Before you pay for anything, you should know what it checks and what a bad result would even look like. So here’s the list.
There are 12 checks. These are the five that turn up real problems most often.
Can your income be proven?
Recorded income and provable income are two different things. The check traces revenue back to actual invoices and receipts and reports what percentage survives that.
Deposits with nothing behind them are the most common serious finding. They matter in both directions: you can end up paying tax on money that was not income, or reporting revenue you can’t support if anyone asks for backup.
Do your accounts reconcile?
Every bank and card account, tested against the real statements. This is the check everything else leans on, because if your records and your bank disagree, no report built on top of them is trustworthy.
What’s parked in the bank feed?
Transactions sitting unreviewed in the queue. They don’t appear on your reports at all until somebody categorizes them, which means your profit and loss can be missing a large piece of the picture while looking complete.
How those get cleared can swing your reported income hard. That’s why the check counts them.
Is personal money tangled up in the business?
Owner draws filed as expenses. Transfers between your own accounts counted as income. Personal spending on the business card. Each one distorts profit in a way that looks ordinary on a report.
Was the file set up correctly?
Opening balances, the chart of accounts, how loans and liabilities were entered. Setup problems are easy to miss. They make it impossible for things to balance, and people usually blame themselves when the setup was the cause.
What a bad result looks like in practice
One real file, details changed to protect the owner. I’ve written about this one before in what I found the first time I opened a client’s real books, so here I’ll just give you the scoreboard:
- About 15% of recorded income could be traced to a source document
- Roughly two thirds of the year’s revenue was deposits with nothing behind them
- 94 transactions sat unreviewed in the bank feed
- Clearing that queue the obvious way would have doubled reported income
- The checking account had at one point shown a negative balance inside the file
Every headline number on that profit and loss looked reasonable. The problems were all one layer down, and that’s what this check is built to find.
What you get
A fixed 12-point check run inside your actual QuickBooks file. A written report in plain English. A clear scope of what it would take to fix whatever turns up. Back to you within five business days.
$49.99.
If you aren’t satisfied, I refund it. All of it, no forms and no argument.
Whether you should buy it at all
Take the free quiz first. 12 questions, about two minutes, and your score comes right back to you.
If the quiz says your books are in decent shape, believe it and keep your $49.99. I’d rather you spend it on something you need.
Take the free Books Health Quiz