What is a review engagement?
A review engagement is an independent assessment of your financial statements, ending in a conclusion your lender can rely on. It is the level of assurance most financing conditions call for: rigorous where a credit decision needs rigour, light on your business everywhere else.
Only a licensed CPA can perform one. At Ashlar, reviews are the core of the practice rather than a sideline, and it shows in the work: careful questions, clean files, and a report your bank will recognize the moment it arrives.
Who needs a review engagement?
The demand usually comes from a bank once borrowing passes a certain threshold, and the letter arrives whether you expected it or not. Bonding companies, investors and franchisors make the same request: they want numbers a CPA has stood behind. The businesses that need a review engagement most are asset-heavy companies borrowing to grow. Three examples from the clients we've served:
Construction
Equipment loans, bonding and financing between draws all rest on statements your bank trusts.
Car Dealerships
Floor plan lenders read your statements closely. Reviewed numbers keep the credit flowing.
Jewellery & Retail
High-value inventory means large credit lines, and large credit lines come with conditions.
What you receive
A review engagement with Ashlar ends with everything your lender needs in hand.
The review engagement report
The signed conclusion your bank accepts, ready to submit with your financing file.
Reviewed financial statements
Prepared alongside the review through our financial statements service, for one entity or several.
Year-end filing, bundled
Corporate tax filing can fold into the same engagement, so year-end lands as one deal instead of two.
How long does a review engagement take?
Typically, three weeks. The biggest variable is how quickly your documents come back to us; when they move, we move. Here is how a review engagement runs:
Meet and scope
In person or online. We talk through the business, what the review is for, the timeline you are working against, and where the risks sit.
Send your records
Financial statements, trial balances and bookkeeping files. Clean books shorten a review, which is why our bookkeeping clients tend to move fastest.
Pressure-test and sign
We work the numbers back and forth with you, checking for errors and anything that does not add up, until we are comfortable issuing the review opinion.
What does a review engagement cost?
Every review engagement is quoted individually, because the fee depends on what you actually need: how many entities, how many reports, how complicated the year was. You will know exactly which fees will land before you commit to anything. No surprises when the invoice arrives.
Expect the first year to carry a premium. A first review raises one-time questions that never need asking again, and we would rather price that honestly than hide it. In later years, the fee typically comes down.
Review engagement or audit?
If your bank asked for a review, that is the service to buy. Lenders sometimes raise the bar as borrowing grows, and when they do, clients move up from a review engagement to an audit, not back down to a compilation. We take on audits case by case, so a tougher requirement next year does not mean finding a new firm.
Review Engagement Questions
No. The statement level is set by whoever reads the statements, and a lender that asked for a review will not accept a compilation in its place. The two are different services rather than steps on a ladder, and clients almost never move between them. If the letter says review, a review is what closes the file.