“They spent two full days on our warehouse floor before touching the ledger. The inventory adjustments they flagged matched what our floor supervisors already suspected but had not quantified. The first planning call ran longer than we expected, though it saved us from reopening closed periods later.”
Client stories
What finance teams noticed during fieldwork
These accounts mention specific balances, schedules, and constraints from engagements we actually scoped— not star ratings or anonymous marketplace blurbs.
“Our lender wanted an auditor’s report within eight weeks of year-end. East Lantern kept a shared open-items list and cleared every balance before the board meeting.”
“The readiness review caught missing cut-off memos on three overseas shipments. We fixed them before the statutory team arrived, which shortened fieldwork by nearly a week.”
“For the earn-out verification they only reported facts we had agreed in writing—no opinions dressed up as assurance. That discipline mattered when both sides of the deal were tense.”
“Cash handling at our two shop counters looked fine on paper. Their control assessment showed deposits were delayed every Friday; we changed the courier schedule the same month.”
Extended story: March year-end at a Komatsu parts supplier
A machinery-parts company asked us to complete a first-year statutory audit before a working-capital facility renewal in May. Opening balances needed reconstruction from the previous accountant’s trial balances; three overseas customers required email confirmations followed by phone call-backs.
Inventory observation took a full day across two sheds. Cut-off testing identified goods shipped on 31 March that still sat in finished-goods stock on the draft statements. After the adjustment, gross margin moved by less than a percentage point— but the lender’s credit memo specifically cited the unmodified auditor’s report and the related-party note we insisted on expanding.
Fieldwork ran six weeks from planning meeting to report. The controller later commissioned an audit readiness review for the following year so the same cut-off memos would already exist before we returned.
Discuss a similar timelineExtended story: Earn-out procedures for a family holding sale
When a Kanazawa wholesale business sold a minority stake, both parties needed factual verification of trailing twelve-month gross profit— not an audit opinion. We agreed a procedure list covering revenue cut-off, credit notes, and intercompany eliminations, then reported findings without interpretive language.
One finding showed a late credit note that reduced the earn-out base. Because the procedure had defined how credit notes would be treated, neither side disputed the arithmetic. The engagement closed in three weeks.