For Audit Firms
Your Client, Ready Before You Arrive
We prepare companies for an attest engagement and support them through it. We do not perform one — no audit, no review, no compilation — so the engagement stays yours, and the preparation you could not take on for an audit client is our whole job.
The Engagement You Are Thinking Of
It is the one where the schedules do not exist, the support for a balance is in somebody’s inbox, and the person who could explain last March left in June. Fieldwork stops being audit work and becomes reconstruction, at your staff’s hourly rate and on your budget. The client experiences it as an audit that took twice as long and cost more than you quoted, which is a conversation you have and we do not.
Everything below is us doing that reconstruction before you arrive, on the client’s paper, at our own prices, and with no claim on your engagement.
What we hand your client’s file
What Your Client Would Have Ready
- A readiness review: what your auditor will ask for, what is missing, and what it would take — in writing.
- Balance-sheet substantiation and supporting schedules — fixed assets, prepaids, accruals, debt, revenue — built and tied to the ledger.
- Controls documentation, walkthroughs and support for management's control attestations, so the control environment is written down before somebody tests it.
- The document request list prepared, managed and filled, with evidence attached to the transactions it supports.
- Fieldwork Support: a single point of contact for the audit team, so your operators keep operating, and management-letter points fixed in the month they were raised.
Our Audit Readiness page is the client-facing version of the same list, and what it costs is published in full, which we mention because you may be asked before you have finished the sentence.
What goes into Audit Readiness, and who does it at each posture
| The work | Review | With You | For You |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write down what your auditor will ask for, what is missing, and what it would take | Us | Us | Us |
| Build the supporting schedules and tie them to the ledger: fixed assets, prepaids, accruals, debt, revenue | You | Us | Us |
| Write down the control environment: the documentation, the walkthroughs, the support for management's control attestations | You | Us | Us |
| Fetch the evidence and attach it to the transactions it supports | You | You | Us |
| Prepare, manage and fill the document request list | You | Us | Us |
| Be the audit team's single point of contact through fieldwork | You | You | Us |
| Fix management-letter points in the month they were raised | You | Us | Us |
| Make the representations, and sign off what goes to the auditor | You | You | You |
The final sign-off is your management’s on every posture; we never sign off on the books or on any engagement.
What We Are Not Doing
We perform no attest engagement — and that is the point of this page
Getting a company ready for an audit, a review or a compilation and supporting it through it is what we do; performing one is not. That is not a caveat here — it is the whole reason this page is addressed to you: there is no version of this in which we are quoting against you for the engagement, now or at renewal.
We also do not tell you what to conclude, negotiate a treatment on a client’s behalf, or ask you to accept our judgement for yours. If we think a client is wrong, you will hear it from us before you have to find it.
The reverse is worth saying plainly too: preparing the books you are going to audit is not work you could take on for that client. It is ours. The two halves fit together rather than competing, which is unusual enough in this industry to be worth a page.
Through Fieldwork, Not Just Before It
What that looks like while your team is in the field
One point of contact for your team, answering the request list rather than forwarding it to an operations manager who is doing three other jobs. Follow-up lists answered as they come. Management-letter points fixed in the month they were raised rather than repeated next year, which is the part clients notice and partners remember.
Your deadlines drive the calendar, not ours. Tell us when fieldwork starts and we will work back from it.
One Owner, Two Companies
Accounting Advisor is a separate company from the one that builds the software we run on, under shared ownership, and we disclose that before anybody asks. If a client’s books are on that platform and we also run their whole finance function, that combination is something you may reasonably want to look at — and we would rather you looked at it now than in week three. The arrangement, and what it means.
If You Have a Client Who Is Not Ready
Send them to us, or send us to them — either way, tell us what you need in hand before fieldwork and we will tell you honestly whether we can have it there. If a client is further behind than the calendar allows, you will hear that from us early rather than in a status call in week two.
We do not pay for referrals. What a licensed firm may accept is a question about your obligations rather than ours, and an offer you would have to decline is worse than no offer. What we will do is keep you informed on a client you sent, to whatever extent they permit, and tell you plainly when the answer is that they need somebody else.
The first conversation is a look at your books and an honest answer about whether we are the right firm.