Behind on Your Books? Catching Up Before Year-End in Lebanon

There is a shoebox, or a folder on a phone, or a WhatsApp thread where you sent yourself photographs of receipts. There is a bank statement you have not reconciled since spring. There is the thing you bought in cash and meant to write down. And there is the fiscal year, which in Lebanon runs from 1 January to 31 December, closing in about fifteen weeks.

The fix is not complicated and it is not expensive by the standards of what it prevents. It is just unpleasant to start, which is why people leave it until the accountant asks — and by then the accountant is asking a hundred other clients the same thing at the same time, and everything costs more and takes longer.

This guide is about doing it now: what a catch-up actually involves, what to hand over, what it costs, and where the boundary sits between a freelance bookkeeper and the licensed professional who signs things.

Why September, and not December

Three reasons, and they compound.

You still have time to find the gaps and fix them properly. A catch-up always surfaces things nobody can answer from memory: a payment with no invoice, a transfer between your own accounts that looks like income, a supplier you paid in cash. In September you can call the supplier, find the invoice, and ask the bank. In February you are guessing, and guesses are what turn into problems later.

You are not competing for the same hours as everyone else. Good bookkeepers and accountants are busiest in the weeks around and after year-end. The person who will take your messy year in September at a normal rate will be quoting rush prices for the same work in January, if they take it at all.

And you get three months of actually knowing your numbers. That is the part people underrate. A business that closes its books in September can see, before the quarter that decides its year, what is profitable, what is quietly bleeding, what a customer really costs to serve and whether that price increase happened or got forgotten. Bookkeeping that arrives after the year is over is history. Bookkeeping that arrives now is a decision tool.

A bookkeeper is not your accountant, and that boundary protects you

Be precise about this, because the words get used loosely and the difference matters.

Bookkeeping is the recording work: entering transactions, categorising them, matching them to receipts and invoices, reconciling what the books say against what the bank actually shows, tracking who owes you and whom you owe, and producing clean, consistent records. This is skilled, ordinary, high-volume work, and it is exactly what a good freelancer does well.

Accounting, audit, certified statements and tax filing are a different matter, carried out by a licensed professional whose signature carries responsibility. Lebanese businesses have obligations around their accounts and their declarations that a freelance bookkeeper cannot discharge for you, and no freelancer should tell you otherwise. Statutory accounts and tax returns go through your licensed accountant or auditor. Confirm your own filing deadlines and requirements with them, since they depend on your entity type and situation, and treat anything you read online — including this — as background rather than advice for your specific case.

The useful way to think about it: a bookkeeper's job is to make your accountant's job small. Clean books mean your accountant spends their time on judgement and filing rather than on sorting receipts at professional rates. That is where a catch-up pays for itself.

Note too that Lebanese businesses are expected to retain their accounting books and supporting documents for a long period — a decade, under the statute of limitations — so "we will reconstruct it later from memory" is not a strategy. Records have to exist and be keepable.

What a catch-up actually involves

If you have never commissioned one, here is the shape of the work, roughly in order.

First, the bookkeeper establishes what exists: which bank accounts, which cash boxes, which payment channels, which platforms you sell on, and what records exist for each. Then they set up or clean up where it will all live — often accounting software, sometimes a properly structured spreadsheet if you are small and stay small.

Then the volume work. Every transaction gets entered and categorised, matched to its invoice or receipt where one exists, and flagged where one does not. Then reconciliation: the books are compared line by line against the bank, and the differences are chased until the two agree. This is the step that catches duplicate payments, charges you never noticed, and the subscription you stopped using a year ago.

Then the people: who owes you money and for how long, whom you owe, what is disputed. Almost every catch-up finds an unpaid invoice the owner had forgotten, which is a pleasant way for the work to pay for itself.

Finally, a short list of questions only you can answer, and a set of clean records handed to your accountant. Expect the questions and set aside time for them. They are not the bookkeeper being difficult; they are the parts nobody outside your business can know.

Gather this before you hire anyone

The single biggest lever on both the cost and the duration is how much of this is ready on day one.

Bank statements for the whole period, for every account, in a machine-readable format if your bank offers one. Statements or exports from every payment channel and platform you receive money through. Sales invoices you issued, in whatever form you have them. Supplier invoices and receipts for what you bought, including the cash purchases, which are the ones that go missing. Payroll records for anyone you pay. Loan or financing documents. Contracts for anything recurring, so recurring entries can be verified rather than assumed. Last year's closing figures from your accountant, so the starting point is right rather than invented.

And a written list of the things you already know are wrong or missing. Owners often hide these out of embarrassment, and it always costs more, because the bookkeeper finds them anyway — after spending your money looking.

If the volume is mostly typing from paper or scans, that portion can be split off. A data entry freelancer capturing receipts into a prepared template, with the bookkeeper categorising and reconciling afterwards, is usually cheaper than paying bookkeeping rates for transcription. Keep the judgement work with the bookkeeper; move only the mechanical part.

The two-currency problem

In Lebanon, "how much was it" is rarely one number, and this is where amateur bookkeeping goes wrong. Transactions happen in more than one currency, at rates that differ from each other and move over time, and a business often holds balances in both.

Do not let anyone improvise this. Agree explicitly, before the work starts, which currency the books are kept in, which rate source is used and at what moment it is applied, and how balances held in the other currency are shown. Then use the same answers consistently for the entire period, and write them down. Your accountant will have requirements here, so ask them first and pass those requirements to the bookkeeper rather than the other way around.

Cash is the second half of this problem. Cash spending that is never recorded does not vanish from your business, it just disappears from your books, which is worse — it makes your costs look lower and your margins better than they are, and you price accordingly. If you take or spend cash, the catch-up has to include it, which means finding or reconstructing those records honestly.

