[Foundation-l] Foundation Discretion on Personnel Matters

Sat Dec 15 14:04:46 UTC 2007

On Dec 15, 2007 8:53 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Does any organisation complete audits quicker than "months"?
> >
> > Umm, yes.  The vast majority of them do.  If you have clean books and
> > good records, an audit isn't that big of a deal.
> >
> > > They take a long time.
> >
> > Do you have any idea what you're talking about here?
>
> Admittedly, I don't know much about organisations the foundation's
> size, but large companies (that give public reports, hence me knowing
> about them) often take months to get their end of year reports out.
> Just take a look at the date on the SEC filings (or equiv) and compare
> to the date of the end of the year. There is a big gap. (If memory
> serves, the SEC allows 90 days to file at the end of the year, but I
> wouldn't swear by it.)
>
Preparing audited financial statements involves *much* more than
auditing them.  The vast majority of the work goes into preparing the
financial statements in the first place.  An audit isn't an
examination of every single transaction (unless there are major
problems).  An audit takes a random sampling of transactions and
examines them.  I'm not a CPA, so I don't know all the nitty-gritty
details, but I've been involved in audits of small and medium sized
companies (up to a few million in revenue), as well as
quasi-governmental organizations, and we're talking days, not months.