A smooth, no hidden costs audit is definitely possible

An audit is an essential part of a company’s accounting process. Its purpose is to ensure businesses are able to add credibility to their finances and be transparent to their stakeholders. A smooth, no hidden costs audit is perfectly feasible to achieve if you get the basics right from the outset.

The whole purpose of an audit is to examine and ratify a company’s financial position, which in turn can help develop sustainable long-term growth. Depending on the size of the business it is also often a legal requirement. Being organised with your company’s internal processes will ensure that the audit is smooth, timely and without issue. Hidden costs will often only appear because of poor-quality information provided at the start of the process. Having the required documents to hand and providing them in a timely manner to the audit team is the easiest way to a achieve a successful, no added cost audit.  Embracing technology and cloud-based accounting software specifically is another enabler to improving integrity and accessibility of financial data and thereby reducing the time and cost involved in an audit.

Providing the correct information to the audit team is key. The team will provide a clear timeline of expectations from both parties and ensure constant communication throughout the process. Communication underpins every relationship and that includes clients and their accountants!

Continuous professional development is a major part of our business strategy at Wilson Partners. Investment in our team’s knowledge and enhancing their experience is critical to successful outcomes for our clients. Additionally, through this knowledge and experience our audit team will ensure that clients are aware of any recent changes in legislation and how this may impact the audit. Similarly, we take on board any client feedback and consider any barriers or matters, from previous years, and address these in our planning to improve the efficiency of the audit.

Auditing is wrongly perceived to have lots of hidden cost that only appear once the audit starts. Ultimately you are paying for the time and expertise of your auditors. If the information provided to the audit team is clear, accurate and provided in a timely manner then additional costs can be avoided. It is only if information provided is wrong, incomplete, or late that the amount of time the audit takes increases, which then obviously increases the cost. At Wilson Partners however, we recognise the importance of working closely with our clients to ensure we cover all of these issues through regular communication, in the period prior to the audit, so the risk of unexpected costs is greatly reduced.

A positive audit outcome will help you identify future goals, grow your business sustainably and ensure that your business looks good from an investment point of view. So, it’s worth working with your Auditors to make sure everything is in place before the start of the audit and then keeping that communication going throughout to ensure a successful outcome with no unexpected costs. Luckily at Wilson Partners, that’s just the way we work!