Consulting & AdvisoryFree
Consulting Document Review Evidence Log
Every finding tied to the page and the item it came from, with whatever contradicts it kept on the sheet instead of dropped.
River reads the whole set and builds the evidence log while it reads. Every row names the file, the page and the item on that page, so a finding points at table 2 on page 9 rather than at a board pack with sixty pages in it. What comes back is the narrative of what the documents collectively establish, the log behind every line of it, and a separate register of the places where two of the client's own documents disagree.
Search the query and page one is document-processing vendors, each of them offering to read the pile, surface the patterns and flag the contradictions between sources. Flagging is where all of them stop. The consultant settles the contradiction, the losing document goes back in the folder, and in month three somebody in the client's finance team produces that document and the finding has nothing to say. Here a contradiction keeps its own row, carrying the class of difference and how it resolved.
Built for the consultant who has to read a data room in the first fortnight of a fixed-fee engagement and then defend the read at a steering meeting in month three. It picks up where the reading order off an unindexed pile stops, sits beside the theme register built from the transcripts, and hands its rows to a findings set that names its criteria. Reach for it on a diligence read, on a predecessor firm's file, or on any engagement whose answer has to carry a page number.
What makes a document review hold up in month three
A published standard already says what a record of document review has to carry. PCAOB AS 1215 requires documentation of a procedure involving the inspection of documents to include identification of the items inspected, and for a significant contract or agreement, an abstract or a copy of the document itself. Naming the file does not identify the item. Page 9, table 2, the scrap column does. The same standard sets the test for a finished row: an experienced reviewer with no previous connection to the engagement can follow it.
The rule nobody carries over concerns evidence that goes the other way. Beyond the documentation supporting the final conclusion, the file must include information relating to significant findings that is inconsistent with or contradicts that conclusion, together with the record of how the difference in judgment was resolved. Consulting review runs the other way: the losing document goes back in the folder and the report ships clean. A findings report is also a summary in the sense Federal Rule of Evidence 1006 uses, usable only where the underlying originals stay available for examination.
Aldworth Plastics, four injection moulding sites, engaged on why unit cost rose while volume held flat. The August operations pack put Site 3 scrap at 8.4 percent of material consumed, which on £14.1m of material ties to the £1,184,000 sitting in the scrap and rework account. The 2023 report from the previous firm said 2.9 percent. Both are right. Regrind has counted as scrap since April 2024 and accounts for 4.1 of the 8.4 points, so the comparable rate is 4.3 percent. The recoverable gap is £197,400, not the £775,500 the trend prints.
How it works
Send the set
Whatever came out of the data room, in whatever folder structure and file naming it arrived in.
Name the question
What the engagement has to answer, so each document is read against a question rather than filed.
Read the log
One row per cited item, the finding it supports, and the row that disagrees with it.
Push back in chat
Ask what a finding rests on, or add the replacement file the client sent last week.
What you get
- Every finding tied to a file, a page, and the item on that page
- A contradiction register, one row per place two of the client's documents disagree
- The class of each difference, separating a definition change from a real one
- The document that contradicts a finding kept on the sheet with how it resolved
- An abstract attached to any clause or table the finding actually turns on
- A coverage log of what was read and cited nothing, so the gap is countable
Common questions
What counts as a citation here?
A file, a page, and the item on that page. Table 2 on page 9 of the August operations pack, or account 5320 in the general ledger export. Where the finding turns on a clause or a table, the row carries an abstract of it, so nobody has to reopen a forty page agreement to check one sentence.
The client just sent a new version of a file. Does the citation break?
No, because the row cites the document as received, with the date it arrived. A replacement becomes a second document and the difference between the two becomes a version row in the contradiction register. Retiring the old file is a decision with a date on it rather than an overwrite nobody recorded.
What happens to a document that contradicts a finding?
It keeps its own row, with the class of difference and how the difference resolved. Six of the 47 findings in the worked example had a document pointing the other way, and three of the six changed the finding. Deleting the losing document is what leaves a report with nothing to say when the client produces it.
Do I still have to read all of it myself?
You read what the log cites and you spot-check the rest. The point of the coverage column is that it tells you where to spend the reading: 168 cited documents, 152 read and cited nothing, and eleven contracts nobody opened. That last number is a request back to the client, not a gap you hide.
How is this different from asking for a summary of the pile?
A summary tells you what the documents say. This tells you which document said it, on what page, and which other document disagrees. The difference only matters once somebody challenges a finding, which is exactly when a summary stops being useful and the address of the evidence becomes the whole argument.
Where does this sit in the engagement?
Right after intake and before any analysis. It runs on the set the intake pack indexed and chased, and its rows become the evidence line inside a scored assessment. Where the documents describe a process, the current state register reads them against what people actually do. Figures the report will hold against an outside peer go on to the graded comparator sheet.
Consulting Document Review Evidence Log
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