How can building relationships with your CPA firm further improve the process?
By staying with the same firm year after year, you develop those relationships and that team spirit. The auditors train the clients, and the clients train the auditors. There’s a lot of efficiency that can come out of this in future years as both sides get a better understanding of what they’re looking for and learn to ask for it better.
Who should participate in an audit?
All key players in a company should participate. A lot of those people have been through audits before and they know what it’s going to take to prepare.
You don’t need all your key players to be there for a two-hour meeting. Instead, plan it so you’re talking about assets in the first half-hour and can have the people involved who work in accounts receivable. In the second half-hour, you can work on liability and bring those people in.
That way you don’t have people sitting around idle for a couple of hours, and everyone gets a chance to meet one another, really understand the audit process and build a team spirit. You can also talk honestly about when certain things can be delivered to the auditors so that everyone can stick to the schedule.
Once the audit is complete, is there any need to follow up with your auditors?
You should always try to have a follow-up meeting within a couple of weeks of when the auditors leave the field. That way, the process is still fresh in your mind, you know what the successes are and you know what went wrong. It’s a great time to talk about what happened during the audit and start thinking about next year so that everyone can begin to prepare.
Michael Benjamin is a partner in the assurance services practice at Burr Pilger Mayer. Reach him at [email protected] or (415) 288-6294.