Client stories
Comments from finance leaders who opened their processes to review — including where the work was awkward or incomplete.
Voices from completed reviews
They spent three mornings in our Central office walking purchase-to-pay with the AP clerk, not just reading our policy binder. The gap on dual approval for vendor bank changes was uncomfortable — and exactly what we needed before year-end.
The draft findings arrived with process maps annotated in plain language. Our board audit committee asked fewer clarifying questions than in prior years, though we still had to negotiate timelines on two IT access items they flagged.
We hired them for a narrow segregation review on our ERP roles. Turnaround was brisk. One recommendation assumed a second reviewer we simply do not have in a six-person finance team — we asked for compensating control wording and they revised it without drama.
Follow-up testing on last year’s management letter points gave us evidence the auditors accepted. Fieldwork was quieter than the first review; they already knew where our files lived.
Extended story — Period-end close at a multi-brand retailer
A Hong Kong holding company asked us to examine period-end close across three retail brands sharing one shared-service centre. The stated control required a checklist sign-off by brand controllers before consolidation. In practice, two brands emailed “done” without attaching the checklist, and suspense accounts often cleared after the consolidation pack had already circulated.
We sampled three month-ends, sat with the consolidation accountant for a live close week, and traced five material suspense clearances to source. The findings register ranked the missing checklist evidence and late suspense clearances above cosmetic policy wording issues. Management accepted a rule that consolidation would not start without uploaded checklists, and we returned six weeks later for remediation follow-up testing on those two points.
The work did not invent a new close system; it made the existing gate enforceable.
Extended story — Treasury approvals before a facility renewal
Ahead of a bank facility renewal, a trading company wanted comfort that payment authorisations matched the bank mandate matrix. Our internal control review of treasury found three leavers still listed as authorisers on the bank portal and a recurring pattern of single approval under a temporary “urgency” exception that had never been time-limited.
The board received the register two weeks before the bank’s credit committee meeting. Clearing the leaver access took days; rewriting the urgency exception took longer — and that delay was noted honestly in our follow-up note.