What We Do
At IQ Audit we are passionate about helping those who serve our communities. Welcoming clients across the business sector, we specialize in the Not-For-Profit Sector, so we know the unique constraints charities face. We work with you to ensure your financial reporting has integrity and reliability by providing audit and review procedures.
Audit
An audit is an independent examination of your organisation's financial statements and records. At IQ Audit, we review your accounts to confirm they are accurate, complete, and prepared in accordance with New Zealand accounting standards and legal requirements.
For many organisations — charities, clubs, community groups, and early childhood centres — an audit is a legal requirement. But beyond compliance, an audit gives your committee, board, funders, and members confidence that your finances are being managed properly and reported honestly.
Here's what the process looks like: we work with your team to gather the information we need, we test transactions and balances, and we assess whether your financial statements give a true and fair view of your organisation's financial position. At the end, we issue an audit opinion — a formal opinion on whether your financial statements can be relied upon.
We keep the process straightforward and low-disruption. Most of our clients are not-for-profit organisations, so we understand your environment, your reporting obligations, and the pressures your staff and volunteers face. We explain what we find in plain language, and we flag anything worth your attention — not just to tick a box, but because we think good governance matters.
Review
A review is an independent examination of your organisation's financial statements — lighter in scope than an audit, but still carried out by a qualified professional and designed to give your stakeholders assurance.
At IQ Audit, we perform reviews for organisations where a full audit is not required but where funders, members, or governing bodies still want independent analysis of the financial statements. A review is often the right fit for smaller organisations, or those that have outgrown self-prepared accounts but don't yet need the full audit process.
Here's the difference in practice: where an audit involves detailed testing of transactions and balances, a review is primarily based on enquiry and analytical procedures. We ask questions, review your accounting policies, and look for anything in the numbers that appears unusual or inconsistent. If something doesn't stack up, we follow it up. At the end, we issue a review conclusion — a formal statement that nothing has come to our attention to suggest the financial statements are materially misstated.
That's a more limited form of assurance than an audit opinion, and we're upfront about that distinction. But for many organisations, it strikes the right balance between cost, effort, and confidence.
We approach reviews with the same care and plain-language communication as our audits. If we spot something worth raising — a control weakness, an accounting treatment worth reconsidering, a disclosure that could be clearer — we'll tell you. We'd rather flag it early than leave it for someone else to find.
Agreed Upon Procedures
Agreed upon procedures — or AUP — is one of the most flexible tools in professional services. A defined set of procedures is applied to specific information, and the findings are reported factually. No opinion, no overall conclusion. Just a clear, documented account of what was found.
For some organisations, that's exactly what's needed: a straightforward way to satisfy a funder requirement, meet a grant condition, or confirm a specific figure. We do that work efficiently.
But the real power of AUP is what it becomes when you use it deliberately.
At IQ Audit, we treat AUP as a premium service — designed around a specific question your organisation is trying to answer, or a specific risk it needs to understand. Because AUP isn't constrained by the structure of an audit or review, we can go exactly where the issue is, with procedures built around your concern rather than a standard template.
The scope is built around your situation. A conflict of interest flagged in a procurement process, questions over expense claims or grant expenditure, a board wanting to know whether controls in a particular area actually work in practice, or a governance decision that needs independent, documented analysis to support it — these are exactly the kinds of problems AUP is well suited to.
If something has come to your attention and you're not sure what to do with it, an AUP engagement is often the right first step. It gives you facts, documented independently, before you decide what comes next.
Let's face it - no one is excited to go through an audit.
We know an audit isn't the most anticipated item on your calendar. Our job is to make the process straightforward, communicate clearly, and give you something useful at the end — not just a signed report.