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A business audit decides the reliability of your business records. It can affect how your investors perceive your company. For example, a negative audit review can tell your stockholders that they cannot trust you in handling your finances.

Seattle Bookkeeper

Other types of audits, however, can help you improve your internal processes. Auditors are trained in determining areas in your business that you can improve. Before you ask an accounting firm in Seattle to audit your business, you need to first know what reports they look for.

This article by Maria L. Murphy in the Journal of Accountancy can shed light on what reports are important to auditors.

Critical audit matters: What firms are reporting

Some important themes are emerging in auditors’ reporting of critical audit matters, which are the key component of the biggest change to public company auditor reporting in 70 years.

Goodwill and intangible assets, revenue, and income taxes were the most frequent topical areas reported identified in a summary of 52 audit reports of large accelerated filers analyzed by Deloitte.

Meanwhile, a sample of public company auditors’ reports reviewed for the JofA showed that in reporting on critical audit matters, practitioners are providing detailed discussion of the audit procedures they performed and including cross-references to the related notes in the financial statements that are related to the critical audit matters. Click here to learn more…

Now that you’ve learned what you need to prepare once you decide to get audited, let’s take a look at how business audits have changed in the past years. This article by Cheryl Meyer, as told by Samantha Bowling, CPA, CGMA, shows how the latter was able to successfully incorporate advanced technology into their audit process.

How we successfully implemented AI in audit

Garbelman Winslow CPAs is evidence that you don’t have to be a large firm to have big aspirations with cutting-edge technology. The Upper Marlboro, Md.-based practice, which has a total of six CPAs and 15 employees, is using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify high-risk transactions as part of its auditing process. Here’s what the firm has done and learned so far, as told by partner Samantha Bowling, CPA, CGMA.

We were innovators back when computers and mainframes were introduced. Today, all of our 15 employees have desktop and laptop computers, monitors, and virtual work-from-home access. We’re paperless. The only file cabinets here are from a firm we acquired, because we have to retain those files for seven years. And we just moved our in-house server and phone system to the cloud within the last year. We used to have seven servers on-site. Now everything’s in the cloud. Click here to learn more…

Knowing enough about business audits before getting one can help you prepare everything needed to make the whole process easier. A reliable accounting and bookkeeping service can help you make sure that you’ll receive flying colors after an audit. If you want to learn more, you can contact us here at AldariCPA.