Audit Readiness
Prepare for an Audit Before Anyone Schedules One
The schedules, the reconciliations and the evidence an auditor will ask for, in the state they will ask for it, before they ask.
Who This Is For
The usual reasons: a first audit, a lending covenant that requires one, or a management letter you would rather not repeat.
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What you receive
What It Includes
These are the standard services, grouped under the objective they serve rather than sold as a menu.
- 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.
Audit Readiness — what you receive
Who owns the work
Review, With You, or For You
The same three postures apply to every category. What separates them is who owns the work: all yours at Review, shared at With You, all ours at For You. The final sign-off is your management’s on all three.
- Review
- All yours — the Gap Review…Review · Audit ReadinessAll yours — the Gap Review: we look, we write down what the auditor will find, and we prepare nothing.
- With You
- Shared — we build the schedules and the evidence file and run the request list…With You · Audit ReadinessShared — we build the schedules and the evidence file and run the request list; your team fetches the evidence and approves what goes to the auditor.
- For You
- All ours — we build it, fetch it, and are the auditor's point of contact through fieldwork…For You · Audit ReadinessAll ours — we build it, fetch it, and are the auditor's point of contact through fieldwork; the representations are management's, and so is the sign-off.
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.
The boundary
What This Does Not Cover
We do not perform the audit; getting you ready for it and supporting you through it is the point of this category. An audit, a review, or a compilation is an attest engagement and has to come from your independent accountants — we are the firm on your side of the table before they arrive and until they leave.
What It Runs On
We do this work on Automate Accounting, which has its own page for the same objective. That page says what the software does; this one says what we do with it.
What you hold first
Before You Sign Anything
Three things you have in hand before anything is signed: the first from this site, the other two from the engagement letter.
Your Own Estimate
Before you write to us
A Written Scope and Price
Before we start
An Exit Named in Advance
Before we start
The first conversation is a look at your books and an honest answer about whether we are the right firm for this.