The first 48 hours matter more than the backlog.
A bookkeeper leaving is an access problem before it is an accounting problem. Get the logins back, find out which months were actually reconciled, then decide who owns next month. In that order.
Three windows, in order.
Do these in sequence. Every hour spent on the backlog before you have access is an hour you may have to spend again.
Get access back before anything else
- Confirm you are the primary admin on the accounting file, not a user your bookkeeper invited.
- Remove the departing bookkeeper's access only after you have confirmed your own admin login works.
- Rotate the passwords that were shared, starting with email and the accounting file.
- Write down every system they touched. Payroll, payment processors, and the receipt inbox get forgotten first.
Find out what state the books are actually in
- Pull the last reconciliation report for every bank and card account and note the date it covers.
- Run a profit and loss and a balance sheet for the year to date. Look for the month where the numbers stop making sense.
- Check for uncleared items and anything sitting in an uncategorized or suspense account.
- List the questions only you can answer. Transfers, owner draws, and personal cards are usually most of them.
Decide who owns next month
- Separate the two jobs: catching up the months behind, and keeping the current month current.
- Tell your accountant the bookkeeper left and what the last trustworthy month is. They would rather hear it now than in March.
- Put the recurring deadlines on a calendar you own: sales tax, payroll filings, and estimated payments.
- Choose the option you can sustain, then get the current month closed before touching the backlog.
The four things people forget to ask for.
Ask while the relationship is still cordial. Access requests get slower every week after the last day, and some of these expire on their own.
QuickBooks admin
The account owner and the primary admin are separate roles, and a bookkeeper who set up the file may hold either one. Confirm the file is billed to your card and that you can add and remove users yourself. If the file was on their accountant subscription, it has to be transferred to you or exported before their access lapses.
Bank and card access
Give yourself a view-only or read-only login on every bank and card account, including the ones only the bookkeeper used. View-only is enough to reconcile and it keeps payment rights out of the accounting seat. Cancel any access the bookkeeper still holds, and check for bank feed connections that were made under their login.
Their files and reconciliations
Ask for the working files in writing: the reconciliation reports and statements for the last twelve months, the receipt and document store, any spreadsheets that fed a journal entry, and a plain list of open items. Reconciliations are the ones people forget to ask for, and they are what proves the books ever tied to the bank.
Payroll and sales tax status
Ask which filings are done, which are scheduled, and which are late, with the portal login for each. Payroll and sales tax carry their own deadlines and their own penalties, and they do not wait for you to sort out the bookkeeping. Prosper does not run payroll or file returns, so put these with your payroll provider or your accountant now, not later.
Stop guessing how far behind you are.
Connect your bank accounts, read-only, and Prosper imports the history and shows you the months that were never reconciled, the transactions nobody categorized, and the questions only you can answer. That list is what your accountant will ask for anyway, and it is a better answer than the one you will get from staring at the file.
If you want a person to own the monthly work
Prosper is software. It does the routine work and asks you what it cannot infer, but nobody at Prosper closes your month for you. If replacing the person is what you actually want, TidyMonth is a bookkeeping service that does the monthly work for $199 a month and puts any catch-up in writing as a fixed quote before anything is charged.
It is a separate service with its own intake, and it is a fair answer to this situation. Choose whichever one matches how much of this you want to hold.
What owners ask in week one.
My bookkeeper quit. What should I do first?
Access, not accounting. Confirm you are the admin on the accounting file, give yourself view-only access to every bank and card account, rotate shared passwords, and ask in writing for the working files and the last twelve months of reconciliations. Nothing about the books can be fixed until you can see them yourself.
How do I find out how far behind my books really are?
Look for the last month that was reconciled against a bank statement, not the last month with transactions in it. Transactions can keep importing long after anyone was checking them. Connecting your bank to Prosper produces the same answer without a manual review: it imports the history and shows which months are unreconciled and what is uncategorized.
Do I have to keep QuickBooks?
Keep it until the year it covers is closed and filed. Whatever you move to, the old file is still the record for the periods it holds, and your accountant may need to trace back into it. Decide about switching after the current month is under control, not during the first week.
Should I hire another bookkeeper or use software?
It depends on whether you want to own the monthly work. Prosper is software: it keeps the books up to date, asks you the questions it cannot infer, and prepares an evidence packet for your accountant. If you would rather a person owned the month, TidyMonth is a bookkeeping service that does the monthly work for $199 a month and quotes any catch-up in writing before it starts. They are separate offers and you can start with either one.
Does Prosper file my taxes or run my payroll?
No. Prosper prepares records for your accountant. It does not file returns, does not run payroll, and does not make tax determinations. Your accountant reviews the accounting and tax treatment.
Start with the months, not the panic.
Connect your accounts and get the list of unreconciled months in front of you. You can decide what to do about them once you can see them.