Audit
An audit is an independent review of your accounts by a person qualified under the Companies Act to say that your statutory annual accounts are true and fair. Companies above a certain size must have an audit by law but many companies do not need one. However a sizeable number of companies who are not required by law to have an audit still choose to do so for various reasons. These include:
- as an independent check on the accounting function where the management/owners are not closely involved in the accounting function
- to add credibility to the accounts for a future sale to better qualify them in tendering processes – especially where the company deals with central or local government
- to assist in obtaining finance from banks or outside investors
As you will see from our annual accounts service even where an audit is not required or requested, we are not just interested in going through the motions of putting the figures into the accounts. We think carefully about the credibility of your accounts regardless of whether we are formally auditing them or not.
However, an audit is an additional service on top of the preparation your annual accounts from your records. It is a formal process which requires detailed work assessing your accounts figures. We cannot simply rely on the explanations of you or your staff, we have to collect independent evidence to support our own assessment of the company’s financial position. Finally if we are satisfied that your accounts show a true and fair view, we formally sign a report in your accounts to say so.
As well as enabling us to report on your accounts, our audit work also assesses your accounting systems and provides us with in depth information about your business. Therefore, a by product of the audit is a review of your business and the identification of any accounting weaknesses.
If you want to find out more about our audit service and how it may work for you, please contact Tom Rhodes at tom.rhodes@lithgow-perkins.
Details of our audit registration can be viewed at www.auditregister.org.uk under reference number C009178624.
Contact us
To get a flavour of what we can do for you, please feel free to call or email any of our partners or staff for a chat or to arrange a free initial meeting.