A CARES Works service · Bookkeeping

Clean Books in 7 Days.

Three years of reconciled, lender-ready, buyer-ready financials. One week. One price. The clock starts when we have the keys.

Price$20,000 flat. Half to reserve your week, half on delivery.

Timeline7 business days from full access. Not from signing. From access.

You getReconciled books, P&L and Balance Sheet by year, a cleanup memo, a handoff call.

Kari Hoglund Kounkel
CARES Consulting, Inc.
Minnesota · 35 years in operations

Who this is for

This is built for an owner with a deadline that has someone else's name on it. Four doors into the same room:

You're selling the business. The buyer's CPA just asked for three clean years and the LOI has a date on it.

You're closing on a bank or SBA loan. The lender wants financials that agree with the tax returns, and the rate lock doesn't care that your bookkeeper quit.

Your books collapsed. The bookkeeper vanished, the bank feed stopped in March, payroll is on fire, and a tax deadline is breathing on your neck.

You run a nonprofit facing an audit or a grant report. The auditor has a calendar. The funder has a form. Neither one is flexible.

If none of those is you, you probably want the monthly bookkeeping engagement instead, and it costs a great deal less. Ask.

What's included

Area	What we do
Bank and credit card accounts	Reconcile every account, every month, for up to 36 months. Kill the duplicates, find the missing, match the feeds.
Categorization	Every transaction landed in the right account. Chart of accounts tidied so a banker or buyer can read it without a decoder ring.
Balance sheet	Undeposited Funds cleared. Opening balances fixed. Loans, credit lines, and owner draws stated correctly. Suspense and "Ask My Accountant" emptied.
AR and AP	Old open invoices and bills resolved, written off, or flagged for you to decide.
Year-end	Books tied to the filed tax returns for each year in scope. Differences documented, not hidden.
Deliverables	Reconciled QuickBooks Online file. Year-by-year P&L and Balance Sheet. A plain-language cleanup memo listing what we fixed, what we found, and what still needs your decision. One 60-minute handoff call.

What's not included

Scope walls are how the seven days stay seven days. These are available as add-ons or separate engagements:

Amended tax returns, or preparing any tax return
Payroll corrections, re-runs, or amended payroll filings
Sales tax filings or amnesty work
1099 preparation or corrections
Inventory counts or valuation
More than one legal entity (multi-entity cleanups are quoted separately)
Forensic or fraud investigation
Ongoing monthly bookkeeping after delivery (we'd love to; it's a different agreement)
Migration from software other than QuickBooks Online (quoted on review)

When the 7 days start

Day 1 is the first business day after we receive everything on this list. Nothing arrives by email; it all comes through the CARES Works portal, where you connect your bank and your QuickBooks directly and the checklist turns green as each piece lands. If the list arrives in pieces, the clock waits for the last piece. That protects you as much as us: a week that starts before we can see your bank is not a week.

Admin access to your QuickBooks Online file
Bank and credit card connections for every account in scope
Filed tax returns for each year in scope
Payroll summaries by quarter
Loan and line-of-credit statements
A kickoff on the calendar, on site or on video, with the person who can answer questions
The deposit, cleared

Terms

Item	How it works
Deposit	$10,000 reserves your week. Non-refundable once work begins.
Balance	$10,000 due on delivery of the cleanup memo and financials.
On site	Day 1 kickoff and access-gathering on site within the Twin Cities metro is included. Beyond that, travel at cost, and it's still a yes.
Scope changes	Anything outside the included list is quoted before we touch it. No surprise invoices.
Access delays	If access stalls more than 5 business days, your reserved week is released and rescheduled to the next opening.
Delivery promise	Optional, Kari's call: if we miss day 7 after full access, $1,000 comes off the balance for every business day we're late.

Why CARES

Thirty-five years running operations in a family transportation company, then a consulting practice built on bookkeeping, HR, and systems for owners who'd rather run the business than reconcile it. The person cleaning your books has signed the front of a paycheck and the back of a bank covenant. That changes what "clean" means.

Read first, if you want to see how we think

Next step

Book a 20-minute fit call. Bring the deadline and the name of whoever set it. We'll tell you in that call whether seven days is realistic for your file, and if it isn't, we'll tell you that too.

Book the fit call →