Do you dread your year end audit? Does having the auditors in your office stress you out and make for a long week? Here are few steps to ensure your year end audit goes smoothly and quickly and gets the auditors out of your office ASAP!
1. Be prepared and plan ahead.
Communicate with your auditors before the audit and let them know about any big events, major changes, or large expenditures during the past year.
Typically, your auditor sends out a letter prior to the audit with a listing of items and documents they will want to see and review. Ensure these items are printed out or that electronic copies are available. We can provide a link so these documents can be easily sent to us using our share file web portal. This will result in fewer questions from the auditors and less time spent in your office!
Another way to ensure everything is ready, is to go through your balance sheet and ensure there is documentation or a reconciliation for all the balance sheet accounts. Your auditor will be asking for this, I guarantee!
Providing anything you can prior to audit will allow for the auditors to do pre-work before coming out, if possible.
2. Offer to prepare items or documents for them.
If there are documents normally prepared by the auditor that you think you can prepare, having these completed and reconciled will allow them to just review the work of reconciliation done instead of having to do the reconciliation themselves.
3. Do a pre-review of the trial balance before sending the records.
Doing a quick review of your trial balance and ensuring accounts reconcile to supporting documentation you are providing, will allow for a much more efficient audit and fewer questions. This includes reviewing income statement accounts and having knowledge of any major changes from prior year.
4. Be available.
Audits are typically scheduled well ahead of time. Ensure your schedule is clear during that time so you are available to answer questions when the auditors are on-site.
Just following these few steps will have those auditors in and out of your office in no time. See your year end audit doesn’t sound so bad now, right? 😊