Filing-ready is a condition with a test attached, not a feeling about how the year went. Books are filing-ready when the person preparing your return can work from them start to finish without emailing you a list of questions. That is the whole standard, and it is binary. One unexplained balance sheet line and you are not there.
In practice it comes down to six things. Every bank, credit card and loan account reconciles to the statement for every month of the period. No transaction sits uncategorised. Opening balance equity is zero. Undeposited funds is empty or explainable. Payroll in QuickBooks Online matches what the payroll provider filed, to the dollar. And every line on the balance sheet can be explained out loud by somebody, which is a lower bar than it sounds and the one most sets of books fail.
Why February 15
Because it gives your accountant a working month before the March and April crunch, and because a deadline without a date is a preference. Engage us by 1 December and your books are filing-ready for your accountant by 15 February. We quote that in full rather than shortening it, because the two dates are the point.
The gap between them is not padding. A year of cleanup for a single entity runs 2 to 6 weeks of actual work, and the variable is how quickly questions come back rather than how many transactions there are. Three rounds of questions across the holidays, with two of those weeks effectively gone to Christmas and New Year, is how 10 weeks becomes a realistic rather than a generous window.
What filing-ready is not
It is not a filed return, and it is not tax advice. We do not prepare or file returns. Filing-ready means the handoff is clean, so the person who does prepare your return spends their time on your return instead of on your bookkeeping at their hourly rate. Owners are frequently surprised to learn how much of their accountant’s invoice is bookkeeping cleanup billed as tax work.
It is also not permanent. Books are filing-ready as at a date. Left alone, they drift, which is why the cleanup conversation and the ongoing conversation are really one conversation held at two different moments.
If you are not sure where your books currently sit against those six tests, that is what the 20-minute call is for. We look at the actual file rather than asking you to assess it.
