An operational audit is not like a financial audit
While both are designed to test and evaluate systems, an operational audit covers the whole business, while the financial audit covers only the accounting systems.
An operational audit consists of looking into and evaluating all of your business systems, processes, policies, procedures and controls. We evaluate your systems for:
- Advertising, marketing, promotion and sales
- Customer fulfillment, how you satisfy your customers through providing products and services,
- Financial management, looking into policies, procedures and controls
- Information technology, how well are you using technologies to make your operations and your employees more efficient.
- Personnel, evaluation of your hiring, appraisal, training, discipline and communication with employees
- Leadership, review of your planning, budgeting, vision and mission
A diagnostic tool
An operational audit is a diagnostic tool to uncover areas for improvement in your business. To improve your business health, you need to identify the underlying causes, not just the symptoms. Typically business owners complain of inadequate cash flow. Lack of cash is a symptom that can have multiple causes. Being able to diagnose the real problem helps to get the business back to a better cash flow position more quickly.
Other Benefits
What you don't know about your business can hurt you. You don't want to be blindsided by preventable problems. We provide a detailed report outlining specific recommendations for addressing areas of concern. Knowing your areas of weakness allows you to focus your limited resources on those issues that can get you the greatest benefit.
An operational audit consists of several steps:
- Pre-audit planning, where we sit down with you to determine the audit approach.
- Risk assessment, define areas of higher priority based on the results of the business checkup.
- Create the audit program, develop the specific steps and timing for the audit work to be done.
- Conduct the audit, reviewing documents, meetings with owners and employees.
- Report, putting the results into a final audit report and presentation to owners and managers.
Affordable for nearly any sized business
An operational audit can be designed to be affordable for most businesses. (Sole proprietorships and businesses with less than five employees will get nearly as much benefit from the business checkup and we do not recommend an operational audit for these very small businesses.)
An operational audit can be done affordably because it does not have to be done all at once. It can be broken down into individual systems or even further into sub-systems, where we can concentrate on a specific area uncovered in the business checkup that can provide the greatest benefit.
