From reviewing original invoices to ensuring that monthly financial reports were initialed by your CFO, a finance audit checklist helps you get a clear overview of your business expenses.
We’ll share what you should include in your financial audit checklist, explain who should perform it, and provide a free generalized template that you can tailor to your company’s needs.
Plus, we’ll explain how to simplify your financial audit process by using digital forms, so your employees can edit, save and upload documents whether they’re in the building or on the go.
Your financial audit checklist should include:
Table of Contents
A financial audit checklist is a document that contains list of tasks that must be completed during the financial auditing process, which is typically conducted once a year.
A financial audit checklist helps you:
Both internal and external financial audits are used to appraise a company’s financial records.
The primary difference between the two is that internal audits are performed by employees, typically several times a year, while an external audit is conducted by an outside public accounting firm or other independent third party, like a CPA, once a year.
Internal audits generally focus on evaluating processes, procedures, and internal controls within the organization.
External financial audits typically go beyond this and involve a more thorough assessment of a company’s accounting records as well as its compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
An external audit is commonly used for year-end reports and annual tax returns required by regulatory bodies.
A certified public accountant conducts financial audits
From financial statements to expense approvals, here’s what your finance audit checklist should include:
The first thing that your financial audit checklist should include is the budget that you established at the beginning of the year, outlining expected expenses and income.
It should also include all financial statements (including income statements and balance sheets) allowing you to track and assess your company’s activity over the year.
Auditing your budget and financial statements will help you identify discrepancies and gain visibility into your company’s cash flow and financial performance.
Before you establish balance sheets for pending payments, your company’s accruals (expenses incurred or revenues earned) must be recorded.
For example, if you provided a service to a customer in January, but didn’t’ receive the payment until February, the profit earned from that service would be noted as an accrual in January.
As part of the audit, you’ll review service dates, payment dates and other details to make sure all transactions are properly recorded and accounted for.
Whether paid by cash or check, all expenses must go through a series of approvals.
Typically, an employee provides proof of the expense (a receipt, for example), then submits it to a manager. The manager confirms the purchase and approves the expense. Finally, the manager sends it to the finance team, who must also sign off on the expense.
During the audit, you’ll need to make sure that all company expenses went through the agreed upon channels for approval.
Company expenses, such as business trips, go through a series of approvals
A trial balance — a list off all your accounts and the balances for each account — will help your employees determine whether double-entry bookkeeping has been correctly carried out and ensure that debit and credit entries have balanced.
For example, let’s say your utility expenses include payments from four different bills, amounting to $2,000, $1,000, $1,500, and $3,000. In the trial balance, total utility expenses should be shown as$7,500.
Example Of A Financial Audit Checklist
Company Name:
Fiscal Year:
Income
Expenditures
Were all expenses properly allocated and categorized?
Internal Revenue Service
Checks/Banking
Budget/Reports
Accruals
Trial Balance
At doForms, we offer mobile forms solutions that transform paper financial audit checklists into a simplified and paperless system.
Our paperless approach means that your employees don’t need to carry around a checklist when performing your quarterly or biyearly financial audit — which can easily get crumpled or misplaced!
Create custom checklists, edit forms and reports, and save and store all of your important documents in one, secure location for easy access.
The doForms mobile forms app allows you to access your checklists and forms from any location, even without WiFi! This means you can easily submit reports, fill out checklists, and manage timesheets and employee payroll whether in the office or on the road.
Digitizing your documents allows for better organization and cost savings — the average business spends $8,000 per year on paper alone!
See doForms in action in the video below:
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In addition to financial audit checklists, going paperless with doForms allows you to:
A financial audit checklist is a valuable tool that can help you gain visibility into your company’s expenses, identify discrepancies and provide assurance to your stakeholders that your company’s finances are in order.
With doForms, you can say goodbye to disorganized and costly paper checklists, and replace your auditing process with digital forms that can be easily edited and securely stored.
