We love auditing. There, we said it. Here’s another fact: While we don’t expect you to love it quite as much as we do, we believe that you don’t have to fear it. After working with hundreds of Technology companies, Wolf & Company, P.C. has found that fear of the audit comes from a combination of three things: expectation of the time commitment you will need to make, uncertainty about whether you have done your accounting correctly, and the feeling that your auditor is trying to catch you doing something incorrect. Let’s debunk those myths as we walk through what it is like to prepare for a Wolf & Company audit.
Misconception #1 – The auditors will require me full-time during the audit
When we say that we will be out doing field work at your location that does not mean we will need to interact with you all day, every day. In reality, we find the best usage of our time and yours is a few hour meeting the morning of the first day of field work. Then throughout the rest of the week, an hour or two each day so we can get answers to questions that have come up that day. We know you have a day job. We want you to be able to get back to it. If you are the founder and have hired a finance professional as part of your team, your time commitment will be even less.
Sometimes we are asked why we need to be onsite for the audit process. It is not mandatory and, in times of inclement weather or if your facilities cannot accommodate, we can definitely work remotely. However, we have learned through countless engagements that auditing is an interactive process. We ask a question, get an answer, which brings up another question. This is all in an effort to make the audit better. We also find that communication with our clients is always better in person than via email. It allows us to deal with anything that comes up at once rather than piecemeal emails that keep interrupting your day. Additionally, if we need to see physical documents, being onsite allows for easier viewing.
Misconception #2 – You need to be a GAAP expert
We know that you want to get it right. The problem is, unless you spend your time studying Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) as we do, you may not know where to start and can spend a lot of time and still get it wrong. We’re the GAAP experts so you don’t have to be. Although we need to remain independent, we can assist and guide you through the GAAP compliance process. Since we’ve done this hundreds of times with clients like you, we know the most likely trouble areas. You spend less time trying to become a GAAP expert and our audit goes more efficiently – it’s a win-win situation.
Misconception #3 – We’re out to catch you doing something wrong
Nothing would make us happier than to find nothing wrong in your accounting. But it frequently doesn’t work out that way. One of the key differences in the Wolf & Company audit process is our commitment to identifying issues early, working collaboratively with you to resolve them and deliver an efficient, high quality audit. We don’t see the audit as an exercise in finding something wrong but rather a way to help you get everything right. The audit is something that makes you better able to handle the coming challenges, whether that’s presenting your financial results to your investors, benchmarking your results against competitors, or preparing for an exit event.
It’s not many professions who can gauge their work as a success when a client remarks “oh, that wasn’t bad at all.” As odd as that sounds, we like it when we hear that. Clients are happy to see us go at the end of fieldwork, but they know that they can always pick up the phone to talk to someone who understands their business and has probably helped other clients with the very same challenges they’re experiencing. And they do it without fear of being billed for every call. That’s the kind of relationships we like build during and after a company audit, and we hope you will choose to become part of those relationships.
