# The catch-up engine

> Months of neglected books worked oldest-first, one month at a time, with visible progress.

Section: Continuous bookkeeping · Canonical: https://intubu.intuitivecapital-dai.com/docs/catch-up

Migrate → Catch-up.

Books that are eight months behind are not a bigger version of books that are one month behind — the problem is that the backlog is shapeless, so nobody starts.

**How it works:** the engine breaks the backlog into months and works **oldest first**, because a categorisation decision in March informs April, and the opening balance of each month depends on the one before it.

**Per month it:** imports and categorises transactions, matches receipts, reconciles what it can, and lists what it cannot resolve as [Owner asks](https://intubu.intuitivecapital-dai.com/docs/owner-asks) — batched per month rather than dribbled out one at a time.

**A month is complete** when it scores 100 on the same [The close-readiness meter](https://intubu.intuitivecapital-dai.com/docs/close-readiness) measure used for a normal close. Nothing is marked done by elapsed time.

**Progress is visible** — "March: complete. April: 4 questions outstanding. May–October: queued" — so an eight-month backlog reads as eight tractable pieces.