The PBC list — "prepared by client" — arrives with 150 to 300 lines, and line 4.3 reads: Intercompany receivable, DE GmbH, 9,900.00 — provide supporting documentation. What the auditor wants is not a folder named "DE GmbH" containing eleven PDFs.
The three things an auditor is trying to do
- Trace the balance to its components: which invoices, credit notes and payments make up 9,900.00.
- Vouch each component to a document: is there an invoice for INV-7781, does it say 9,900.00, is it addressed to the right entity.
- Assess what is missing and whether it matters.
A folder of PDFs supports step 2 only if the auditor already knows which PDF is which. Steps 1 and 3 require either your time on the phone or an index.
The index
A good pack opens with one page per PBC line:
| PBC 4.3 | Intercompany receivable DE GmbH | 9,900.00 |
|---|---|---|
| INV-7781 | 15 Aug 2026 | 4,400.00 — p.1 |
| INV-7790 | 2 Sep 2026 | 3,300.00 — pp.2–3 |
| INV-7802 | 28 Sep 2026 | 2,200.00 — missing, requested from DE AP 14 Oct |
The auditor can now do steps 1 and 3 alone, and step 2 by turning to page 1. Your phone does not ring.
The still-missing list is not a confession
Finance teams hesitate to write down what they cannot find. Auditors prefer it: a dated list of gaps with owners is evidence of control, and it tells them where to spend sampling effort. The alternative — discovering the gap during fieldwork — costs everyone more.
Confirmations
Intercompany confirmations are the other year-end time sink: draft a letter per counterparty, chase signatures, summarise returns. They are mechanical once the balances are reconciled, which is why TieOut Pilot drafts them from the reconciled workspace and tracks returns in a schedule.
Audit as a by-product
If the monthly reconciliation was done in a workspace that kept the documents and the explanations, year-end is assembly, not archaeology. The index is generated from work already done; the missing list is whatever was still open. That is the whole argument for doing the monthly work somewhere other than a spreadsheet.