Audit prep & PBC assembly
The prepared-by-client list worked through document by document, so the audit opens with the folder already full.
Join waitlistThe year, and the day each item went on the shelf
Year-end financials, one portfolio company
It will not exist until they close their own books in March. We can ask on the day they do. Asking sooner is your relationship, not our checklist.
A fiscal year drawn as a spine. Five requested audit items hang off it at the date each was filed, and the auditor’s request list arrives on 18 September, a quarter before the year ends. A sixth item carries no date because it cannot exist until a portfolio company closes its own books.
58 of 62, dated before year end
The auditor sent the request list on 18 September, against a year with a quarter still to run. Fifty-eight of its sixty-two items were already filed, each carrying the date it happened.
The auditor asks in September. What they find was settled in March, and nothing filed later can be dated earlier.
The single largest block of hours in the fund's year, and almost all of it is assembly against a checklist that barely changes.
Books and records pulled together ahead of the exam, against the list rather than against memory.
Every entity's file assembled at once, which is the part that turns a two-week job into a six-week one when it is left to the entity owners.
We do the work. You verify it.
- Working the list section by section from the day it arrives, which is around September, before the year it asks about has even finished. A fund on cadence closes most of it before 31 December.
- Tying every schedule back to the trial balance before it goes anywhere near the auditor. A schedule that does not agree is the delay you get billed for, and it is the second thing every audit firm names when asked what goes wrong.
- Building the confirmation selection list in Q4: party, contact, balance as at 31 December, authorisation ready for your signature. A request sent to someone who left the company comes back wrong and starts a second round in February.
- Chasing the evidence that lives at your portfolio companies rather than in your files: cap table as at 31 December, the latest round documents, year-end financials, including rounds you did not take part in.
- Keeping the subsequent events log running through to the auditor's report date rather than stopping it at year-end, which is where a well-run file quietly falls apart.
- Your auditorSends every confirmation, receives every confirmation, tests and opines. They never pass through you and they never pass through us: a confirmation the fund receives is no longer evidence, so our work on them ends at the selection list.
- You and your administratorThe financial statements are management's to produce. Independence rules stop the auditor drafting them, so the statements, the Schedule of Investments and the Financial Highlights sit with you or with whoever keeps your books. So does the management representation letter, which is signed by you.
- You, on valuationEvery Level 3 mark needs a written basis and the auditor challenges the basis, not the folder. We assemble the file behind a mark: board decks, round documents, cap tables, prior valuations. We do not set the mark and we do not write the memo that defends it.
We do not test anything, confirm anything or opine on anything. The confirmations in particular are not ours to touch: the auditor sends them and the auditor receives them, and the moment one passes through the fund it stops counting as evidence.
What we ask on the first call
The answers decide whether this is two hours a month or not something we should take on. You get that on the first call rather than the third.
- 01Who is your auditor, and when does fieldwork start? Everything upstream is scheduled backwards from that date.
- 02When are audited financials due to your LPs? For a US adviser relying on the custody rule's audit exception it is 120 days after fiscal year end, but LPAs commonly say 90, and the tighter one wins.
- 03Do you have this year's PBC list yet? If it has not landed by the end of September, asking for it is the first thing we do.
- 04Will your auditor run interim procedures on the first three quarters? That is the single decision that turns a February scramble into an autumn.
- 05Is your valuation policy written down, and who signs off each mark? A first audit without one is a longer audit.
- 06How many portfolio companies do you need a 31 December cap table and year-end financials from, and how many of them replied last year? That is the number that sets the hours.
- When it runs
- Annual, and it is always the same month
- What it costs you today
- 10-40h a year
- What it touches
- Drive, QuickBooks, Xero, The auditor's PBC list
- Grade B
- Runs, with a hop we handle
Pricing
Two ways to work with us.
Have us run the recurring back office, or have us build you a system you own. We are what makes the administrator you already pay for usable by a two-person firm.
We run your back office
What moves it: how many entities, how many LPs, and what your positions sit on.
Done-for-you operations, handled on the cadence each task needs, for investment firms of any size.
- Your administrator's draft lands day 30. Our pass is done by day 34. Your LP pack goes out day 45.
- Your auditor's list closed before 31 December, not reconstructed in March.
- No per-LP fee. No charge per capital call. No add-on for an extra SPV.
- A dedicated operator who knows your firm
- Works inside your existing stack: custodians, QuickBooks, Sheets
- One monthly rate, no hourly billing. Pause or cancel anytime.
We build it, you own it
We scope and build the automations that run the work. You own the system outright, and it keeps running without us.
- A scoping call to map the workflows worth automating
- Custom automations built to your firm's process
- You own the system: no lock-in, no per-seat fees
- A custom dashboard over the systems we connect
- Full handover so your team can run it
- 3 months of maintenance and support included
- Optional care plan after, at a reduced monthly rate
Run it or build it. Both start here.
Join the waitlist.
We are taking a small number of firms to begin with. Leave your email and we will come back with what we would handle, on what cadence, and what it costs.