Prior books review
We look at the books that came before and tell you whether they can be relied on. This runs before we take responsibility for anything going forward, whether or not you ask for it.
HOW IT IS SCOPED
On the call
How long it takes depends on how many prior periods and entities there are. You get the scope and the number before anything starts.
Book a free 30-min callYou are probably here because one of these is true.
Which version you need.
The review is the same in kind every time. What changes is how many periods and entities it has to cover, and whether the record survives.
Standard review
- Opening balances verified
- Prior reconciliations checked
- Written finding
Usually within onboarding
Extended review
- Everything in the standard review
- Each entity checked separately
- Inter-company balances traced
- Retained earnings walked back
- Impact quantified per period
Scoped on the call
Pre-transaction review
- Everything in the extended review
- Comparatives tested for consistency
- A note on what a diligence team will ask
Scoped on the call
What is in, and what is not.
Included in every review
- Opening balance verification against source documents
- Prior period bank and control account reconciliations checked
- Receivables, payables, accruals and prepayments tested
- Inventory valuation reviewed where the business holds stock
- Retained earnings traced back to a supportable position
- Any material prior period error quantified, not just noted
- A written finding with a recommendation you can act on
- A scope and a quote for any cleanup the review shows is needed
Not included
- An audit, and any form of assurance opinion. This is a review, and we will say so
- A forensic investigation. If it needs to become one, we stop and tell you
- Fixing what we find. That is cleanup, and it is quoted separately
- The decision on how to treat a material error. We quantify and recommend, you decide
- Any criticism of whoever kept the books before. Not our job and not useful to you
Five stages, and a written answer at the end.
Closing balances become opening balances. Once we sign our name to this year, any error in last year becomes ours, which is why this is not optional.
What you have at the end.
Named artefacts, not adjectives. Everything below is something you can open, forward or hand to a third party.
WHO DOES THIS WORK
A named senior accountant
ACCA-qualified · Bookkeeping department · Reviewed by Quality Assurance
The review is run by an ACCA-qualified senior accountant and checked by quality assurance before the finding is issued. Three layers work each engagement, so cover holds if someone is away. You get the name of the senior accountant who owns yours on the first day.
Scoped on the call, before anything starts.
A single prior year on one entity is a different job from four years across three companies, and we will not put one number on a page for both. What you get on the call is the scope, the timeline and the figure.
Price your ongoing bookkeeping insteadQuestions we get asked.
Because closing balances become opening balances. Misstated prior receivables, payables, accruals, inventory or retained earnings flow into everything we produce afterwards, and once we sign our name to it the error becomes ours. It costs us unbilled hours and occasionally a deal. We do it anyway.
No. An audit is an assurance engagement with a formal opinion, and we do not provide one. This is a review to establish whether the opening position is supportable enough for us to take the books forward. We are deliberate about the difference and we will not describe it as anything else.
We stop and raise it with you before going any further. We are an ACCA Approved Employer and work under the ACCA Code of Ethics, which sets out what we are required to do when something looks like non-compliance rather than a mistake. That conversation happens with you first.
Then you have a written statement that they are, which is worth having on file the next time a lender, an investor or a new accountant asks. It happens more often than people expect.
No. We are not looking at who did what, we are looking at whether the numbers are supportable. Businesses often carry issues from prior years that nobody remembers the reason for, and that is normal rather than negligent.
That is your call. What we will not do is take on ongoing work on opening balances nobody has verified, because we would then be standing behind numbers we know we cannot support. We will say so plainly rather than start and hope.
More on why opening balances matter.
Case studies are anonymised and figures are banded. Nothing here identifies a client.