They spent the first morning on the warehouse freeze with our shift leads, not buried in the conference room. The management letter later named three cut-off items we could actually fix before the next close.
Client stories
What finance teams noticed after fieldwork
Comments below refer to specific engagements—statutory audits, interim reviews, and count days—not generic praise.
The interim review caught an intercompany fee that our Tokyo parent had booked a month early. Slightly awkward in the moment, but it saved a larger adjustment at year-end. I would have preferred an earlier heads-up that sample sizes would grow after the new loan covenant—communication there was thinner than the fieldwork itself.
Our first audit readiness workshop forced us to write down the closing calendar we had been carrying in our heads. Two weeks later we still had open bank reconciliations, but at least we knew which week they belonged in.
Inventory observation finished by mid-afternoon because the tags matched the floor map. The exception log listed seven SKUs; we recounted six the same day and wrote off one damaged lot with documentation ready for the audit file.
Extended story
March year-end at a two-site manufacturer
A machinery components maker with plants in Okayama and a smaller satellite store needed a signed opinion before its main lender’s April covenant test. Prior-year workpapers from another firm were thin on inventory.
We scheduled simultaneous count observations, opened bank confirmations in week two of planning, and held a related-party workshop with the Tokyo parent’s controller. Fieldwork cleared proposed adjustments totaling under 1% of revenue—mostly cut-off and a slow-moving spare-parts reserve. The opinion was delivered four business days before the covenant certificate was due.
The client’s reservation: travel days for the satellite site added cost they had not budgeted in the first quote. We now flag multi-site same-day counts explicitly in scoping letters.