Performing an audit and having audited financial statements are always a good thing, but how do they also benefit buyers in a transaction? In the next PKF Texas – The Entrepreneur’s Playbook® episode, Audit Senior Manager, Kimberly Wood, CPA, CEPA, provides the insightful details.
Jen: This is the PKF Texas – Entrepreneur’s Playbook®. I’m Jen Lemanski and I’m back once again with Kimberly Wood, an Audit Senior Manager and one of our Approachable Advisors™. Kimberly, welcome back, glad to have you here.
Kimberly: Thanks for having me.
Jen: So, we’ve talked in the past about due diligence, buy-side, sell-side. So, if a firm is keeping to GAAP, what’s the benefit to the buyer of having those types of audited financial statements?
Kimberly: Audits generally bring credibility, but they’re not as granular. So, for example, with due diligence procedures, we’re going to dive into customer concentrations, trends, seasonality business versus non-business expenses. It’s essentially a deeper dive into the analysis of financial statements. Also, audits are as of a point of time and potential buyers are going to want to get those figures trued up.
Asking the Right Questions
Jen: So, are there questions that a buyer should ask you to look into when they are potentially looking at buying a business or do you make recommendations of things that they should touch on?
Kimberly: We have our set procedures to do for due diligence, but then also potential buyers will say, “Hey, I want to take a deep dive into this. Are there customer concentration issues? Hey, we noticed this was skewed a little bit. Can you take a look and see what’s causing that?” So, definitely, we have your basic procedures, but we can tailor it as well.
Jen: Perfect. Sounds good. Well, we’ll get you to talk a little bit more about buy-side and sell-side due diligence, as well as transactions and those kinds of things. Sound good?
Kimberly: Sounds good. Thanks.
Jen: This has been another thought leadership production brought to you by the PKF Texas – The Entrepreneur’s Playbook. For more information about this and other topics, visit www.pkftexas.com. Tune in next week for another chapter.