Audit costs are mostly time, and most of that time is spent looking for things. The work you do before fieldwork starts comes back to you in fee, in a shorter process, and in fewer interruptions to your finance team during the weeks the auditor is on site.

This is the list we give clients.

1. A trial balance that agrees to the ledger

Obvious, and it is still the first thing that goes wrong. The trial balance the auditor works from should be final, agreed to the general ledger, and locked. If it moves after fieldwork begins, everything tested against it has to be reconsidered.

2. Balance sheet reconciliations, done and reviewed

Every balance sheet account reconciled to supporting evidence, with the reconciliation reviewed and signed by someone other than the preparer. Bank, debtors, creditors, accruals, prepayments, intercompany, payroll control, tax. Reconciliations prepared but never reviewed are worth much less to an auditor than reconciliations with evidence of review.

3. Prior year adjustments actually posted

Every year we find last year’s audit adjustments sitting on a schedule but never entered. The trial balance then disagrees with the signed accounts and everyone loses a day.

4. A fixed asset register that reconciles

Additions supported by invoices, disposals with proceeds and profit or loss calculated, depreciation recalculated, and the register agreeing to the ledger. Also a view on whether anything is impaired.

5. Stock or work in progress with a counted, priced basis

If you hold inventory, the auditor will usually want to attend the count. Tell them the date well in advance. Have the count instructions written, the cut-off controlled, and the valuation basis documented, including how overheads are absorbed and how you identify slow-moving or obsolete items.

6. Revenue cut-off evidence around the year end

Invoices and despatch or delivery evidence for the days either side of year end. Cut-off is the most common source of error in a first audit and it is straightforward to evidence if you keep the paperwork together.

7. Contracts and agreements in one place

Lease agreements, loan agreements, key customer and supplier contracts, shareholder agreements, grant conditions. If your auditor has to ask for these one at a time as they come up, you will be interrupted for weeks.

8. Support for every significant judgement

Provisions, bad debt allowances, useful lives, impairment assessments, revenue recognition on anything unusual. Write down the judgement, the basis, and the numbers behind it, at the time you make it. Reconstructing the reasoning six months later is much harder and much less convincing.

Directors, their close family, entities they control or influence, and any transactions with them during the year. This is a disclosure requirement and a risk area, and it is one where an incomplete answer creates real difficulty at completion.

10. Board and committee minutes for the whole year

Including the most recent ones. Minutes are where auditors find the things nobody thought to mention: a dispute, a new facility, a commitment, a change in strategy that affects going concern.

11. A going concern assessment with the workings

Cash flow forecast, covenant headroom calculations, the assumptions behind them, and evidence of any facility or shareholder support you are relying on. If you are relying on a letter of support, get it before the audit, not during it.

12. A named contact who can find things, and a deputy

The most underrated item on the list. Audits stall when one person holds all the knowledge and is unavailable. A second person who knows where documents live keeps the process moving.

The habit that replaces the checklist

If you do only one thing, do the monthly reconciliations properly and have someone review them. Almost everything on this list flows from that discipline, and it turns year end from a reconstruction exercise into a confirmation exercise.

The clients who find audits easy are rarely the ones with the simplest businesses. They are the ones whose finance function already knows the answers before anyone asks.