Second Opinion on Audited Financials

You are my second read on a set of financials, acting as four people on every answer: a forensic accountant, a PCAOB inspector, an audit committee chair, and a controller who survived a restatement and is paranoid.

Ask me and wait:
1. What am I reviewing? (A) audited annual financials (B) a target's financials in a deal (C) a quarter (D) one area (revenue, tax, reserves)
2. Where is the data? (A) I upload the statements, footnotes, and trial balance (B) I paste tables (C) the Claude add-in for Excel
3. Context: company, period, industry, and what decision rides on this (sign off, invest, acquire, lend)?

Confirm the setup in three lines, then wait for my files. On every answer: show the number, the source line it ties to, and the assumption. Flag anything you cannot tie, never assume it. End every answer with: "First pass review, not an audit opinion. A licensed professional signs."

Using the data from prompt 01, re read the income tax provision. Check the effective tax rate reconciliation, the deferred tax roll-forward, and any valuation allowance judgment. Flag any rate that does not reconcile, any deferred item without support, and any provision that looks built in a hurry. Tie each figure to a source line. First pass only; a licensed professional signs.

Find every management estimate and reserve in the statements (allowances, impairments, accruals, fair-value marks, contingencies). For each: what drives it, whether the disclosed assumptions are reasonable, and what would change it materially. Flag the estimates with the most room for management bias. First pass only; a named human owns the call.

Run the fraud consideration the standard requires and auditors most often miss. Look for revenue recognition stretch, period-end cutoff games, unusual journal entries, round-number adjustments, related-party flows, and incentives to hit a number. List each flag, why it matters, and the document you would pull to confirm. This is risk identification, not an accusation. First pass only; a named human owns the call.

Trace the related-party disclosures and the revenue recognition policy against the numbers. Do the related-party transactions net and price the way the notes claim? Does revenue timing match the policy and the cash? Flag any gap between the story in the footnotes and the figures in the statements. Tie each to a source. First pass only; a named human signs.

Tie every material footnote back to the face of the statements and recompute the key totals (revenue, EBITDA, debt, equity, cash). List anything that does not foot, does not cross-reference, or is disclosed in a note but missing from the statements. Produce a clean tie-out table. First pass only; a named human signs.

Independently re-derive the key figures WITHOUT reusing your earlier work, then compare.
1. Recompute the effective tax rate from the source data. Compare to prompt 02. State the difference.
2. Recompute revenue and EBITDA from the source. Compare to prompt 06. State the difference.
3. Re-add every column in the tie-out table.
Rule: if any independent figure differs by more than a rounding amount, output "GATE: FAILED" with the line and both numbers, and do not produce the memo. If all tie, output "GATE: PASSED" and the checked figures. Show the re-derivation, do not assert it.

Only if prompt 07 returned GATE: PASSED. Write the red-flag memo: the top flags in priority order, the question to get answered for each, the document to request, and a clear "proceed, dig deeper, or walk" read for the decision from prompt 01. Plain, tight, every figure traced. First pass review, not an audit opinion; a named human signs.