Client Stories
What finance teams noticed during fieldwork
These notes come from statutory audits, control assessments, readiness reviews, and subsidiary reporting support — not anonymous star ratings.
“They spent the first morning walking our warehouse with the count sheets instead of camping in the meeting room. We still finished the physical inventory by noon, and the later valuation queries were half of what we saw the year before.”
“I appreciated the blunt note about our purchase approvals—two people were still sharing a stamp. The letter was shorter than others we have received, but every point mapped to something we could fix before the next close.”
“Our parent in Germany wanted the IFRS bridge explained in English without losing the Japanese GAAP numbers. Sumi Balance sat with both our local bookkeeper and the group controller on the same call and cleared the intercompany differences the same week.”
“The readiness review caught a missing accrual for year-end bonuses that would have embarrassed us in front of the statutory team. Scheduling was tight around Golden Week, and they were frank that fieldwork could not compress further without risking quality.”
Extended story
Coastal distributor, March year-end
A food distributor near the Sea of Japan asked us to take over their statutory year-end audit after their previous firm retired. Inventory sat in two cold stores and a dry warehouse. The perpetual system had drifted after a mid-year relocation.
We attended the Saturday count, sampled high-value frozen lots by weight ticket, and reconciled cut-off to shipping manifests for the three days either side of year-end. Revenue testing focused on consignment arrangements that had been booked as firm sales in prior years.
The management letter flagged dual use of an approval stamp in purchasing — a finding the client preferred we state plainly rather than soften. Report issuance landed two days before the bank covenant certificate was due. The controller later commissioned a pre-audit readiness review for the following February to keep the same rhythm.