GOING PUBLIC MEANS PREPARING YOUR FINANCIAL STATEMENTS IN THE CORRECT FORMAT

Even if your financial books are kept perfectly, you will still need to “translate” your financial statements into the format the SEC requires or you will not be able to go public.  Doing this will require you to either hire a CFO who has worked with SEC financials, or hire a consultant with the same experience.

Quickbooks is one of the most popular financial software packages. Auditors are comfortable working with it. But Quickbooks outputs financial statements on a different format than required by the SEC. For example, on your Profit and Loss Statement, Quickbooks lists everything by line item. All expenses are totaled. However, the SEC requires you to separate out interest expense as well as income or loss from currency fluctuations-important if you have international business. The SEC requires that you provide a cash flow statement. The Quickbooks cash flow statement does not conform to SEC requirements for going public
Then,  someone has to prepare the footnotes required by the SEC. Your auditor cannot do this.

Imagine that you present your financial statements to your auditor in perfect condition. All the statements are formatted perfectly. All required footnotes are there. You have all the backup organized. You have already highlighted to the auditor any potential interpretation issues. You will probably get your audit done for less cost and much more expeditiously. And that is what you want. Time is money.