#audit
Audit
Independent audit and assurance engagements — SOC 2, financial statement audits, internal controls testing, evidence collection, and audit readiness for service organizations and growing businesses
Workers' Comp Premium Audits: Which Payroll Records Prevent a Surprise Bill?
A workers' comp premium audit reconciles your estimated payroll against actual payroll, job classification codes, and subcontractor payments. Missing a subcontractor's certificate of insurance can add the entire contract amount to your auditable payroll — plus a 25–50% non-compliance surcharge. Here are the records to keep monthly, and the 30–60 day dispute window to know.
OMB's Uniform Guidance Overhaul: What the 2 CFR 200 Rewrite Means for Nonprofits on Federal Grants
OMB's proposed Uniform Grants Regulation would replace 2 CFR Part 200 by October 1, 2026 — making the rules binding regulation, eliminating most fixed-amount awards in favor of cost-reimbursement, and adding termination-for-convenience authority. Here's what nonprofit finance teams should do about the 30–60 day reimbursement lag, indirect cost documentation, and new allowability limits before the final rule lands.
SAS 150 Explained: Auditors Must Now Confirm Cash Held by Payment Processors, PEOs, and Escrow Agents
The AICPA's SAS 150, issued July 2026, requires auditors to independently confirm cash and cash equivalents held by third parties — payment processor balances, PEO trust accounts, and escrow arrangements — effective for audits of periods ending on or after December 15, 2028. Here is what the standard changes, why it exists, and how audited businesses should prepare.
PCAOB AS 1215: The New 14-Day Audit Documentation Deadline and What It Means for Small Firms
PCAOB AS 1215 cuts the audit documentation completion window from 45 days to 14 after the report release date. Large firms have complied since fiscal years beginning December 15, 2024; all other registered firms follow for fiscal years beginning December 15, 2025 — meaning most calendar-year 2026 audits are already covered. Here's who's affected, the mistakes firms keep making, and how small practices are adapting.
How a Trailer Manufacturer's Bankruptcy Shows What Happens When Nobody Is Watching the Books
A Georgia trailer manufacturer's 2026 Chapter 11 filing traces partly to alleged employee theft discovered in 2024. Businesses under 100 employees suffer a median fraud loss of $141,000 per ACFE data — here are the segregation-of-duties controls that catch theft early, and why an auditable ledger matters.
GAO's AI Report on the SBA: What Federal Contractors and SBIR Applicants Should Do Now
GAO report GAO-26-107828 found the SBA froze nearly all AI work in March 2025 and took six years to publish its legally required AI use-case inventory. Here's what AI-assisted market research, proposal screening, and fraud detection mean for federal contractors and SBIR/STTR awardees — and the records to keep now.
Ghost Employee Fraud: How Fake Payroll Records Drain Small Businesses and the Controls That Catch Them
Ghost employee schemes cost U.S. businesses an estimated $400 billion a year and run a median of 18–30 months before detection. Learn the three common scheme patterns, the red flags already in your payroll data — duplicate bank accounts, unchanged withholding, missing I-9s — and the segregation-of-duties controls that stop them.
The IRS Doesn't Have to Prove You Lied — It Just Has to Prove Your Receipts Don't Exist
In Goodwill-Oikerhe v. Commissioner, a tax preparer lost every disputed deduction — dependents, property tax, vehicle expenses, S-corp flow-throughs — and drew a 75% civil fraud penalty under Section 6663, largely because no records existed. Why the Cohan rule couldn't rescue him, and what contemporaneous bookkeeping must capture to survive an audit.
Algarawi v. Commissioner: How the IRS Bank Deposits Method Turns Missing Records Into Taxable Income
In Algarawi v. Commissioner (T.C. Memo. 2026-8), the Tax Court upheld an IRS bank deposits analysis that reconstructed $165,744 in underreported income for a tax preparer who kept no books, rejected his charity conduit defense for lack of contemporaneous records, and sustained accuracy-related penalties — a case study in why commingled accounts shift the burden of proof onto the taxpayer.
PCAOB Bars Auditor Jennifer Crofoot Over Skipped Engagement Quality Reviews: What It Teaches You About Vetting an Audit Firm
In December 2025 the PCAOB barred CPA Jennifer Crofoot for at least three years and fined Fruci & Associates $50,000 after four public-company audits were released without the mandatory engagement quality review under AS 1220. Here is what the second-reviewer requirement actually protects against, and five concrete questions to ask before relying on any firm's audit opinion.
PCAOB Bars Zwick CPA Over Fabricated Genie Energy Workpapers: What Audit Quality Failures Mean for Small Businesses
The PCAOB revoked Zwick CPA's registration and fined the firm $50,000 after finding its 2022 Genie Energy audit relied on the predecessor auditor's recycled workpapers with swapped names and fabricated documentation. With 61% aggregate deficiency rates at triennially inspected firms, here's how small businesses can vet the audits they rely on — and keep their own books diligence-ready.
South Delta Planning v. United States: The Ruling That Lets ERC Clawback Fights Reach Court
On July 15, 2026, a Mississippi federal court ruled that a business fighting an IRS clawback of a previously-paid Employee Retention Credit refund does not need to file a second administrative refund claim before suing, and — because employment taxes are divisible by employee and quarter — can satisfy the Flora full-payment rule by paying the amount tied to a single employee rather than the entire reassessment.