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You can’t price what you haven’t figured out yet.
Cleanup work is difficult to price when you do not yet understand the file.
BrokenBooks turns the diagnostic answers into a report and cleanup plan. Your firm reviews the findings, evidence and unresolved questions, then uses that assessment to define the work and apply its pricing.
Understand the file. Define the work. Apply your firm’s pricing judgment.
The commercial workflow stays connected to the accounting context.
BrokenBooks includes findings-linked scope preparation, cleanup/rebuild pricing support, proposal drafting and preview, client response/signature, supported deposit checkout, and explicit engagement launch. The professional still controls what work is proposed and how it is priced.
Because the ‘quick cleanup’ is rarely quick.
The visible problem is not always the whole problem.
An account marked reconciled may still require investigation into how the reconciliation was completed. Opening Balance Equity may contain entries that need explanation. Undeposited Funds may hold unresolved items spanning multiple periods.
An issue in one area can also create corrective work across several accounts or months.
When a firm estimates the cleanup before investigating those conditions, it risks pricing work around an incomplete understanding of the file.
That can leave the bookkeeper absorbing hours the original estimate never accounted for.
Define the scope from documented findings.
The built-in diagnostic generates a cleanup plan from the assessment, giving your firm a starting point for deciding what to propose.
For each potential area of work, the reviewer needs to understand:
- What was found.
- What evidence supports the finding.
- What corrective work may be required.
- Which accounts or periods may be affected.
- What remains unresolved.
- What information or action is needed from the client.
The report and cleanup plan keep the findings and supporting context together, ready for your firm to review.
Use that foundation to prepare the scope instead of writing it again from scattered notes or building a separate spreadsheet of proposed work.
A finding informs scope. The reviewer decides what work belongs in the engagement.
Make unresolved questions visible before committing to the work.
Some cleanup work cannot be fully defined until the client provides additional information.
An unresolved question may affect the extent of the correction, the periods involved, or the work required to complete it.
Keeping those dependencies visible helps the firm decide whether it has enough information to price the work or needs further clarification first.
A structured diagnostic supports a more informed estimate. Professional judgment remains necessary when the file contains uncertainty.
Your firm controls the pricing decisions.
BrokenBooks does not decide what your cleanup work is worth.
Your firm remains responsible for its rates, pricing approach, assumptions, and final commercial decisions.
The pricing workflow uses defined cleanup scope and your firm’s pricing configuration to support a repeatable process.
Keep the basis for the price connected to the work identified during the diagnostic, with final commercial decisions in your firm’s hands.
Explain how the scope connects to the price.
A cleanup proposal is easier to explain when the firm can connect the recommended work to documented findings.
That connection helps the client understand what the engagement includes and why the work is necessary.
It also gives the firm a clearer reference point if additional issues emerge later.
When the original scope is documented, the firm can compare newly identified work with what was included, explain the difference, and discuss any necessary changes with the client.
Carry the diagnostic context into the proposed engagement.
The diagnostic is the starting point for a connected commercial workflow:
Diagnostic findings → cleanup scope → firm-controlled pricing → proposal → client approval → cleanup work
Carry the findings into scope, firm-controlled pricing and the proposal, with payment handled alongside the engagement. The accepted scope provides the basis for the cleanup work.
As approved cleanup moves into execution, BrokenBooks creates tasks and posts client questions to the portal. Your firm carries out and reviews the accounting work without rebuilding the plan in another system.
Start with the diagnostic.
A clearer cleanup price starts with a clearer understanding of the file.
Explore the built-in diagnostic that turns review answers into a report and cleanup plan, with evidence and unresolved questions available for your firm’s review.
Built for bookkeeping and accounting professionals who scope and price cleanup work.
Prelaunch. In use at For The Love of Bookkeepers, with client-portal testing underway. Not yet available to other firms.
Get occasional BrokenBooks development news, feature updates, and launch announcements by email. No beta-testing obligation.
Built by Candice Thompson, founder of For The Love of Bookkeepers LLC
Built for the people who fix the books. QuickBooks Online diagnostic and cleanup workflow software.
