Client notes
Evidence from real audit seasons
Finance leads describe how fieldwork, sampling, and reporting felt—not star ratings. Each note refers to a specific Harbor Balance engagement.
They arrived after our first close attempt fell short on inventory cut-off. The sampling plan was explained in plain language, and the only friction was our own warehouse delay—not their fieldwork.
Keiko Morita · Finance Director · statutory financial statement audit
The internal control review caught that purchase orders under ¥50,000 skipped a second approval. Fixing it before year-end cost us a week of policy writing; leaving it would have filled the management letter.
Ryo Tanabe · Controller · internal control review
Observation at our Nara plant ran longer than we hoped because the count sheets were reprinted mid-morning. Harbor Balance stayed calm, but I would schedule a dry run next year—the memo still arrived on time.
Mika Endo · Operations Manager · inventory observation support
When we changed auditors, opening balances were the worry. Hana Saito’s team tied equity to the prior opinion and flagged one classification we had papered over. That honesty made the board more comfortable, not less.
David Lang · CFO, Japan subsidiary · opening balance review
Engagement story
Year-end audit for a Kansai components maker
A mid-size manufacturer needed a first statutory opinion for its bank facility renewal. Ledgers were complete, but inventory cut-off between the plant and a third-party warehouse had never been tested.
Harbor Balance ran interim revenue testing in November, observed both count locations in March, and issued the opinion within the bank’s April window. Two adjusting entries related to goods-in-transit; neither affected the covenant headroom.
Another season
Control review ahead of a parent reporting pack
A foreign-owned distributor asked for a spring control walkthrough before summer consolidation. We interviewed payroll, purchasing, and revenue clerks over eight days and delivered a ranked findings memo. The statutory audit later that year referenced the remediations and required fewer follow-up inquiries on approvals.
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