Audits are often viewed as another compliance tick-box exercise – just something that must be done to meet legal and regulatory requirements.
However, audits can add value to a business when the data is used to gain a greater insight into performance.
Who is eligible for a statutory audit?
While any company can voluntarily have an audit, there are certain thresholds that mean an audit becomes compulsory.
As statutory audits are not targeted at smaller businesses, a company must exceed at least two of these thresholds for two financial years to become eligible.
These audit thresholds were raised in April 2025, reclassifying an estimated 132,000 UK businesses into lower size tiers.
Although these businesses are now legally exempt from mandatory audits, many smaller enterprises choose voluntary audits, particularly when they are close to the threshold.
Whether an audit is voluntary or legally required, it can have a host of benefits for the performance of a business.
What benefits can an audit bring?
By having an independent third party verify your financial statements, confidence in your business’s financial health can be boosted.
Demonstrating strong finances to investors, lenders and suppliers might allow you to secure more investment and more favourable financing terms.
Aside from identifying financial strengths, auditors can bring your attention to inefficiencies and areas where you could save money.
Through an analysis of financial processes and operations, areas where resources are being used inefficiently can be identified.
With these insights in hand, you can improve operations, boost cash flow and have a better understanding of where to allocate resources.
Your business may also be exposed to fraud, operational weaknesses or non-compliance, but these can often fly under the radar.
With an audit, you gain an external perspective on potential vulnerabilities, allowing you to fix weaknesses you might not otherwise have noticed.
A clearer picture of weaknesses might also be revealed with scrutiny of your business’s financial performance.
The accurate and reliable data auditors provide can be the insight needed to plan with greater confidence.
When audits are embraced as tools that can strategically benefit business growth, they seem more like an investment and less like a daunting compliance burden.
Schedule your audit – Speak to an accountant
Beyond just conducting your audit, our accountants can turn the findings into practical actions that can improve the performance of your business.
Where weaknesses are identified, our accountants can help design stronger financial controls to reduce the risk of future losses.
We can help turn data into better management reporting to help you make more informed decisions for business growth.
