Trial Balance to Audit Opinion: A Guide to Audit Readiness
August 24, 2026Preparing for the annual financial statement audit can feel overwhelming for public sector entities, particularly for finance teams balancing daily operations, compliance requirements, and reporting deadlines. Audit preparation can often be treated as a year-end event rather than a year-round process.
Join Forvis Mazars as we introduce a practical framework for preparing for the financial statement audit by organizing activities around major financial statement line items. Learn how to identify key audit risks, supporting schedules, reconciliations, and documentation requirements associated with cash, receivables, capital assets, liabilities, revenues, expenditures, grants, and other significant balances.
This session will demonstrate how government finance teams can break audit preparation into manageable tasks throughout the year to help reduce year-end stress while strengthening financial data quality, documentation readiness, and communication with auditors. In addition, gain insights into a structured approach that can be adapted to public sector entities of varying sizes and maturity levels.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this program, participants should be able to:
- Evaluate and prioritize financial statement line items based on audit risk and documentation requirements to help improve audit efficiency.
- Identify key audit preparation activities associated with major financial statement line items and understand how those activities support audit readiness throughout the year.
- Prepare and develop a year-round audit preparation framework that assigns reconciliations, schedules, documentation, and review procedures to specific balance sheet and operating statement accounts.
Presenters
