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    We will tell you what is wrong with your books.

    Twenty minutes with an accountant. Share accountant access to QuickBooks or Xero at least 48 hours before the call and we will go through what is actually broken, in the order it matters, with what each one is costing you.

    You keep the findings whether or not you work with us.

    Book the teardown

    Free, and there is nothing to install. We work inside the file you already have.

    What you walk away with

    A ranked list of what is wrong in your file, written down and sent to you after the call. Every item carries the same four things, because a finding you cannot act on is not worth reporting.

    • What is wrong, in plain language, with the account and the period it sits in.
    • What it is costing you, whether that is an overstated profit, a return that has to be amended, or a number you have already shown someone.
    • What fixing it involves, and roughly how long it takes.
    • Whether it is inside what we do. Where it is not, we tell you what kind of firm handles it.

    What we look for

    When you take over a set of books from someone else, the same handful of things are wrong almost every time. We run the same list against every file, so nothing gets skipped because the call ran short.

    A payment processor nobody reconciled

    Money sits inside Stripe between the charge and the payout, which is a real balance on a real date. A bookkeeper who reconciles only the bank produces a clean-looking month while revenue and fees are both wrong, and the gap compounds. This is the single most common thing we find, and it is invisible precisely because the bank ties out.

    Owner draws booked as expenses

    Money you took out of the business recorded as though the business spent it. Your profit reads lower than it is, your equity is wrong, and the return built on top of it is wrong too.

    Capital and transfers booked as income

    A loan, an investment, or a move between your own accounts landing in revenue. Every metric derived from revenue inherits the error, and it usually survives into the numbers you send investors.

    A reconciliation forced with a plug

    An adjustment posted for whatever amount made the statement agree, with no underlying transaction behind it. The account reconciles and the books are still wrong.

    Opening Balance Equity that never cleared

    A conversion balance that was supposed to be temporary and has been sitting on the balance sheet since the file was set up. It means the opening position was never actually reconciled.

    Prepaid schedules that stopped

    An amortization that was set up correctly and then abandoned. The balance can still tie to a schedule while the schedule itself has not been touched in a year.

    Periods that kept moving after you reported them

    Entries posted into a month you already closed and already showed someone. The board deck you sent and the ledger you have now no longer agree.

    Each one is checked against the innocent explanation first. A processor with no reconciliation might pay out same day and hold nothing. Opening Balance Equity might be two weeks old and about to clear. Where your file does not settle the question, we say it is unresolved rather than turning it into a false alarm.

    Why we ask for access first

    Reading a general ledger properly takes longer than twenty minutes. If we open your file for the first time on the call, you get an hour of our questions and none of our answers. With the file in hand beforehand, the call is us telling you what we found.

    Access is read-only and stays read-only. We do not post entries, we do not change anything, and you can remove the access the moment the call ends. If you would rather not grant access at all, export your balance sheet as of the last closed month and your profit and loss for the last full year and send those instead. It narrows what we can check, and it still finds most of the list above.

    Granting accountant access

    QuickBooks Online. Settings, then Manage users, then Accounting firms, then invite jacob@medianfi.com.

    Xero. Settings, then Users, then Invite a user, with Adviser access.

    When this is a waste of your time

    Three cases where we would rather you did not book, because we already know what the twenty minutes would produce.

    • Your books have not been started. There is nothing to tear down yet. The cleanup page is the right starting point.
    • You want a second opinion on a tax position. We look at the bookkeeping underneath the return, not the position taken on it.
    • Your accountant is already doing this well. If your processor reconciles, your prior periods hold still, and someone reviews the exceptions, keep them.
    “Until working with Median, our books were a black box. The platform gave us a real, granular view of where the money was going, and cutting unnecessary spend became obvious.”
    Greg Mayer, founder, Curve Technologies

    Bank-level security. Your accounts connect through Plaid with read-only access. We never store your login and never move your money.

    A real accountant on your books. AI does the volume, a real accountant owns the result. You always have a person accountable for your numbers.

    Common questions

    Accountant access to your QuickBooks Online or Xero file, at least 48 hours ahead. In QuickBooks that is Settings, then Manage users, then Accounting firms, and you invite jacob@medianfi.com. In Xero it is Settings, then Users, then Invite a user with Adviser access. If you would rather not grant access, export your balance sheet as of the last closed month and your profit and loss for the last full year, and send those instead.

    So the twenty minutes is us telling you what we found rather than us opening your file for the first time while you watch. Going through the accounts, the reconciliation history and the prior-period activity takes longer than the call does. Book a slot further out if that timing does not work.

    You will get the findings whether or not you hire us, and we will say plainly which ones are inside what we do and which are not. Where something is outside our scope we will tell you what kind of firm handles it. If nothing significant is wrong, that is the answer you get, and it is a useful one.

    That is the normal case and it makes the call more useful, not less. We are not going to react to how far behind you are. The output is a ranked list of what is wrong and what each item costs you, which is more useful the worse the starting point is.

    Both, and any general ledger you already use, at the same price. There is nothing for you to migrate before the call and nothing to rebuild after it. If you later decide to move ledgers, we handle that migration at no charge.

    If they are, yes. What we will not do is certify them. This is a diagnostic against the failures that turn up repeatedly when we take over a set of books, not an audit, and not tax or legal advice. Where the evidence in your file does not settle a question, we say it is unresolved instead of guessing.

    The teardown itself is free. If you want the cleanup on its own, we scope it from the transaction count and quote it in writing before anyone starts. If you start ongoing bookkeeping with us, the cleanup is included as part of onboarding rather than billed as a separate project. Ongoing pricing is metered on your accounts and transaction volume, published on the pricing page.

    Anyone whose books have not been started yet, since there is nothing to tear down. Anyone looking for a second opinion on a tax position rather than on the bookkeeping underneath it. And anyone whose accountant is already doing this work well, in which case the honest answer is to keep them.

    Pick a time

    Choose a slot at least two days out so we have the file before we talk. We will send the access instructions in the confirmation.

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