Behind on your books? Don't worry. We can help you.

Yes. A year is a common starting point, and the work is the same whether you are three months or three years behind: rebuild each month from the statements, reconcile it, then move to the next. What sets the pace is how quickly the statements arrive, not how messy things look. Most banks let you download past statements online, which is usually the fastest route.

If the tax deadline is close, the return can be put on extension while the books are finished. That gives more time to file, not more time to pay, so the plan is set at the start. Business deadlines are covered on the business returns page.

It moves in a fixed order, so you always know where the job stands. The steps below show the sequence. The key point is that nothing is guessed: every figure in the books ties back to a bank or card statement, and anything that cannot be matched gets a question, not an assumption. You answer those questions once, in a single list, rather than in a stream of emails.

• Bank statements for every business account, for every month you are behind.
• Credit card and loan statements for the same months.
• Any income records: invoices, 1099s you received, sales or merchant reports.
• Your last filed tax return, if there is one.
• Access to your QuickBooks or other software, if you started a file.
• Any IRS or Texas Comptroller letters you received.

Receipts are welcome but not required to begin. If you mixed personal and business spending on one card, send it anyway; separating the two is part of the job.

Lachezar Velev rebuilds and reconciles the books. He holds a BBA in Accounting from the University of Houston and has years of experience with reconciliations, financial records, reporting and financial fraud detection, which is useful when old statements turn up charges no one recognizes. Blaga Veleva, EA, then reviews the finished books and prepares the return. As an Enrolled Agent, she can also speak to the IRS for you if the late books have already led to letters. Learn more on the about page.

The returns are prepared from the finished books: a full Schedule C and personal return for a sole proprietor, or the partnership or corporate return for an entity. If returns are late, filing stops the failure-to-file penalty from growing; the IRS charges 5% of the unpaid tax for each month or partial month late, up to 25% (IRS failure to file penalty).

Penalty relief may help. First Time Abate covers earlier years, and the IRS's Automatic Exemption from Penalty applies to 2025 and later returns (IRS penalty relief). Several missing years? Read unfiled tax returns next.

You leave with a simple system set up for how your business actually runs. That usually means one account and one card used only for business, a clear way to save receipts, and a short monthly routine. Some owners keep the books themselves after that, with QuickBooks training from Blaga, a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and QuickBooks help when they get stuck. Others hand monthly bookkeeping to the firm, with monthly or quarterly profit and loss statements, so this never piles up again. Either way, the next tax season starts with books that are already done.