2 September 2025
What we ask for in week one of an engagement
A short, specific request list so fieldwork does not begin with a scavenger hunt.
Week one is a document week. We send a request list before the opening meeting so the finance lead is not hearing the list for the first time across a table. The list is boring on purpose.
We ask for the current draft of the financial chapters; the forecast workbook with workings, not only outputs; the latest management accounts or, for a new company, the bank statements and paid-in capital evidence; draft or signed bank and trustee letters; the operations note on top-ups, stored value, and merchant payout; related-party agreements; and the board resolution that authorises the application and the capital.
If the wallet is live or in pilot, we add a month of wallet ledger extracts, merchant payout files, and the corresponding bank statements. We do not need a data room of everything the company has ever produced. We need the sources behind the figures that will be in the file.
Teams that can produce this list in the first ten days get a shorter engagement and a cleaner exception schedule. Teams that cannot are telling us, early, where the application is still a narrative rather than a file.