The good news is that gathering what’s needed is usually simpler than people expect. Most of the heavy lifting falls on your bookkeeper, not on you. Your job is to provide the raw source documents so they can reconstruct an accurate picture of your finances.

Bank statements are the foundation. You need statements for every business bank account covering the entire period that needs to be caught up. If your books are two years behind, that means two years of statements. Most banks let you download these as PDFs directly from online banking, going back several years. If you used personal accounts for business transactions during that time, include those statements too and flag which transactions were business-related.

Credit card statements come next. Same idea as bank statements. Every business credit card, every month that’s behind. If you ran business expenses through a personal card, pull those statements and identify the business charges.

Sales records and invoices matter for tracking revenue accurately. If you use a point-of-sale system, payment processor like Square or Stripe, or invoicing software, your bookkeeper will need access or exported reports. For cash-based businesses, any logs or records of cash sales are important even if they’re informal.

Receipts for expenses help with proper categorization, especially for larger purchases. Don’t panic if you’ve lost most of your receipts. Bank and credit card statements provide the transaction detail needed to categorize spending. Receipts mainly help clarify what a purchase actually was when the statement description is vague. If you have them, great. If not, your bookkeeper can work with what’s available and ask you about anything unclear.

Prior year tax returns give your bookkeeper a starting point. They show how income and expenses were reported previously, what asset depreciation schedules exist, and whether there are carryforward items that affect current-year books. Even if the returns were filed with messy books behind them, they’re still useful context.

Loan documents and financing agreements are needed if you have any outstanding business debt. Your bookkeeper needs to know the original amounts, interest rates, and payment schedules to record principal and interest correctly.

Any 1099 forms you received or issued help verify contractor payments and miscellaneous income. Payroll reports from your payroll provider (if applicable) round out the picture on the expense side.

Finally, if you have an existing QuickBooks Online file or other accounting software, your bookkeeper will need login access. Even if the data inside is incomplete or messy, it’s a starting point that saves time compared to building from scratch.

Don’t let the length of this list intimidate you. A small business accounting firm that handles catch-up work regularly will walk you through exactly what they need and in what format. Most of it takes an afternoon to pull together, and your bookkeeper handles everything from there.

The biggest thing to avoid is waiting until everything is perfectly organized before reaching out. Catch-up bookkeeping exists precisely because life got in the way of keeping tidy records. Hand over what you have, answer questions as they come up, and let the professionals sort it out.