What it costs

On Furrsati, bookkeeping is priced hourly, typically $10 to $30 per hour. A software setup or cleanup project — getting your accounting system properly configured, your chart of accounts sensible, your bank feeds connected and historical data imported — is priced per project, typically $100 to $500. Data entry, where you only need transcription, is typically $3 to $8 per hour.

What decides your total is volume and mess, in that order: how many transactions the period contains, how many of them have a matching document, how many bank accounts and payment channels are involved, whether anything has ever been reconciled before, and how many currencies are in play. A year of a few hundred clean transactions in one account is a modest piece of work. A year of several thousand across cash, two banks, a card and three platforms, with no documents, is a different project entirely, and honest quotes will say so.

Which is why the sensible way to buy this is in two steps. Pay for a short review first — a few hours in which the bookkeeper looks at what exists and tells you the real scope — then agree the catch-up itself against that. Anyone who quotes a firm total for a year they have not seen is either padding it heavily or about to discover they underpriced, and neither ends well.

Do not just clean up — stay clean

A catch-up you repeat every autumn is a tax on yourself. The habit that prevents it is small.

Get a monthly retainer instead of an annual panic: a few hours each month to enter, categorise and reconcile while everything is recent and you still remember what a payment was for. It is cheaper in total, it is far less painful, and it gives you monthly figures you can actually use. Separate business money from personal money into different accounts, which removes the single largest source of confusion in small Lebanese businesses. Photograph receipts when you receive them, into one folder, not five. And agree a short monthly routine with your bookkeeper: they reconcile, they send you a list of anything unmatched, you answer it within a few days rather than a few months.

Our guides on how to hire a bookkeeper and on bookkeeping rates in Lebanon go further on choosing the person and reading a quote.

What to hand over, and what not to

You are giving someone visibility into your business, so be sensible without being paranoid.

Give read-only access wherever the software offers it, which for bookkeeping is almost always enough. Do not share the credentials you use to move money, and do not give anyone authority to make payments as part of a bookkeeping engagement — recording and paying should never be the same pair of hands. Create a separate user for the bookkeeper in your accounting software rather than sharing your own login, so you can see who did what and remove access cleanly at the end. Agree confidentiality in writing before you send anything. And when the engagement finishes, get your data exported to you in a standard format and revoke the access. Your books are yours; they should never live only in someone else's account.

Hiring and paying safely

Three questions sort candidates quickly: have you done a catch-up of this size before and what did it involve; which software do you work in and will the records be exported to me in a standard format; and what will you need from me and by when. Ask for the last one specifically, because a bookkeeper who cannot tell you what they will need from you has not thought about your job.

Write the scope down — the period covered, the accounts included, what "done" means, who answers the queries — using our job brief guide, and compare proposals like with like as our notes on evaluating freelancer proposals explain. Structure it as milestones: the review, then each block of months, then reconciliation complete, then the handover pack for your accountant.

This is where Furrsati removes the risk. You post your project, compare proposals from verified freelancers, fund a milestone, and release payment only once you've approved the work, with milestone funds held by Stripe until you release them. The service fee comes off the freelancer's side, so only standard card processing is added to your bill, and wallet-funded milestones carry none. Freelancers verify their identity before they can withdraw; as a client you need no verification. Payouts reach the freelancer inside Lebanon by OMT, Whish, bank transfer or USDT.

Your next step

Put every bank statement for the year in one folder this week, then add the receipts, then write the list of what you know is missing. Ask your accountant what they require for the close and in which format. Commission a short scoping review rather than a blind quote. Then get the catch-up done while there is still time to correct what it finds — and put a monthly retainer in place so you never read this article again. When you're ready, hire a bookkeeper on Furrsati or hire a QuickBooks specialist, and keep your payment protected until the work is delivered.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a bookkeeping catch-up cost in Lebanon?

On Furrsati, bookkeeping is priced hourly, typically $10 to $30 per hour, and an accounting software setup or cleanup project is typically $100 to $500. The total depends on transaction volume, how many have matching documents, how many accounts and payment channels are involved, whether anything was ever reconciled, and how many currencies are in play. Buy a short scoping review first rather than accepting a firm quote for a year nobody has looked at.

Can a freelance bookkeeper file my taxes in Lebanon?

No. Bookkeeping is the recording and reconciliation work; statutory accounts, certified financial statements and tax filing go through a licensed accountant or auditor whose signature carries responsibility. A good bookkeeper makes that professional's job smaller and cheaper by handing over clean records. Confirm your own deadlines and requirements with your accountant, as they depend on your entity type.

When does the fiscal year end in Lebanon?

The fiscal year runs from 1 January to 31 December, with specific approval required to use a different accounting year. Filing obligations fall in the period after year-end and vary by entity type, so confirm the dates that apply to you with your accountant rather than assuming a general one.

What do I need to give a bookkeeper to start?

Bank statements for the whole period for every account, exports from every payment channel you use, the sales invoices you issued, supplier invoices and receipts including cash purchases, payroll records, loan and financing documents, contracts for anything recurring, and last year's closing figures from your accountant. Add a written list of what you already know is missing or wrong — hiding it always costs more.

How are two currencies handled in the books?

Agree before the work starts which currency the books are kept in, which rate source is used and at what moment it is applied, and how balances in the other currency are presented. Then apply those answers consistently across the whole period and write them down. Ask your accountant for their requirements first and pass them to the bookkeeper.

Is it safe to give a bookkeeper access to my accounts?

Give read-only access, which is almost always sufficient, and create a separate user in your accounting software rather than sharing your own login. Never give a bookkeeping engagement authority to move money — recording and paying should be separate hands. Agree confidentiality in writing, and at the end have your data exported to you in a standard format and revoke the access.