Now that we are well into September, it’s time for credit unions to start preparing for their year-end audits.  Year-end audit preparation is a stressful time for both credit union Supervisory Committees and management, but that stress can be minimized with organization and relying on your external auditors.

Get Your CPA Involved Early

An annual audit for a credit union is methodical, detailed, time-consuming work.  If you get your CPA team involved from the start, they can organize and manage the process and relieve some of the burden from credit union management and staff.

Get Organized with A Schedule

There is so much information to gather and get through for an annual audit.  A well-planned schedule should be created with input by both the credit union team and the external auditors. 

This schedule should create a timeline of smaller tasks that need to be completed, which will keep the team on track and minimize any crunch time stress.

Consider Time Chunking

Instead of facing whole days of work time devoted to auditing tasks, your team should consider time chunking. When tasks are broken down into pieces, these pieces can be accomplished in manageable chunks of time.

These chunks of time should be built into the schedule, and this can help to avoid being away from the day-to-day business for long periods of time.

Do It Right the First Time

If you find yourself working on an audit task, and you find yourself running out of patience, that’s the time to stop.  You can either put it aside to pick up later or delegate.  Gathering information when you’re frustrated can lead to incomplete data, which means you might have to redo the work later.   

Annual Audits for Credit Unions

If you would like to talk about any aspect of planning for your credit union year-end audit, please give us a call.