11 May 2026
Year-end cut-off mistakes we still see in northern Taiwan books
Export invoices dated in December with January bills of lading remain a common source of overstated revenue before audit fieldwork begins.
Every spring we open boxes of shipping documents and find the same pattern: sales booked when the invoice was printed, not when control of goods passed. For FOB export shipments, the bill of lading date often tells a different story from the sales ledger.
Finance teams under pressure to hit board targets sometimes rely on the ERP’s default invoice date. That works for domestic delivery with same-day handover. It fails for containers that leave Keelung in early January.
A practical check before you close
Pull the last fifteen outbound shipments of the year and match invoice date, warehouse release, and shipping document. Flag any gap longer than three calendar days. Those lines deserve a second look — and often an adjusting entry — before the auditor arrives.
Related-party sales deserve the same treatment. Intra-group invoices raised to meet a monthly target without corresponding goods movement create consolidation headaches later.
Why this matters for the audit opinion
Material cut-off errors push revenue and receivables. Even when management corrects them promptly, late discoveries compress the reporting calendar and raise questions about the control environment around period-end.
If your close checklist does not already include a shipping-document reconciliation, add it this year. It is one of the cheapest ways to keep fieldwork focused on judgement areas rather than basic timing mistakes.