Lost Your Bookkeeper? The First 72 Hours, and What to Buy Next
Bruno the Bear
The short answer: When a bookkeeper leaves, don't start by hiring another one. Start by listing the jobs they were doing — coding, closing, payroll, bill approval, collections, the tax-preparer relationship. Revoke their access, find the next hard deadline, then buy only what's left on the list. Most companies need less than they expect.
Who this is for: you had a bookkeeper, a bookkeeping firm, or an outsourced provider, and now you don't. If you're pre-revenue with fewer than thirty transactions a month, skip to the last section — you need software and two hours a month, not a hire.
Nobody writes about the part you're in
There is plenty written about spotting a bad bookkeeper. There is plenty written about choosing a new provider.
There is almost nothing written about the four weeks in between, when there is nobody in the seat and month-end is coming anyway.
That's the part that costs money. So that's where this starts.
Hour one: revoke access
Bank, payroll, accounting software, bill pay, the credit-card portal, and any email alias they used.
Do it the same day, and do it even if you parted on good terms. This isn't about suspicion. It's about the fact that you now own everything that happens in those accounts, and you can't own what you can't see.
One thing founders miss: bank feeds are often connected under the departing person's login. Revoke it and your transactions silently stop importing. Reconnect the feed under an account you control.
Day one: find the next hard date
Something has a deadline and no owner right now.
Usually it's payroll. Sometimes it's a sales-tax filing, a 1099 run, or a loan covenant that needs a statement by a certain day.
Find that one thing and solve just that one thing. Do not try to fix the whole finance function this week. You'll do it badly and you'll miss the deadline anyway.
Week one: write down what they actually did
This is the step that changes the outcome, and almost nobody does it.
The person who left was doing a bundle of jobs assembled over years. Write the list. It usually looks something like this:
- Coding transactions and keeping the ledger tidy
- Reconciling the bank and card accounts each month
- Closing the month and producing the statements
- Running payroll and filing the payroll taxes
- Entering and approving bills, then paying them
- Invoicing customers and chasing the ones who don't pay
- Answering the tax preparer once a year
Now mark each line: still needs a person, software already does it, or it's mine now.
In our experience two things fall out of that exercise. The bundle is smaller than it felt — often ten to fifteen hours a month rather than a full role. And at least one line has quietly been done by nobody for a while.
Week two: buy exactly what's left
Only now is the hiring question a real question.
The short version of the hire order: a bookkeeper records what happened. A controller makes sure what's recorded is right and closes the month properly. A CFO decides what to do about it.
Most companies under roughly ten million in revenue need the first, sometimes the second, and rarely the third on a full-time basis. We've written the long version of that decision, including when the honest answer is to hire down rather than up, in Bookkeeper, Controller, or CFO: What You Actually Need.
The thing that will bite you
Your history.
If your books lived inside a provider's own system rather than in an account you own, you may not be able to take five years of ledger with you. Some providers export cleanly. Some hand you a spreadsheet that is technically your data and practically useless.
Check this before you sign with anyone new, because the answer changes who you should sign with. We've covered how to do the handover in How to Switch Bookkeepers Without Losing Your History.
Want the shortcut?
Our free Books-Cleanup Assessment is a 30-minute look at where your books actually stand and what it would take to get current — findings in writing, yours to keep either way. Or, if you'd rather hand the whole thing over, that's exactly what we do. Talk to Ursa at info@ursaconsultants.com.