Pricing

QuickBooks leaves you two do-it-yourself ways to keep long-term access, and both cost more than this service:

1. Keep paying for QuickBooks Online. The cheapest plan is $38 a month at current prices. Over a 7-year retention window, that's about $3,192 per company, for books you never touch. And QuickBooks has raised prices every year for the last several.

2. Move the books into QuickBooks Desktop. Intuit lets you export to a Desktop copy during your one-year window. But Intuit no longer sells Desktop to new customers except Enterprise, which starts around $2,210 per year. It's Windows-only software you have to keep somewhere, and the transfer has documented gaps: your attachments don't come along, so every receipt gets separated from its transaction anyway.

Both paths cost several times our flat fee, and neither one gives you what an auditor actually asks for: the document, attached to the transaction, outside of software that can expire.

Probably not. Your data stays in read-only mode for 12 months after cancellation, and inside that window we can still build your archive. There is one extra step: QuickBooks blocks new user invites on a cancelled company, so you resubscribe for a single month (Intuit restores the company exactly as you left it), add us, and cancel again once your archive is delivered. After that window closes, Intuit can delete the data permanently, so don't wait.

About two minutes: you invite us as an accountant user in QuickBooks, under Manage users on the "Accounting firms" tab, and answer a few questions about your company. We do the rest and send you the finished archive. Accountant access doesn't use up one of your billable user seats, and you remove us when we're done.

Two things that occasionally trip people up. QuickBooks gives smaller plans only two accountant slots, so if your CPA and your bookkeeper already fill both, you'll need to free one up and can restore it afterwards. And if you've already cancelled, see the question above: QuickBooks needs you to resubscribe briefly before you can add anyone.

Most archives are delivered within 5 business days of your QuickBooks invitation arriving. The clock starts at the invitation rather than at payment, because we cannot begin until we have access to the company.

A large or complicated company can take longer. We confirm your expected schedule in writing once we are in, so you are never guessing. If you are working against a cancellation or filing deadline, tell us and we will work to it.

If your company ran QuickBooks Payroll, we export the payroll reports and tax forms that QuickBooks makes available. Tell us during onboarding and we'll include them.

We use your books only to view and export, deliver the archive to you, and remove our working copy after you confirm receipt. Your data is never sold, never shared beyond the service providers needed to do the work, and never used to train AI models. See the privacy policy for details.

Yes, and we are upfront about it: parts of the export and indexing work are performed with AI assistance, which means portions of your books are processed by our AI provider under commercial terms that prohibit using your data to train models. You consent to this in writing before we touch anything, we process your data only to build your archive, and working copies are deleted after you confirm delivery.

If you are an accountant engaging us for a client's books, we operate as your contractor under the IRS rules on tax return information (IRC section 7216), acknowledge those obligations in writing, and provide a client-consent template you can use.