During a short-term controller engagement with a distribution business, I was asked to work directly with the accounting records, assess close readiness, and investigate several unresolved balances and transactions.
The review went beyond a high-level assessment.
Bank reconciliation work identified timing and documentation gaps requiring follow-up. Reconstructing cost of goods sold from source records showed that some manual entries did not have sufficient supporting workpapers, making the reported figures difficult to trace and defend.
The work also included reviewing a vendor dispute involving differences between purchase orders, goods received, and supplier invoices; assessing the accounting treatment of a factoring arrangement; reconciling customer advances; and analysing member distributions and equity activity.
The engagement produced reconciliation workbooks, issue-specific accounting analysis, close-process templates, and written documentation of the matters identified and the work still required.
The engagement concluded before the full remediation was carried out, so I did not oversee the implementation of the corrective work. The value of the work was diagnostic: it made visible which balances could be supported, which required reconstruction, and where stronger close controls and documentation were needed.
This is an anonymised account of professional work. It is presented as a diagnostic work example, not as a completed Chez Solutions client case study.
Start with what can — and cannot — be supported.
A useful diagnostic identifies which balances are reliable, which require reconstruction, and where the close process needs stronger controls.
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