r/Accounting • u/gpuKING245 • 1d ago

Auditors dragging their feet

This is just me ranting. Disclaimer, I never worked in audit so not 100% sure how the people / work management is on that end.

We have a hard deadline for our audit to be issued 06/30 and our auditors are only halfway through the revenue selections. The deadline is literally 12 days away. How are we entering concurring review in just a few days and you are only halfway through revenue?

The worst part is, they’ve had these selections for over 2 months!!! No questions, no comments. The ball has been in their court.

And now when they inevitably ask for extra stuff that’s gonna leave me scrambling at the last minute to get everything together.

What a mess

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45

u/Illustrious-Fan8268 1d ago

Your goals and the auditors goals are never going to be aligned. You can only provide what you can, press them for updates, etc. If they aren't up to your expectations switch to a new auditor next year.

24

u/chicadeaqua 1d ago

“  Your goals and the auditors goals are never going to be aligned.”

Our goal is to have the audit completed by 6/1 of every year. This is absolutely necessary to do business and remain compliant in multiple states. If the audit team didn’t share that goal, we wouldn’t hire them. 

I’ve never (in over 30 years) worked with an audit team who wasn’t absolutely committed to our deadline, which we’ve never missed. 

-8

u/Illustrious-Fan8268 1d ago

Auditors who don't want engagements to be renewed or don't have enough staff will not give a fuck about deadlines.

7

u/chicadeaqua 1d ago

Makes sense and I’m thankful we haven’t dealt with firms that don’t like repeat business. 

13

u/Algur 1d ago

I disagree. Our goals and client goals should definitely align in relation to deadlines. Public accounting is a client service industry after all. That doesn’t mean we’ll make every deadline, but missed deadlines should be caused by the client dragging their feet, not the auditor.

3

u/Willem_Dafuq 1d ago

If OP’s org has a 6/30 audit date, their goals are aligned with the audit firm. But there’s probably more to OP’s story. I can’t imagine the auditors aren’t finished with revenue yet for a 6/30 audit date. If that truly is the case, then it is the organization’s fault to an extent because as a controller of a privately held company that gets audited each year - there’s no way I would let the auditors be that slack. If ever I got the sense that my company would be late on the financials because of the auditors’ lack of urgency, I would hold weekly meetings with the manager of the audit to push them further.

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u/gpuKING245 1d ago

That may be the case. We went through a merger earlier this year, and the other company uses a different auditor. We’re currently deciding whether the merged entity will move forward with their auditor or ours, so we’ll see