Internal Audit
An Independent Check,
Before the Gap Finds You.
Books, stock, cash and controls examined by someone who does not work for you — so a bank, a tax officer or a loss is not the first to notice.
Evidence, Not Opinion
Every finding backed
Risk-Rated
So the order is obvious
Follow-Up Review
Findings actually closed
Two audits, not one
“Internal audit” covers two different questions, and a business usually needs both eventually. The first asks whether what the books say is true. The second asks whether the way the business runs achieves what it was meant to. They use different evidence and they produce different reports, so we keep them separate rather than blurring them into one engagement.
Financial Internal Audit
An independent check on books, stock, cash and controls — before a bank, a tax officer or a loss finds the gap. (The business-efficiency counterpart sits under Business Consultancy.)
- Transaction and ledger audit — vouching, cut-off, party balance confirmations
- Stock audit — physical verification, valuation, slow-moving and shortage analysis
- Cash and bank audit — surprise cash counts, reconciliations, unauthorised payments
- Purchase and expense audit — rate comparison, duplicate bills, vendor genuineness
- Fraud detection — pattern analysis on sales, purchases and payments
- Pre-statutory-audit review so the year-end audit goes clean
Business Internal Audit
An audit of efficiency and objectives rather than of books — distinct from the Financial Internal Audit under Accounting.
- Review of whether processes achieve what they were designed to achieve
- Branch, department and field-staff performance review
- Internal control and SOP gap report
- Output: Business Audit Report with a risk rating, recommendations and an action plan
What you get at the end
- A findings report with the evidence behind each item, not a list of opinions
- A risk rating per finding, so the order to fix them in is obvious
- Recommendations written as actions with an owner and a date against each
- A follow-up review, because a report nobody actions is an expense, not an audit
Common questions
How is an internal audit different from the statutory audit?
The statutory audit is an obligation, done once a year, to give an opinion on the financial statements to people outside the business. An internal audit is for you, runs on whatever cycle suits the business, and is free to look wherever the risk is — stock, cash, a branch, a process — rather than only at what the statute requires.
We are not a company. Do we need one?
Need, in the statutory sense, no — internal audit is mandatory only for certain companies. But the businesses that get the most out of it are usually the ones under no obligation at all: owner-run, growing faster than their controls, with cash and stock moving through more hands than the owner can watch.
What is the difference between the financial and the business audit?
The financial one checks whether what the books say is true — vouching, stock, cash, party balances, purchase rates. The business one checks whether the processes achieve what they were designed to achieve — branch and department performance, control gaps, whether the SOP and the practice match. Most engagements start with the financial side, because it is where evidence is easiest to establish.
Will this disrupt the team?
Some of it is deliberately unannounced — a cash count booked in advance is not a cash count. The rest is planned around your month so it does not collide with billing or filing. We work on your existing system rather than asking anyone to maintain a second set of records for us.
What if the audit finds something serious?
Then it is reported with the evidence, to you, before it is anyone else's problem. Where a loss is already suspected rather than merely possible, that is forensic work and is scoped separately — the two are related but they are not the same engagement.
How often should it run?
It depends on what moves. A business with stock across branches and daily cash usually wants a quarterly cycle with surprise elements in between. One with few transactions and tight controls may need an annual review before the statutory audit. We scope it after seeing the business, not before.
Related
When businesses call us in
Six things owners notice first
None of these is proof of anything on its own. Together they are the pattern that shows up before a real loss does.
Stock never ties to the register
Physical count and book stock differ every time, and the difference is written off rather than explained.
Cash is counted once a year
If the only count is the year-end one, a shortage has had twelve months to become normal.
Nobody compares the rate
The same vendor, the same item, year after year, with no one checking what it costs elsewhere.
Party balances are assumed
Your ledger says one thing, theirs says another, and neither side has asked.
The statutory audit turns into a scramble
Queries arrive in bulk at year end because nothing was reviewed while it was still fresh.
A process exists but nobody follows it
The SOP is written down. What actually happens is whatever the person on the desk has always done.