For the books that do not fit a monthly close
Special situations
Finbryn handles the bookkeeping situations a normal monthly close does not cover: years of backlog, missing records, a competitor shutdown, a dormant entity, a wind-down, or several franchise units needing one consolidated view. Every engagement is reviewed by a senior principal, inside QuickBooks Online or Xero, in a file you keep.
Bank reconciliation summary
Illustrative client · August 2026
USD
| Account | Difference | Status | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating account··4821 | 184,220.16 | 184,220.16 | 0.00 | Reconciled |
| Reserve account··0937 | 60,000.00 | 60,000.00 | 0.00 | Reconciled |
| Company card··1006 | (12,418.52) | (12,418.52) | 0.00 | Reconciled |
| Card processor clearing | 8,905.40 | 8,905.40 | 0.00 | Reconciled |
| Payroll clearing | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | Reconciled |
Last weekly runFri, Aug 28, every account agreed to its statement.
Two open itemsTwo card receipts requested from you, marked on the card account until they arrive.
Illustrative. An example of the document, not a client's figures.
Bookkeeping for situations, not just months
Most outsourced bookkeeping is built around one thing: a monthly close on time, every time. Special situations are different. A business shows up with three years of unreconciled statements, or its previous provider closed with no warning, or an entity has sat dormant since a founder moved on to something else. None of that fits a standard onboarding flow, so Finbryn scopes each one as its own engagement, with its own timeline, before any work begins.
The common thread across multi-year catch-up, records reconstruction and the dormant-company and wind-down work is the same discipline we apply to a routine month: every transaction traced to a bank, card or processor statement, every adjustment written down, and a clean handover of the file itself. For a business coming off a shuttered provider, switching from Bench or switching from Botkeeper means rebuilding continuity from whatever export survived, not starting the historical record over from scratch.
Some of this work touches a federal return. Under IRC Section 7216, a client's written consent is required before any US tax return information is shared with anyone who works on it, and the return itself is filed by a credentialed signer or licensed partner, never by Finbryn. A dormant LLC, a foreign-owned entity winding down, or a franchise group consolidating several units all keep that same line: the books and the numbers are ours to prepare, the signature is the client's preparer to give.
Franchise and multi-entity owners get one consolidated set of reports built from clean per-unit books, not a spreadsheet stitched together at quarter end. See pricing for how a special-situations engagement is scoped and quoted, or read how it works for what the first weeks of a catch-up or reconstruction project actually look like.
All services
Special situations: every service
- Multi-year catch-upBringing several years of unreconciled or missing books current in one structured engagement, scoped and timed before the work starts.
- Records reconstructionRebuilding a business's financial history from bank statements, receipts and other source documents when the original books are incomplete, lost or unreliable.
- Switching from BenchSupport moving your books and history out of Bench and into a QuickBooks Online or Xero file you control, for businesses affected by Bench's shutdown and its later reopening under new ownership.
- Switching from BotkeeperSupport moving off Botkeeper's automated bookkeeping platform, which discontinued service, into a QuickBooks Online or Xero file reviewed by a named team.
- Switching from PilotSupport moving your books and financial history out of Pilot and into a QuickBooks Online or Xero file you own, keeping the monthly close cadence you already have.
- Switching from QuickBooks LiveMoving from QuickBooks Live's assigned-bookkeeper model to a named team that stays consistent month to month, working inside the QuickBooks Online file you already own.
- Switching from CrunchSupport for founders who used Crunch for a UK-registered company and now need bookkeeping set up on the US side, in QuickBooks Online or Xero, independent of the UK file.
- Dormant company bookkeepingBookkeeping and reporting for an entity that is registered but not actively trading, so required filings can still be prepared and stay current until it reactivates or winds down.
- Wind-down exit packA structured close-out of the books and records when a business is winding down or dissolving, so the final return, the final state filings and the exit itself all rest on numbers that reconcile.
- Franchise and multi-entity consolidationBookkeeping across multiple franchise units or related entities, each location's books kept separately and then rolled up into one consolidated view.
Questions
Frequently asked questions: Special situations
Do you handle bookkeeping backlogs of more than one year?
Yes. Multi-year catch-up is a named service here, scoped by the number of backlog periods and the state of the underlying records.
Our old bookkeeping provider shut down. Can you take over from where they left off?
Yes, for Bench, Botkeeper, Pilot, QuickBooks Live and similar transitions, using whatever export and prior reports survived the handover.
What happens to a US company that is registered but not trading?
It usually still owes a federal return and a state annual report even with zero activity; we prepare the books and numbers, and a credentialed signer or the state filing agent handles the actual filing.
Can you consolidate bookkeeping across several franchise locations or related entities?
Yes. Each unit keeps its own books on the same monthly schedule, and we roll them into a consolidated profit and loss and balance sheet.
What software do you use for catch-up, cleanup and switch projects?
Work happens inside whichever platform your business already runs, most often QuickBooks Online or Xero, with Dext or Hubdoc used to rebuild a receipt trail where paperwork was never captured the first time around. Nothing moves to a proprietary system, so you keep the file if the engagement ends.
How long does a multi-year catch-up or switch usually take?
A month-by-month completion plan is agreed at the start rather than a single delivery date, because the pace depends on how complete the source records are and how many months or years are involved. Milestones are shared as each block of months clears.
How is catch-up or switching work priced?
These projects are priced separately from ongoing monthly bookkeeping, scoped against the number of months or years involved and the condition of the existing records, and agreed before work starts rather than billed by the hour as issues turn up.
What happens to the handover once a special-situation project is finished?
A written summary covering every adjustment made, the opening balances agreed, and any open item still outstanding is handed over, and the business moves onto ongoing monthly bookkeeping from that point rather than repeating the catch-up work later.
Next step
Talk to the team that would run your books
A short call covers your setup, your software and what a first month would look like. You get a written scope and price after it.