Short answer: Business and bank details, access to your accounting file, statements for the period being worked on, and payroll records if you have employees. You do not need any of it assembled before the first conversation — that call is how we find out what applies to you.
The working list looks like this.
Business basics: your legal entity name and structure, your EIN, your Washington UBI number, and your business license. If you operate under a trade name, both names.
Financial access: your accounting file if one exists, and read access or statements for every business bank account, credit card, loan, and merchant processor. Every account the business touches, including the one you forgot about.
The period being worked on: bank and card statements covering it. If we are catching you up on the last eighteen months, that means eighteen months of statements. Most banks let you download these as PDFs going back several years.
Payroll, if you have employees: recent payroll registers, quarterly filings, and your state agency account information.
Prior tax returns: the last filed business return, and personal if the two are connected. This tells us what position was already taken so the books stay consistent with it.
Two things worth saying. First, if some of this does not exist, that is normal and not a problem — missing records are a large part of what cleanup work is. Second, you will never be asked to email a password. Access is set up through the platforms’ own invitation flows, which means you can revoke it yourself at any time without changing your credentials.
If your records are genuinely scattered, bring what you can find to the consult and we will build the list from there.
Related: How do I switch bookkeepers? · How long does QuickBooks cleanup take? · Contact