Audit Trail

There's one word that every small business owner — and I am one — fears: audit.

However, I will now share with you the secret to not only surviving an audit, but guaranteeing you'll never be audited again.

My business came up to receive a random audit from the state last year. Lucky me. The auditor sent me a letter, and followed up with a phone call a few days later to set an appointment. He was clearly Asian, with somewhat broken English, but I understood him to say that he knew where I lived (I have a home office), that he knew the area well because it was his audit territory, and he'd arrive at 10 a.m. the next day.

That morning our daughter Claire, who was eight, threw up and stayed home from school. She was laying on the sofa while I stacked all the financial documents the auditor had requested on our kitchen table.

10 a.m. came, and the auditor didn't. 10:15. 10:20. 10:30. Finally at 10:40 he pulled up, gathered a laptop case and pile of papers from his front seat and came to the door, looking a little out of breath and upset. As I went to the door our dog, a 100 pound black lab, started barking. The auditor recoiled.

I put our dog in the basement and let him in. As I was offering him something to drink he was explaining, in broken English, that he'd gotten lost on the way. As he dumped his stuff on the kitchen table and started getting out his laptop I explained that Claire (whom he could see on the sofa) was home sick but wouldn't bother us. The auditor seemed to be rattled, and merely nodded.

His laptop fired up, he asked me for the first document from the list he'd sent me. As I handed it to him Claire leaned over the edge of the sofa and threw up into a bucket I'd put there "just in case."

"I'm sure everything is fine," the auditor said, shutting his laptop and standing. "You'll be getting a letter of compliance within a week to 10 days." (I'm not going to try to duplicate his broken English.) He was out the door in 30 seconds.

As soon as he left I said to Claire, "Sweetie, I know you don't feel well. But as soon as you do, I'm taking you to Toys 'R Us and buying you whatever you want."

I haven't heard from an auditor since.