Most delayed audits in Saudi Arabia are not delayed by the auditor. They are delayed by information that was never assembled during the year and has to be reconstructed under time pressure in the weeks after year end. By then the people who know the answers are busy, the supporting documents are in someone’s inbox, and every question costs days instead of minutes.
The signs that a company is heading for that situation are visible long before fieldwork begins. These are the five we see most often, and what to do about each.
1. Bank and intercompany reconciliations are more than a month behind
A reconciliation that is two months old is not a control. It is a record of a position nobody has verified recently. When reconciliations lag, differences accumulate, and the work of explaining them grows faster than the work of preventing them.
The fix: close bank reconciliations within five working days of month end and have them reviewed and signed by someone other than the preparer. Intercompany balances should be confirmed with the counterparty monthly, not at year end — a mismatch found in March takes an email to resolve; the same mismatch found in January of the following year takes a meeting.
2. There is no fixed asset register that agrees to the general ledger
Many companies maintain a fixed asset list in a spreadsheet that has drifted from the ledger over several years. Additions were posted but not listed. Disposals were listed but not derecognised. Depreciation was calculated on the old schedule.
The fix: rebuild the register once, properly, and reconcile it to the ledger cost and accumulated depreciation balances. Then require that every addition and disposal is recorded in both places in the same month. A physical verification of high-value items, with the count sheets retained, turns the register from an assertion into evidence.
3. Related-party transactions are undocumented
Transactions with shareholders, affiliates and entities under common control are among the most scrutinised areas in an audit, and among the least documented in practice. Balances move between group entities on instruction, without agreements, pricing basis or approval records.
The fix: maintain a schedule of related parties and the transactions with each, updated as they occur. For each recurring arrangement, keep the agreement, the basis on which amounts were determined, and evidence of who approved it. This also matters beyond the audit — related-party disclosure is required under IFRS, and the underlying pricing may be examined by the tax authority.
4. Revenue is recognised on invoicing rather than on performance
Under IFRS 15, revenue is recognised when control of a good or service transfers to the customer — which is not always when the invoice is raised. Companies with long-term contracts, milestone billing, retentions or bundled deliverables frequently bill on a schedule that does not track performance.
The fix: map the contract types the business actually uses and document, for each, when performance obligations are satisfied and how that translates to the ledger. This is the single most common source of year-end adjustments we see, and it is entirely avoidable with a policy written before the transactions occur rather than after.
5. The people who hold the answers are not part of the process
Audit readiness is often treated as a finance department problem. But the explanation of a provision sits with legal, the status of a contract sits with operations, and the basis of an estimate sits with whoever made it. If those people first hear about the audit when an auditor emails them, the delay is built in.
The fix: identify, before year end, who owns each judgemental area and what they will be asked to produce. A one-page request list circulated in advance converts three weeks of chasing into a single planned exercise.
What readiness actually buys you
A company that has closed these five gaps does not simply get a faster audit. It gets a cleaner one: fewer adjustments, fewer management letter points, and an opinion issued on a date the business chose rather than a date it was given. For companies that need audited statements for a bank facility, a tender submission or a shareholder deadline, that difference is commercial, not administrative.
If you would like a view on where your own gaps sit before year end, our audit partners run a short readiness review that produces a written list of what to fix and in what order.