Running examinations in-house: the paperwork problem

A factor that examines its own clients controls the quality and timing of every exam. It also takes on everything around the exam: scheduling, collecting documents, chasing, filing, writing up and following up. For most in-house teams, that work takes more time than the examining itself, and it is where exams slip.

Where the time goes

Follow one exam from request to report and the pattern is familiar.

1. Scheduling. Emails back and forth with the client to find a date, then a reminder, then a change.
2. The document request. A list sent by email, often copied from the last exam and edited by hand: A/R and A/P agings, bank statements, interim financials, sales journals, invoices and proofs of delivery for a sample.
3. Collection. Files arrive over days, as email attachments with names like “scan0043.pdf”, some for the wrong period, some missing.
4. Chasing. Working out what’s still outstanding and asking again, sometimes several times.
5. Filing. Renaming, sorting into folders, matching each proof of delivery to its invoice.
6. Examining. The part that needs an examiner’s judgement.
7. Writing up. Rebuilding the report, often from last year’s document, carrying figures across by hand.
8. Following up. Tracking what the client was asked to fix, in a spreadsheet or someone’s inbox.

Only step 6 needs an experienced examiner. The rest is administration, and every hour spent on it is an hour not spent testing the receivables.

The costs that don’t show

The obvious cost is time. The less obvious costs are worse:

• Inconsistency. When each examiner keeps their own request list and report format, exams of different clients can’t be compared, and the same client’s exams drift from year to year.
• Lost history. Last year’s findings sit in a document on a shared drive. Whether they were fixed depends on someone remembering to check.
• Security. Bank statements and customer lists travel as email attachments, copied to inboxes and laptops.
• Visibility. Credit and management can’t see where an exam stands without asking the examiner.

What good looks like

An exam process that keeps the examiner examining has a few features in common.

• A standard request list per exam type, generated for each exam, so that the client is asked for exactly what’s needed and nothing more.
• One secure upload link per exam, where the client sends documents against that list. Each upload is checked off as it arrives, and chasing asks only for what’s still missing.
• Documents read as they arrive. An A/R aging read into its buckets with the total checked against the report’s own, a bank statement reconciled from opening to closing balance, an invoice compared with its proof of delivery. The examiner reviews the results and investigates the differences, rather than retyping figures.
• A template, not a blank document, so every exam of a given type covers the same ground and produces a report in the same format.
• A record that carries forward. Last exam’s open items, figures and findings are in front of the examiner at the start of the next one.
• Review before release, by someone other than the examiner who did the work.
• Findings turned into tracked action items the moment the report is released, each with an owner.

None of this changes what a good examiner does. It changes how much of the day they get to spend doing it.

What to measure

Before changing anything, time a few exams from request to released report, and note how much of that time went on requests, chasing and write-up rather than testing. Measure the same exams again after the change. The numbers make the case for the new process better than any description of it, and they show where the remaining delays are.

Where Audits Hub fits

Audits Hub was built by auditors to run exactly this process, and it is in daily use for audits in the UK. The examiner requests an exam, the client receives a single upload link listing what’s needed, documents are read and checked as they land, and the exam is worked through a template with each check beside the figure it tests. The report is reviewed, released online and as a PDF, and its recommendations become action items for your team. The next exam starts with the last one’s open items.

Your account executives do the reviews and your examiners do the exams. The Hub handles the paperwork.

Getting started

Teams that move to a structured process usually start with one exam type, typically the routine exam of existing clients, and one or two examiners. A standard request list and report template are agreed first, then a handful of exams are run through the new process before it is rolled out across the portfolio. Within a cycle of exams, the history starts to build, and each exam begins where the last one ended.