What Does Catch-Up Bookkeeping Cost for a Rental Portfolio?

What actually drives the price?

Six things, and property count is not the first of them:

• How many months you are behind. The most direct driver. Catch-up is priced per month of backlog because each month is a discrete piece of work: import, categorize, tag, split, reconcile, close.
• Transactions per month. A long-term rental with one rent deposit and four bills is a different month than a short-term rental with forty payouts, cleaning invoices, and supply runs. This is the driver that separates two portfolios with identical door counts.
• Condition of the records. Complete downloadable statements are the easy case. Missing periods, closed accounts, or a platform that no longer exposes its history all add time before any bookkeeping happens.
• Number of entities and accounts. Each LLC needs its own reconciled set. Each bank account, card, and connected platform is another feed to tie out.
• Whether prior books exist. Correcting an existing file can be faster than starting from nothing, or considerably slower if the existing categorization has to be unwound first. Both happen.
• Events inside the period. A purchase, a sale, or a refinance means a closing statement to allocate, and those are the entries most often done wrong or skipped entirely.

Why is it priced by transactions instead of properties?

Because the work is the transactions. A door does not create bookkeeping; activity does. Our pricing page makes the same point about ongoing service, and it applies with more force to a catch-up, where the whole job is processing historical activity month by month.

“Nobody can quote a catch-up off a property count. Two five-door portfolios can differ by a factor of five in the work they actually contain.”

Short-term rentals are the clearest illustration. One long-term rental generates a rent deposit, a mortgage payment, and the occasional repair. One short-term rental generates platform payouts that each bundle gross rent, service fees, cleaning income, and collected lodging tax, and every one of those payouts has to be split before the books mean anything. We walk through that untangling in how to untangle Airbnb payouts.

How does Real Cents Organized price catch-up?

Catch-up is billed per month of backlog, added on top of the ongoing monthly plan, and once you are current you return to your regular rate. The ongoing plan itself is set by transaction volume, starting at $124.95 per month, with a one-time setup of $44.95 per property to build the chart of accounts and configure the file. Current figures for every tier live on the pricing page, and the catch-up and cleanup page covers the service itself.

What that includes for each backlog month: transactions imported and categorized, every transaction tagged to its property, mortgage payments split into principal, interest, and escrow, platform payouts split into their components, the month reconciled to the bank statement, and the period closed with a stated reconciled-through date. A reconciled month is the unit of work. A pile of categorized transactions that has never been tied to a statement is not the same thing, and it is worth asking any bookkeeper you talk to which one they are quoting.

How do I get an accurate number?

By counting, not estimating. The honest sequence is a short call to scope the portfolio, a look at real statements to establish actual monthly transaction volume, and then a number. Quoting a catch-up from a property count and a vague sense of “a couple of years” produces a figure that is either too high for the client or too low to do the work properly, and both of those end badly.

What to have ready for that conversation: how many months you are behind, how many entities and bank accounts are involved, whether the rentals are long-term or short-term, which software the books are in (if any), and whether anything was bought, sold, or refinanced during the period. Those five answers get most of the way to a real scope. If you want to see what the work involves before talking about price, what actually happens in a catch-up covers the process end to end.

The Bottom Line

Catch-up bookkeeping is priced per month of backlog, and the size of each month is set by transaction volume, record condition, and how many entities and accounts are in play. Real Cents Organized bills catch-up per backlog month on top of the ongoing plan, which starts at $124.95 per month by transaction volume, with $44.95 one-time setup per property. Anyone giving you a firm catch-up price from a door count alone is guessing, and the fix is a short call and a look at real statements.

Real Cents Organized is a bookkeeping firm. We rebuild and organize the records; your CPA determines the filing position for any year involved.

Frequently asked questions

Is catch-up bookkeeping charged separately from monthly bookkeeping?

Yes. Catch-up is billed per month of historical backlog and sits on top of the ongoing monthly plan while the cleanup runs. Once the books are current, the catch-up charge ends and you continue on the regular monthly rate. Current figures for both are published on the Real Cents Organized pricing page.

Why will nobody quote me a catch-up price over the phone?

Because the price depends on transaction volume, and nobody knows your volume until someone looks at real statements. A quote given before that is either padded to cover the unknown or too low to complete the work properly. A short call plus a look at a representative month or two turns the guess into a number.

Does a short-term rental cost more to catch up than a long-term rental?

Usually, and it is about transactions rather than the property type itself. One STR payout bundles gross rent, platform fees, cleaning income, and collected lodging tax into a single deposit that has to be split before the books are usable. A long-term rental typically produces one rent deposit a month. More activity per door means more work per month.