Audit and Agreed Upon Services
Audit and Agreed Upon Services
While audit and assurance services are often required to satisfy lending institutions, boards, and investor requirements, they can offer valuable insights about the strengths of a company as well as areas for improvement. Whether satisfying the requirements of traditional lenders or for private equity funds and venture capital investors, your chosen audit team should offer approaches that help management and stakeholders feel confident about their processes, controls, and financial narratives.
Walter Shuffain helps many businesses meet their traditional audit and assurance needs, including compilations and reviews of financial statements, full audits or employee benefit audits. Even when companies come under new management or ownership, our team is kept in place to support assurance continuity.
The audits we perform are not a commodity, and we don’t monetize them like other bigger firms will. At the end of the day, our goal is to deliver information our clients need to answer stakeholder questions and deliver timely financial data.
- Rebecca Warren, CPA, Shareholder
Audit & Assurance Experience
Audits can be performed at the corporate or fund level. Certain assurance services are performed to support stakeholder requirements, but also to satisfy government regulations, as in the case of employee benefit audits or for organizations that receive government funding.
Audit services and agreed upon procedures before or after acquiring a company may involve many layers of assurance. With efficiencies in place, transactions can run smoothly, but you also want the right data at the negotiating table in case of internal control issues or complex debt. Our tried-and-true audit and assurance services paired with custom agreed upon procedures deliver knowledge for deal making and the guidance to implement operational and standards best practices for portfolio companies.
Walter Shuffain’s assurance experience includes:
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- Audits, compilations and reviews
- Benefit plan audits
- Risk compliance auditing
- Accounting for complex equity structures
- Accounting for compensation and profit sharing
- Accounting for complex debt arrangements
- Surprise custody examinations (only for RIAs)
Agreed Upon Procedures Experience
Carefully built agreed-upon procedures can give business owners and funders a factual analysis of certain transactions or processes. Procedures such as verifying balances, confirming accounts payable, identifying internal control issues and reviewing grant funds can add credibility to your financial statements. They may support tax reporting compliance and help to expedite transactions. Your CPA is not typically providing an opinion on the findings of the agreed-upon procedure, but will issue a written report that discusses the procedures and findings.
Walter Shuffain’s team will collaborate with you to develop appropriate agreed-upon procedures. These agreed-upon procedures can support the following common needs:
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- Quality of earnings analysis
- Working capital evaluation
- Balance sheet investigation
- Customer trends
- Unrecorded liability identification
- Payroll and benefits analysis
- Accounting systems, controls and procedures
- Fraud risk assessments
Establishing a strong financial reporting structure improves corporate and portfolio valuations while also building in best practices for management. Leverage our knowledge and experience to meet your requirements and business preferences.