How To Minimize The Amount Of Time You Are Being Audited

Posted on: 10 August 2015

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No company enjoys being audited, even if they know that they have done nothing wrong and are in full compliance with all regulations that apply to them. When the auditor is in the building, people are on edge and generally less productive, costing the company a great deal of money. In order to make sure that you minimize this loss of productivity, you are going to need to minimize the amount of time that the audit takes. Here are some tips for speeding up the audit.

1. Ask for the List of Necessary Documents Ahead of Time

Some auditors announce that they are going to be coming ahead of time. This is awesome because it gives you time to prepare for the audit and make sure that you have everything that you need. Before the auditor even arrives, ask him or her for the list of the documents that his or her auditing team is going to require. Send out this list to each department that it applies to and ask them to make copies of each of the documents on the list. Have them send you all the copies and put them in one large file, organized in the same format by which they are organized on the original list. You will then be able to give the auditor all of the documents that he or she needs immediately and allow him or her to start work right away.

2. Cooperate Fully

The second step is to cooperate fully. Have a person near the auditor or available to the auditor at all times in order to take orders and run messages throughout your company. Your auditor might need to take a tour of some parts of your company and look at parts of your building to make sure that you are in compliance. If you have a person by the auditor, the auditor will not have to put off asking for anything and any of his or her needs can be met right away. This will reduce the time that the audit will take.

3. Ask About Technological Requirements

Finally, tools such as data mining and working with databases can help auditors do their job more quickly and effectively. Ask if there is any way that you can facilitate the use of technology through compliance audit programs, such as those offered by Steton Technology Group. This could mean digitizing all of your forms, giving access to any databases that you might be keeping, or getting the auditor specific software. Doing this can speed up the auditing process.

For more information, talk to your compliance auditor.