The sentence that decides it
Look for the words audit, review, or compilation attached to a report, an opinion, or a signature that is not yours. Look for a deadline measured from year end. Look for a request that the statements follow a framework and that someone independent say so. That cluster is the signed report.
Look, on the other side, for current financials, a debt-coverage calculation you can support, or a banker who wants to see the last three months. That cluster is books. We do the books. We set payday up. We prepare the return. We do not cross onto the signed report.
What we hand the firm that does sign
A year of closed months is the kindest thing you can give the firm that will sign. Confirms go faster when the bank already matches. Samples go faster when invoices live with the sale. We get you to that door. We do not walk through it and pretend the signature is ours.
If you do not need that door, we say that too. A template is not a law. Some lenders will take statements you sign yourself, once they trust the close. Ask them. We will help you ask in one paragraph.
Where the practical line is drawn
Open books are finished before a monthly rhythm starts, or the work is declined. We do not calculate paychecks or move payday money. An examination is a room you walk into yourself. What we can assemble is the list of records the notice already named, taken from months that match.
The longer version of that line, including the state sections that draw it, is on the disclosures page. It is written once, on purpose.
Lake Meredith, a wide sheet of water and a dry month
Lake Meredith sits on the Canadian River northeast of Amarillo, held by Sanford Dam since 1965. Texans know it as the big water in a dry country, and they also know years when the lake pulled back. That shoreline is not one we claim as ours. The rhyme we keep is a bookkeeping one. A wide month can still hide a dry spot, a week nobody closed, and the low water is where the problem shows.
The stone front on this page is the J. Marvin Jones federal building in Amarillo, the kind of official door a written notice comes from. It is not Lake Meredith, and we will not borrow a river from another state to stand in for that water. A wide month can still hide a week nobody closed, and that dry spot is the one we look for.
A notice is not the same thing as a report request
A letter from the state that asks for copies of returns and bank statements is a records request. We gather what the closed months already hold and put it in the order the notice named. We do not speak for you at the meeting, and we do not rewrite history to make a month look closed when it was not. A report request asks a stranger to sign an opinion. Those two envelopes can arrive in the same week. They do not get the same answer, and you should hear the difference from us in the first reading, not after you have promised a banker a page we cannot produce.
