Accounting Standard Implementation & Audit Support
Adopting a new standard is a project, not a memo. So is a first audit. Both go badly when they're run part-time by a team that already has a close to finish. I run them end to end — assessment, documentation, entries, disclosures, and the auditor conversations that follow.
New Standard Implementations
How it runs:
Scoping and impact assessment. Which contracts, leases, or instruments are in scope, and what the adoption actually changes for you.
Policy and position papers. Elections, practical expedients, and judgments — written down with the reasoning, because your auditors will ask.
Data and calculations. Pulling the population, building the models, and reconciling to the ledger.
Transition entries. The adjustment, the entries, and the support behind them.
Disclosures. Draft footnote language and the schedules that feed it.
Auditor walkthrough. I present the approach and answer the follow-ups.
Standards I implement: ASC 320/321/323 (investments) · ASC 815 (derivatives and hedging) · ASC 606 (revenue) · ASC 842 (leases)
Audit Support & Readiness
Audit season goes wrong in predictable ways: the PBC list lands and nobody owns it, a prior-year position can't be supported, or the schedules take three weeks that the close didn't have.
Where I help:
Audit readiness — working the PBC list before fieldwork, so requests are answered when they arrive rather than chased
First-audit preparation — for companies being audited for the first time, including what auditors will want that nobody has documented yet
Technical positions under challenge — researching and supporting a treatment the audit team is questioning
Prior-period corrections — assessing materiality, and handling the restatement or revision if it comes to that
Interim capacity — stepping in when your team is short-handed during fieldwork
Pre-IPO and Diligence Readiness
Going public, or being acquired, turns every undocumented judgment into a diligence question. The accounting work is best done eighteen months before you need it, not during the process.
Typical scope: cleaning up historical positions and the documentation behind them · restating to public-company presentation · building the control environment ahead of SOX year one · preparing for the increased scrutiny a first public audit brings
If you're on an IPO timeline, the first call is worth having early, even if the work isn't for another year.
Why Bring in an Independent CPA
Your audit firm is the wrong place for this — independence rules bar them from preparing what they then audit at a public company, and constrain it heavily elsewhere. Hiring a full-time senior technical accountant for a project that lasts four months is expensive and hard to unwind. A large consulting firm will staff it with people who learn your business on your dime.
An independent CPA who has done the standard before is usually the right answer for a bounded, technical, deadline-driven project. When it isn't, I'll say so on the call.
Working against an audit date or an adoption deadline?
Tell me the date and the standard, and I’ll tell you on a 30-minute call whether it’s realistic and what it takes.