Internal and statutory audits are often confused, but they serve very different purposes within a business.
A statutory audit is a legal requirement, focused on giving stakeholders assurance that the financial statements present a true and fair view — it happens once a year, after the fact.
An internal audit, by contrast, is a management tool — it runs through the year, focuses on processes and controls, and is designed to catch issues while there's still time to fix them.
For growing businesses, particularly those preparing for external funding or scaling operations, a periodic internal audit often pays for itself by catching control gaps well before the statutory auditors — or an investor's due diligence team — ever see them.
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