A system is being chosen, or the one in place no longer fits
An ERP or point-of-sale selection, an implementation that has stalled, or controls designed for a smaller business than the one now running on them.
Selected assignments
Engagements are published only once verified against the file, and no client is named without written consent.
How this work begins
What organisations usually bring us in for
An assignment here is any piece of work taken on against an agreed scope and a written engagement letter — a review, an implementation, a filing programme, or a recurring outsourcing arrangement. Most start the same way: something specific has to be answered, decided or filed.
Controls exist on paper but nobody can point to where they are tested
A board or a lender asking for assurance the current process cannot give, or growth that has outrun the systems describing it.
A notice, an audit or a filing deadline has a date on it
A registration that is overdue, a position that has to be defended, or a return that needs to be filed correctly the first time.
The books need to be handed over in a state somebody else can rely on
Bookkeeping, payroll and month-end close that a bank, an investor or a new finance hire can pick up without reconstructing it first.
A company is being formed, or its filings have fallen behind
Incorporation, SECP filings, and the recurring compliance that keeps an entity in good standing once it exists.
A first audit, or a change of auditor
Independence resolved first, and records brought into a state the engagement can actually start from.
What the work usually is
Typical assignment types
Every assignment sits inside one of three areas. Each links through to the service pages that describe the work in full.
Systems & Assurance
Choosing the system, designing the controls inside it, and testing that they hold.
Tax
Both sides of the federal and provincial line, advised by one practice.
Compliance & Outsourcing
The recurring work that keeps an entity in good standing once the systems are in place.
Sector context
Where sector context matters
Some of this work is generic to any business. Some of it only makes sense once the sector is known — retail's point-of-sale and stock questions are not the same as pharmaceutical's distributor and bonus-stock questions, even when the underlying service is the same.
Retail
Chains running an ERP and a point of sale, where stock, margin and every invoice are now reported in real time.
Pharmaceutical
Manufacture and distribution sold through a trade that settles half its margin outside the invoice — in bonus stock, credit terms, discounts and credit notes.
Both are set out in full on the sectors page — what each one is usually called about, and what the practice does across the two.
Getting started
How an assignment starts
The sequence is the same regardless of which of the above it turns out to be.
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01
Define the problem
What has to be answered, decided or filed, in your own words, before anything is scoped.
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02
Establish scope
What the engagement will and will not cover, agreed in writing before work starts.
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03
Identify records and data required
What has to be produced, and by whom, so nothing stalls waiting on a document nobody knew was needed.
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04
Agree deliverables
What arrives at the end — a report, a filed return, a working system, a signed opinion — and on what basis.
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05
Begin work
Work starts once scope, fees and deliverables are agreed in writing, not before.
How this page works
Nothing is listed here yet, and that is deliberate
Most practices fill a page like this with work they cannot evidence and clients who never agreed to be named. This one publishes an engagement only once it has passed both of the rules below, and until then it stays empty.
Verified against the file
Every entry is checked by the principal against the engagement file before it is published. Not remembered, not reconstructed, and not written because it reads well.
Named only with written permission
No client is named without written consent held on file. Where consent is not held — which is the ordinary case — the work is described by sector, scale and year instead, and that carries the point on its own.
What you can do meanwhile
Describe the situation you are dealing with. You will get a plain answer on whether the practice has done this kind of work, what it would involve, and what it would cost — which is more useful than a list either way.
In the meantime: what the practice does, the two sectors it works in, who you would be dealing with.