Mike Has MS
Audit
If there is one word that makes people cringe, it’s audit. You immediately have visions of IRS agents invading your records and pouring over receipt after receipt.
In my line of work, audits are expected. They’re normal. And they’re part of life. You may have heard of this little law known as Sarbanes-Oxley, sometimes known as SOX. When you work in finance or IT in a publicly traded company, it’s just part of how you do business.
This week is our annual audit from the major consulting firm that will really dig into our records and processes. We also have another company come in quarterly to do audit work since we don’t have an internal audit group in the company. My boss was telling me stories of spending hours and hours with them last year in the audit. We spent about two hours with them today. That was it.
Last week, I had spent a good chunk of my week preparing for the audit, pouring over checklists of things they’d want to see. Today, most of the time was spent pointing out where certain data was in the files we gave them or getting additional data. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected. In fact, I joked with the auditors (yes, that’s possible) that I was a little let down because I should have been much more difficult than that.
I will say that part of the reason it went smoothly is that my boss is pretty OCD about making sure we’re in compliance. We run a pretty tight ship. Nobody touches the financial systems without proper documentation and authorization. We also do an audit checklist every month, producing the things that will most likely be asked for in an audit. On top of that, I’ve become a master at producing audit-worthy reports. My experience as a consultant certainly helped here. And maybe, just maybe, it might have something to do with the fact that I’m pretty good at what I do. Maybe.
No maybe about it! Is it too soon to point out to the new company how good the audit went and maybe parlay a bonus out of it?
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/27 at 11:07 PM
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