PBC list?

OK, clearly I have audit on the brain (it is no coincidence that a majority of my clients are preparing for their upcoming 2008 audits).  Recently a staff accountant asked me:

what is the PBC list you keep talking about?

Well, first, PBC stands for Provided by Client.  Technically the PBC is a request by external auditors of items (a loooooong list) that will be required from the client by the auditor prior to the commencement of audit fieldwork.  The PBC list is usually grouped to match your balance sheet accounts, then revenue and expense accounts, followed by cash flow.  It also has a section for general items like organization charts, board minutes and resolutions, significant material contracts, etc.

We discuss preparing for audits quite extensively in the Finance Ready Guide but on this blog we also refer to ‘audit binders’.  This is essentially all the material requested in the PBC, organized to match the PBC list, so that the auditors have the majority of the information on arrival which minimizes your ‘fetch and retrieve’ activities while they are on-site.

I’ve been talking about it quite extensively lately because my client has their audit starting next week and they still have not received their PBC list!  As it takes weeks to pull this information together, photocopy and prepare the binder we are using an old one from PWC (the big four all use relatively the same list).  But still.  Geesh.

If you would like to see what a PBC list looks like just let me know.  I’ll post an example with our products.

Now, back to the ol’ tick and tie.  Sometimes I hate accounting.