Preparing reconciliations before the auditors ask

External auditors will ask for bank, intercompany, and suspense reconciliations whether or not your close felt orderly. The fortnight before they arrive is late to invent ownership of aged items.

A practical sequence

1. Lock who owns each material reconciliation.
2. Age every reconciling item over thirty days and write one sentence on why it remains.
3. Match the reconciliation total to the trial balance — not to last month’s file renamed.
4. File support for the largest five items where a stranger could follow the math.

Our year-end preparation support often starts with exactly this pass. Teams that finish it early spend auditor meetings on judgment areas instead of hunting PDFs.