Months behind, or years. Either way it's fixable, the fee is quoted before anything starts, and nobody is going to make you feel bad about it. This is more common than you think.
Get a fixed quote →Being behind on the books is one of those problems that grows in your head faster than it grows in reality. Two years of unreconciled transactions is more work than two months. It is the same work.
What actually makes catch-up harder isn't elapsed time — it's missing records. Bank statements can always be obtained. Purchase invoices, once lost, limit what VAT can be reclaimed. So the useful thing you can do today is stop worrying about the months and start collecting the paperwork.
Catch-up work is priced on the state of the records, so a fixed fee comes after someone has looked at them, not before. Anyone quoting a number without seeing the Xero file is guessing, and the number will change later.
The main drivers: transaction volume, how many bank accounts and card feeds there are, whether VAT is involved, and what paperwork survives. It's normally priced per month or per quarter brought up to date, so you can see exactly what you're buying.
Ongoing bookkeeping, if you want it afterwards, is £199 + VAT a month and quoted entirely separately. See what UK bookkeeping typically costs.
Thirty minutes. What software, how far back, how many accounts, what's missing. No judgement, and no obligation.
Priced per period being caught up, agreed in writing before anything starts. If the records turn out worse than they looked, you're told before extra work happens — not afterwards on an invoice.
Historic transactions coded, bank accounts reconciled, supplier and customer ledgers rebuilt, VAT position established period by period.
A clean Xero file, a trial balance you can hand to an accountant, a clear statement of the VAT position, and a list of anything that couldn't be resolved and why.
Estimated or missed returns can be corrected. HMRC treats errors differently depending on whether they're disclosed voluntarily or discovered during a compliance check — so the position is generally better if you come forward first.
Either way, the starting point is the same: establish what the correct figures actually are. That's what this work produces. Where the position is complex, it goes to a UK Chartered Accountancy firm we work with — Corporation Tax and Self Assessment sit outside CIMA's scope of practice.
Companies House and HMRC penalties escalate, and Companies House late filing penalties double if it happens two years running. If you're near a filing date, say so at the start — the order the work is done in changes.
Work runs on your existing Xero, so location isn't a constraint. We're based at Clopton near Oundle and work across Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and the surrounding counties in person where that helps.
The free Bookkeeping Health Check scores your books out of 100 and lists what's wrong. No login, nothing uploaded, no obligation — and it's a useful starting point before any conversation about cost.
Run the free Health Check → Or book 30 minutes and get a fixed quote