Most of what makes an audit painful is decided months before the auditor arrives.
Goldenthal & Suss Consulting P.C. provides advisory services to nonprofits, government entities, and closely held businesses: risk assessment, audit readiness preparation, internal control assessment, accounting policy development, board and governance training, and part-time CFO support. These engagements are separate from attest work, and independence rules govern which of them we can provide to organizations we also audit.
Organizations facing a first audit, a new auditor, or a first single audit after crossing the federal threshold benefit disproportionately from preparation. The work is unglamorous: reconciling accounts that have drifted, assembling grant documentation, building a Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards that ties to the ledger, and documenting the controls that already exist but were never written down.
Done in advance, this shortens fieldwork and reduces findings. Done during fieldwork, it is billed at audit rates and produces findings anyway.
A financial statement audit evaluates controls only to the extent needed to plan the audit — it is not a comprehensive review, and a clean opinion is not a statement that your controls are good. A dedicated assessment looks at segregation of duties, authorization and approval, cash handling, procurement, payroll, and IT access, and reports what would actually reduce risk.
Small organizations often cannot achieve textbook segregation of duties with the staff they have. The answer there is usually compensating controls with genuine board involvement, not a recommendation to hire people the organization cannot afford.
Board members carry fiduciary duty over financial matters many of them have no background in. Training that covers how to read a nonprofit financial statement, what the audit and the management letter actually say, what the audit committee is responsible for, and what the 990 discloses tends to raise the quality of oversight quickly.
New York's audit committee requirements attach to organizations required to file an audit, which makes this a compliance matter as well as a good-practice one.
Organizations too large for a bookkeeper and too small for a full-time CFO can engage senior financial leadership on a fractional basis — budgeting and forecasting, cash flow management, grant budget construction, financial reporting to boards and funders, and support during transitions in finance staff.
Yes, and it is a common engagement. Preparing an organization for someone else's audit carries no independence complication at all, and organizations facing a first audit or a first single audit often get the most value from it.
Some of them, with limits. Independence rules restrict what an audit firm may do for an attest client, and the restrictions are stricter under Government Auditing Standards than under AICPA rules alone. Bookkeeping and management responsibilities are out. Training, policy consultation, and similar services are generally permissible with proper safeguards. Ask before engaging so the scope can be set correctly from the start.
No, and this is a common misreading. An audit evaluates internal control only as far as necessary to plan and perform the audit — it is not a comprehensive assessment, and the opinion addresses whether the financial statements are fairly stated, not whether your control environment is strong. A dedicated internal control assessment is a separate engagement.
Tell us about your organization and the deadline you are working toward. We will tell you what the engagement involves and what it costs.
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