Tools · cost estimator

What might your books repair cost? An honest band, not a fake number.

Cleanup, catch-up, or both — this estimator places your situation inside our published $1,800–$6,000 one-time range using the drivers you can actually know from outside the file: months, accounts, volume, and what's at stake in the gap. Ranges out, never a single dollar figure — the math is published below.

Runs in your browser; nothing you enter leaves the page. Every figure is our own published pricing — no market averages, no invented precision.

Published ranges only The math, in the open

What moves the band

Months & accounts

Periods interact rather than stack — more months and more accounts move the band more than linearly.

Volume & the both-case

Transaction count sizes the pass; behind-AND-wrong adds the interleaving work of two jobs on one file.

Liabilities in scope

Payroll or collected sales tax raises the prove-it standard on those accounts — and the band with it.

The math, in the open

Exactly how your inputs move the band.

No black box: every result starts at the $1,800 cleanup floor. Up to 12 months in scope the estimate is the published $1,800–$6,000 band, and your points say where in it your file is likely to sit; more than 12 months sits above it. Score yourself if you prefer.

Estimator drivers: the points each adds and why it moves the price
Driver	Points	Why it moves the price
Months affected	Up to 3 = 0 · 4–12 = 1 · more than 12 = above the published band	Periods interact rather than stack — each unproven month corrupts the next month's starting point.
Accounts involved	1–2 = 0 · 3–5 = 1 · 6+ = 2	Every account is its own reconciliation per month — the work multiplies across them.
Transaction volume	Light = 0 · Moderate = 1 · Heavy = 2	Volume sizes the categorization and matching pass inside every month.
Liabilities in scope	Yes = +1	Payroll and collected-tax accounts get rebuilt to a prove-it standard — other parties rely on them.
Behind and wrong	+1	Two jobs interleaved on one file — the missing months and the drifted ones untangle together.

The result: every estimate starts at the cleanup floor, $1,800. Up to 12 months in scope it reads $1,800–$6,000, the published range, and your points say where in it your file is likely to sit: 0–2 points, the lower part; 3–4, the middle; 5 or more, the upper part. More than 12 months reads $6,000+ — scoped individually: see bookkeeping cleanup. "Records gone" skips the scoring entirely — that's reconstruction, priced from what survives, not from a formula. The review sometimes finds a smaller job, a QuickBooks-file-only cleanup or a tidy gap with the answer "do it yourself, here's the free method." The full mechanics of why repairs cost what they cost — error density, the compounding math, what makes quotes vary between firms — are in the cleanup cost guide and its QuickBooks twin; all published figures also live on the pricing page, dated. Illustrative estimate — not a quote; your fixed fee is set in writing after the free books review.

FAQ · Updated October 2026

How the estimate works: your questions.

Where do the estimator's ranges come from?

From our own published pricing, nowhere else. A one-time books repair — cleanup, catch-up, or both — is published at $1,800–$6,000 for up to 12 months in scope; the cleanup page and our pricing page carry the same numbers, dated and standing. Every result starts at the $1,800 floor. Up to 12 months, the estimate is that published band, and your other answers say where in it your file is likely to sit; more than 12 months reads $6,000+, scoped individually. It never invents a market average and never outputs a figure our own pages don't already publish.

Why does it give a range instead of an exact number?

Because an exact number produced before anyone opens your file would be theater, and an instant quote made without the file has nothing to hold it in place. The honest cost drivers — how deep the drift runs inside recorded months, how the errors interact, what the diagnostic actually finds — are visible only in the file itself. So the estimator narrows the published band using what you can genuinely know from the outside, and the free review turns that band into one fixed number in writing. Anyone offering more precision from five inputs is selling the later surprise.

Does the estimate commit me — or you — to anything?

Neither, in both directions. It's an illustrative estimate, not a quote: the review sometimes finds a smaller job than a books repair (a QuickBooks-file-only cleanup, or a tidy gap that's genuinely DIY-able — and we say so), and a file with drift the inputs couldn't see can scope higher, explained line by line before anything starts. The number that binds is the one in writing after the free review — fixed, never hourly, no rush fees. The tool exists so you walk into that conversation calibrated, not so it replaces the conversation.

Why does 'records gone' show no dollar band?

Because that answer changes the job's nature, not just its size. When records are missing entirely, cost is driven by what your bank, processor, and payroll provider can still produce — which no formula can see from here — and by whether the recovery check finds a copy that shrinks the whole job. That's financial reconstruction, scoped after the free review reads what survived. Showing you a band for it would be exactly the invented precision this tool exists to avoid.

Is anything I enter stored or sent anywhere?

No. The estimator runs entirely in your browser — no inputs are submitted, stored, or connected to you. The single thing recorded is an anonymous analytics event noting that a result appeared and where it landed (lower, middle or upper part of the band, above it, or the reconstruction route), so we can tell whether the tool earns its place — never your answers, never anything identifying. Your situation gets shared with us only if and when you choose to book the review.

Ready for the band to become one fixed number in writing? The free assessment — your real file, read by us.

What might your books repair cost? An honest band, not a fake number.

Five inputs, one honest band.

Exactly how your inputs move the band.

How the estimate works: your questions.