Yes, and it suits an agent well. It can work through the auditors' request list, pull ledger extracts, gather supporting documents for each sample, tie schedules to the trial balance and flag gaps. It does not choose what auditors see. A finance manager reviews the pack and releases it, and the auditors select their own samples.
What goes into an audit pack?
Auditors send a request list, sometimes hundreds of items long: trial balances, reconciliations, fixed asset registers, contract copies, payroll reports, board minutes, and then, once they pick samples, the invoice, order, receipt and payment for each one. Finance teams spend weeks finding documents in shared drives, inboxes and filing cabinets.
The work is retrieval and checking, which suits an agent. It can read the request list, map each item to where it lives, extract what is needed and confirm that each schedule agrees to the ledger. The approach is similar to building a monthly board finance pack, with a stricter audience.
What may the agent prepare, and what must a person do?
| Task | Agent | Finance manager |
|---|---|---|
| Track the request list | Maps each item to an owner and due date, chases owners | Agrees the timetable with the auditors |
| Ledger extracts and schedules | Pulls and ties them to the trial balance | Reviews before release |
| Sample support | Gathers invoice, order, receipt and payment for each item | Spot-checks completeness |
| Gaps | Lists what is missing and why | Decides how to explain the gap |
| Agent-related evidence | Assembles its own certificates and verdict record for the period | Confirms what is in scope |
| Release to auditors | None | Uploads or sends the pack |
| Answering auditor queries | Drafts factual responses with references | Approves and sends |
Which step keeps the separation of duties?
Two lines matter. First, the auditors choose their samples. An agent that helps "select representative items" has crossed into the auditor's job, and any pack built that way is worthless as evidence. The agent responds to selections; it does not make them.
Second, documents go to the auditors as they are. The agent can gather, label and index. It must not create, edit or "tidy" a document to fill a gap. A missing approval is reported as missing. If the agent drafted a document after the fact and it reached the auditors, the problem would be far worse than the gap.
The release step, by a named person, enforces both. They can see what is in the pack and what is not, and they answer for it.
What will auditors ask about the agent itself?
Where an agent prepared or processed transactions in the period, auditors will want to understand its role. Expect requests for its scope and limits, its certification history, evidence of who approved what it drafted, and the record of its verdicts. The case for keeping that record ready is in auditors will ask for the verdict record. How auditors approach agent-prepared transactions generally is covered in how auditors treat transactions prepared by an AI agent.
The agent can assemble this evidence alongside the rest of the pack, including its certification evidence pack.
An illustrative example
Take a distribution company in its year-end audit. The request list has 140 items. The agent maps 120 to known sources, finds owners for 15 and lists 5 it cannot locate.
When the auditors send 60 sample transactions, the agent gathers support for each within a day. For 57 it finds all four documents. For two, the goods receipt is missing because the warehouse team marked delivery in a spreadsheet, not the system. For one, the invoice approval was given by email rather than in the AP tool.
The agent reports all three as exceptions with what it did find. The finance manager reviews the pack, adds a note explaining the warehouse practice and attaches the approval email, and releases the pack.
Where Pryme fits
In Pryme, every verdict an agent reached during the period is in an append-only record, alongside the certificates that applied on each date. The agent can export that record for the auditors; it has no capability to edit it, and neither does anyone else.
For the wider preparation, see how to prepare AI agents for an audit and AI agents for finance: books you can audit.
Questions people ask
Can auditors query the agent directly?
Some teams allow read-only access for factual retrieval. Answers that interpret or explain should still come from a person, because the business is answerable for them.
Does the agent speed up the audit?
It usually shortens the time spent finding documents. The audit itself still takes as long as the auditors' testing and the resolution of their findings.
Should the agent keep a copy of everything it sent?
Yes. The released pack is filed as it was sent, so later questions are answered against the same documents.