Audit Prep Checklist

If you're scoping an engagement with us, or thinking about hiring any serious operations consultant, this is the data set worth assembling before the first conversation. Most of these are things you already know in fragments — pulling them into one place will sharpen your own thinking even if you decide not to hire anyone. The whole assembly takes 60-90 minutes of honest work.

1. Operating history — last 12 months

• Major process changes and reorganizations, in order, with start and end dates.
• Which initiatives you actually completed versus abandoned mid-stream. Be honest about the abandoned ones; that pattern matters more than the completed ones.
• Core metrics (revenue, margin, throughput) at the start, middle, and end of each quarter.
• Headcount and team structure by month.
• Any operating reviews actually run (not just scheduled and skipped).
• Advisor or consultant for each initiative, and whether you'd hire them again.

2. Operating numbers — last 60-90 days

• Average cycle time on your core workflow versus your target.
• Throughput — units shipped, projects delivered, orders fulfilled — by week.
• Tool or system data if you have it: queue depth, exception rate, cost per unit. Pull 60-90 days. Trends matter more than individual days.
• Margin: gross and contribution, on a 1-5 confidence scale for how clean the number is.
• Where you suspect time leaks — which step feels slow, even if you can't prove it yet.
• Where you suspect money leaks — which handoff or order type feels unprofitable.

3. Process debt — recent and chronic

• Any acute breakdown in the last 24 months: what happened, how it was handled, current status.
• Any chronic friction point you've been managing for over a year — billing, fulfillment, onboarding, support, handoffs. Note which steps aggravate it and which run clean.
• Any documentation that exists (process docs, SOPs, playbooks) and how current it actually is.
• Any tooling or vendor currently involved or recently changed.
• Steps you currently work around, skip, or handle manually. Be specific about why.

4. Prior consultants and initiatives

• Every consultant or advisor you've worked with in the last five years. Length of engagement, what worked, what didn't, why it ended.
• Every off-the-shelf playbook or framework you've adopted in full. Note the result and what you'd change.
• Initiatives you started and abandoned. The abandonment pattern is often the most useful signal in this section.
• What you tell yourself when an initiative isn't working. (Your answer to this question is a real data point.)

5. Capacity constraints

• Team availability by function — which roles are reliable, which are stretched, which are a single point of failure.
• Realistic capacity per cycle, team to team. Note your floor, not your ceiling.
• Owner and leadership hours and how they change across the quarter. Travel days per month, and pattern.
• Seasonal load — peak periods, slow periods, and how the operation flexes (or doesn't).
• Decision bottlenecks — what only the owner can sign off on, and how often that blocks the team.

6. Tooling access

• Primary stack — list of tools that matter for your core workflow. PM, billing, CRM, fulfillment, support, analytics.
• Where the stack overlaps, and where gaps get bridged by manual copy-paste.
• Integrations that exist versus integrations that are manual.
• Any tool your current process requires that the team doesn't reliably use.

7. Key dates — next 12 months

• Any launch, deadline, or business target with a fixed date.
• Major work or personal events that will compress capacity (launches, peak seasons, key hires, moves).
• Planned changes that are confirmed (not aspirational).
• Annual planning or board cycle — when, and whether we'll have access to the numbers.

8. Cost baseline

• Average monthly operating cost range, if known. If unknown, mark it unknown rather than guessing.
• Cost per unit you're hitting most weeks. Note the weeks you don't.
• How much work is done in-house versus outsourced, by function.
• Any cost commitments — contracts, retainers, licenses. Note if these are firm or flexible.
• Margin baseline — rough gross and contribution margin, plus any leakage notes from section 2.

9. The honest questions

These are the questions a good consultant asks somewhere in the discovery call. Answering them on paper first will save you time and surface useful tension.

• What is your stated goal for the next 12 months, in one sentence with a number in it?
• What has your last 12 weeks of behavior actually optimized for? (This may not match the stated goal.)
• If you removed all ego from the answer, what is the single biggest gap between where you are and where you want to be?
• What have you tried that didn't work, and why do you think it didn't?
• What are you not willing to change? (This is a useful constraint, not a defect.)

10. Files to have ready

• A spreadsheet or PDF of the last 8-12 weeks of operating data.
• 60-90 days of tool or system export, if applicable.
• Any prior consulting documents (audits, plans, process maps) you're willing to share.
• Any existing process documentation if it's in play.

Send the assembled package as a single shared folder or one zipped file. If you're doing this for your own clarity rather than a consulting engagement, the act of pulling it together is most of the value.