A responsible AI checklist for finance leaders
Your teams are probably already using AI. The question is not whether to allow it, but on what terms.
Audit
Preparing for a smoother audit in Togo
How long an audit takes is rarely decided during the audit. It is decided in the six weeks before it.
Most engagements that go off track do not do so because of a technical difficulty. They go off track because the entity was not ready, and the audit team spends its first weeks reconstructing what should already have existed. Here is what actually makes the difference.
1. Close the balances before, not during
An account still moving during fieldwork forces the team to redo tests already performed. Set a firm cut-off date and hold it. Adjusting entries identified afterwards are handled as documented adjustments, not as quiet changes to the ledger.
2. Clear the suspense accounts
Suspense and clearing accounts are the first place an auditor looks, because they collect everything nobody knew how to classify. A non-zero balance at year-end calls for a line-by-line explanation. Deal with them in advance: it is slow work, but far more expensive once the engagement has started.
3. Genuinely reconcile the banks — including mobile money
A bank reconciliation that balances thanks to an unexplained adjusting line is not a reconciliation. Electronic money accounts deserve the same treatment as bank accounts: provider statements, a formal reconciliation, and reconciling items you can justify.
4. Send third-party confirmations early
Confirmations to customers, suppliers, banks and lawyers are the single most common cause of delay in issuing the report, because they depend on parties you do not control. Send them as soon as the timetable is agreed.
5. Assemble evidence that fixed assets exist
A depreciation schedule is not evidence of existence. Plan a dated physical count, reconciled to the fixed-asset register, with differences explicitly resolved.
6. Gather the legal and tax file
Up-to-date articles, shareholder and board minutes, significant contracts, tax authority correspondence, ongoing audits. These documents drive the assessment of contingent liabilities and subsequent events.
7. Appoint one point of contact
An engagement with five partial contacts moves more slowly than one with a single contact who has the authority to get an internal answer. It is the easiest of these points to implement and among the most decisive.
What preparation does not change
It does not change the opinion. A well-prepared audit is faster and cheaper; it is not more lenient. If there is a substantive disagreement on an accounting treatment, it is far better to raise it early and in writing than to discover it at signature.