, cleanup, recurring bookkeeping, monthly close, year-end, and CPA handoff, the work needed to stay connected. The client needed one place for requests, documents, messages, updates, and next steps.

The diagnostic gives the work its direction. The connected engagement keeps that direction from getting lost between systems.

BrokenBooks brings the assessment, the work it generates and the client’s participation into the same system.

Not “AI accounting.” Not “click a button and let software decide.” And not another generic task manager wearing an accounting costume.

It is QuickBooks Online diagnostic and cleanup workflow software. The built-in diagnostic drives the report and cleanup plan; approved cleanup work generates tasks and client questions, with those questions posted to the client portal.

The system provides the structure. The professional provides the judgment.

BrokenBooks provides the questions and report structure, carries the findings into a cleanup plan, and generates the tasks and requests for approved cleanup work. Your firm evaluates the evidence, reviews the results, sets scope and pricing, and performs the accounting work.

The diagnostic is the foundation. The engagement stays connected.

BrokenBooks carries the review into reports, cleanup proposals, payment and execution, then into CPA preparation and ongoing bookkeeping. Tasks follow the client’s configured services and cadence through monthly and year-end close. Clients can follow diagnostic milestones, answer requests and access published results in their portal.

For firms doing QBO diagnostic and cleanup work, the value is an established process that carries forward, not a collection of empty task lists. Professional judgment stays with the firm, while the software handles the connected administrative steps.

Follow what BrokenBooks becomes next.

BrokenBooks is prelaunch. It is in use at For The Love of Bookkeepers, with client-portal testing underway, and is not yet available to other firms.