Consulting & AdvisoryFree
Prior Firm Recommendation Status Review
Their recommendations in a register with a status and a reason for each, plus the findings that no longer match what you can see today.
River reads the previous firm's reports and decks and returns a register. One row per recommendation they made, with what it asked for, who was named to own it, what actually happened, and the evidence for that status. Then it does the harder half: it tests their findings against the material you have now and lists the ones that no longer hold. Recommendations that were refused come back with the reason, because a refusal is the cheapest lesson in the folder.
Search this and you get advice about why clients ignore recommendations. Ownership was unclear, the plan was too complex, leadership attention faded, there was no follow-up cadence. All of it is plausible and all of it is written for the consultant whose own recommendations stalled. None of it helps the consultant who has just been handed somebody else's report and eighteen months of silence, and has to work out which of those explanations applies here before repeating the same advice.
Built for the consultant who follows another firm, the fractional operator inheriting a strategy, and the diligence lead reading a target's advisory history. Run it before you write a workplan. The reports usually arrive inside a wider pile, which is what the reading order for an unindexed data room is for, and the recommendations you eventually write get their structure from the findings and recommendations pack. Where their conclusions rest on numbers you cannot reproduce, that belongs in the register rather than in a footnote.
One profession has a published protocol for this
The status register is not an invention. 2 CFR 200.511 requires a federal auditee to file a summary schedule of prior audit findings, reporting the status of every finding from the last audit. Fully corrected rows only need to say so. Rows not corrected, or corrected in part, must describe the reasons for the recurrence, the planned action, and any partial action taken. Where what was done differs significantly from what was promised, that difference gets its own explanation.
The same section is strict about dropping one. An auditee who believes a prior finding is no longer valid has to write the reasons down. And treating a finding as not warranting further action requires all three of these: two years since the report was filed, no current follow-up from the funding agency, and no management decision ever issued. Three conditions, not a judgement call. Carry that into a predecessor review and a recommendation cannot quietly disappear because it has become inconvenient.
The other half is the conversation nobody has. PCAOB AS 2610 puts the initiative on the incoming auditor and names what to ask the outgoing one: disagreements with management, anything bearing on management's integrity, and their own understanding of why the relationship ended. It also says to request the working papers rather than the report. And where the client refuses to allow the conversation, the successor asks why and weighs the refusal when deciding whether to take the job.
How it works
Send their work
The report, the decks, the board summary, and any working files that happen to have survived.
Say what changed
What the situation looks like now, and which of their recommendations visibly never happened.
Read the register
Every recommendation with a status, the evidence for it, and the reason where one exists.
Ask the two questions
Whether you can speak to the outgoing firm, and whether their working files still exist.
What you get
- One row per recommendation, with a status and the evidence behind that status
- Refused recommendations carried with the reason, because a refusal is the cheapest lesson available
- Their findings tested against the current material, with the ones that no longer hold named
- Claims resting on numbers you cannot reproduce marked unverifiable rather than repeated or discarded
- The questions to put to the outgoing firm, and what a refusal to allow that would tell you
- What they already covered, so your scope does not resell work the client has bought once
- Owners who have left flagged against every recommendation that was assigned to them
Common questions
What does it need from me?
Their deliverables in any form: the final PDF, the decks, a board summary, scans of a printed copy. Working files help and are usually gone. Then whatever you can see about the situation today, which is what turns their recommendations into statuses rather than into a summary of what somebody once said.
Is this just a summary of their report?
No. A summary tells you what they said. This tells you what happened to each thing they said, with the evidence for it, and which of their findings stopped being true. The register has a status column and a reason column, and both are filled from the current material rather than from their conclusions.
Should I really contact the firm I replaced?
Ask the client to authorise it. The published protocol for an incoming auditor puts the first move on the successor and treats a client's refusal as information to weigh rather than as an ending. Ask why, write the answer down, and carry on. The reason given is often the most useful sentence in the handover.
What if their numbers cannot be checked?
The row says unverifiable and names what is missing: the export, the model, the benchmark source. That is different from wrong, and keeping them apart matters. A finding that may still be correct and cannot be reproduced is a request you send, not a conclusion you either discard or repeat.
Does it tell me whether their work was any good?
It tells you which findings reproduce, which have been overtaken by events, and which rest on something not in the document. Findings that reproduce get said out loud, which stops the review reading as score-settling. Where you need the organisation graded rather than the report checked, a scored assessment is the different job.
Why does a refused recommendation matter so much?
Because it is the one thing in the folder that tells you what this organisation will not do. A refusal with a recorded reason saves you from proposing it again in week two and being told, in front of the sponsor, that the matter was discussed and settled two years ago.
Where does this fit in the engagement?
Week one, alongside the rest of engagement intake. Their reports usually arrive inside a much larger pile, so index the folder first and then read their work properly. Their sponsor has often left, which reconciling the chart against the headcount list settles in the same week. What comes out feeds the scope: what is covered, what is blocked, and what has already been refused once.
Prior Firm Recommendation Status Review
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