The Audit-Readiness Test - Would Your Finance Function Pass?
Published: 30th Sep 26
The Audit-Readiness Test - Would Your Finance Function Pass?
A quick, honest self-check for whether audit season will be a formality or a scramble
Audit season has a way of exposing exactly how a finance function has been run all year – not just how it looks on the day the auditors arrive.
The businesses that find audit straightforward aren’t the ones with the simplest numbers.
They’re the ones whose finance function has been audit-ready every month, not just at year-end.
Here’s a quick, honest self-test. The more “no” answers, the more audit is likely to feel like firefighting.
1. Can you reconcile every balance sheet line, not just the easy ones?
Trade debtors, accruals, and intercompany balances included, not just the accounts that are simple to check.
If any of these are routinely left until year-end, that’s where the scramble starts.
2. Were your reconciliations done monthly, or all at once before the auditors arrive?
Reconciling through the year and reconciling in the six weeks before audit produce very different starting points.
“Catching up” at year-end usually means catching up on problems too, not just paperwork.
3. Could you trace a random transaction back to source in minutes?
If an auditor picked any transaction above materiality at random, could you find the invoice, the approval, the contract quickly?
A clear audit trail is one of the fastest ways to build – or lose – an auditor’s confidence early.
4. Are your accounting policies written down and applied consistently?
Revenue recognition, capitalisation thresholds, provisioning – are these documented, or just “how we’ve always done it”?
Consistency that only exists in someone’s head is invisible to an auditor, and to anyone new who joins the team.
5. Could someone other than your usual finance contact answer a query competently?
If everything routes through one person, that’s a risk auditors notice – and a risk that outlasts audit season.
The businesses that answer queries fastest are the ones where more than one person understands the numbers.
None of this is really about passing an audit for its own sake.
A finance function that can answer yes to most of these questions isn’t just audit-ready – it has the process discipline that produces trustworthy numbers all year round.
Good practice, built into the process. Not held in one person’s head. Not manufactured in the six weeks before year-end.
Because audit-readiness built up gradually across the year is a far easier position to be in than trying to create it under time pressure.
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