Audit preparation & support

A review is built on inquiry and analytical procedures: the independent accountant asks questions and examines whether the numbers behave the way they should relative to each other and to prior periods. It produces limited assurance: nothing came to their attention suggesting the statements are materially misstated. An audit adds testing and third-party corroboration: sampling transactions, confirming balances directly with banks and customers, observing controls. It produces an opinion. A review is substantially less work than an audit, and is priced accordingly by the firms that perform them. For a full comparison see compilation vs review vs audit.

No. Wago Pop does not perform audits, reviews or compilations, and does not issue any report or opinion on financial statements. An independent auditor does that. We prepare you for it and support you through it: closing the books, building schedules and the PBC list, drafting management's statements where appropriate, and handling auditor requests. If you do not yet have an audit firm, we can help you compare a few and engage one.

For a small to mid-sized organisation with reasonable records, plan on four to eight weeks from the start of fieldwork to a final report, with the fieldwork itself typically one to two weeks. The variable that moves this most is how quickly the PBC list comes back and whether the records need remediation first. That is precisely the part we take on. Organisations that have the request list assembled before fieldwork begins routinely finish weeks ahead of ones that do not.

Earlier than most people do. For a June 30 fiscal year end, preparation belongs in July and August. Form 990 is due 15 November, and California requires audited statements to be publicly available within nine months of year end. By October the calendar is genuinely tight. Our compliance calendar lays out the whole year.

Yes. Because we do not perform the audit, there is no independence conflict in us keeping your books and preparing you for an independent auditor. The audit firm still has to be separate from us and from your organisation, and it reaches its own conclusions. Our role is to hand it a closed, reconciled and documented set of records.

Then we say so at the scoping stage, quote the remediation separately, and you decide whether to fix it internally or have us do it. What we will not do is start an engagement at a price that assumes clean records and then re-quote halfway through. If clean-up is needed, it is far better done before your auditor arrives than during fieldwork.

Book a scoping call using the form on this page, or call us. We will ask who is asking for the audit or review, when it is due, and what condition your records are in, then tell you what the preparation work involves and what it will cost before anything begins.