Client stories

Specific accounts, constraints, and outcomes from reconciliation reviews — not star ratings.

Short comments

"The review of our three HKD accounts before the interim audit caught a vendor refund posted twice. We would have preferred a faster turnaround, but the aged open-item list was the clearest we have filed."

— Patricia Yeung, Group accountant, Island East

"Adrian walked our USD clearing account with the treasury clerk for half a day. The timing differences finally had dates next to them instead of vague notes."

— Kelvin Mak, Treasury supervisor, Kwun Tong

"We asked only for period-end cash checks. They declined to expand into inventory cut-off, which was the right call — the cash sample note was enough for our auditors."

— Sarah Lin, Finance director, Mid-Levels holding company

Extended story: June close, trading firm

Central trading firm — five accounts, one hard fieldwork date

The controller engaged Datastreamtools ten working days before statutory auditors were due on site. Three HKD accounts reconciled cleanly; a fourth held seventeen uncleared wires, some older than sixty days. The fifth, a CNH account, showed FX differences from weekend rate updates.

We aged the wires, obtained remittance PDFs from the bank portal with the client's IT liaison present, and drafted journal proposals for two duplicates. The CNH differences were classified as timing with rate sources cited. The findings memo went into the audit binder on the morning fieldwork began.

Constraint: original cheque images had to remain in the client's locked file room, so one afternoon was spent on-site at their Central office rather than in Sheung Wan.

Extended story: Suspense that would not clear

Kowloon professional services firm — discrepancy investigation

A HKD 184,000 suspense balance had rolled for four months. Ordinary reconciliation reviews had already matched the current month. The investigation traced a client receipt applied to the wrong matter code, then a reversing entry that never reached the bank account mapping.

Root cause sat in the practice management export, not the bank. We documented the trail, proposed correcting entries, and noted residual risk on two older items still lacking remitter names. The finance manager kept those two open with a named owner.

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