Turning chronic audit delays into on-time delivery for a seven-entity manufacturing group

The situation

A group of seven companies making water-flow meters, with government tender business, contract manufacturing, and international joint ventures, experienced every statutory audit as a crisis. Deadlines were missed, penalties followed, and relations between the finance team and the auditors had soured.

The challenge

• Statutory deadlines missed repeatedly, with penalties every year
• Material errors found during fieldwork, when there was little room to correct them
• Auditor requests left open for weeks, and PBC lists incomplete when fieldwork began
• Management time swallowed by last-minute firefighting

What we did

We introduced a readiness calendar that starts well before fieldwork, with milestones for each entity and PBC schedules assigned to named people rather than departments.

Pre-audit health checks found and resolved errors, unreconciled balances, and undocumented judgements before the auditors arrived. We acted as the single point of contact between the group and its auditors, managing the flow of information and answering technical questions quickly.

The impact

• Every statutory deadline met, and penalties eliminated
• Errors found and corrected before fieldwork rather than during it
• A working relationship with the auditors restored, with fewer and faster queries
• Management attention back on the business

Client details are anonymised, and some facts are generalised to protect confidentiality.