An audit is more than a regulatory formality. Here’s when one is required, when it’s worth doing voluntarily, and what good audit work actually delivers.
Reliable information about a company’s financial processes is the foundation of every meaningful business decision — strategic planning, investment, acquisition, financing, dispute resolution, succession. An audit is the most direct way to obtain it.
In Moldova, the audit framework is set primarily by Law 271/2017 on the Audit of Financial Statements, working alongside Law 287/2017 on Accounting and Financial Reporting. Together they define which companies are required to be audited, which standards apply, and how the work is overseen. For everyone else, an audit remains an optional but often very useful exercise.
BULR — Brodsky Uskov Looper Reed & Partners provides audit and audit-adjacent services for businesses in Moldova: statutory audits where required, voluntary audits where they make commercial sense, and targeted reviews where a full audit isn’t the right tool.
When an audit is required
Statutory audit obligations in Moldova apply to three categories of entities, regardless of whether ownership wants the audit or not:
- Public interest entities (PIEs) — banks, insurance companies, listed entities, and other categories defined by law. PIEs are also required to prepare financial statements under IFRS.
- Medium-sized and large entities by size criteria set in Law 287/2017. The large entity threshold is reached when at least two of three criteria are exceeded for two consecutive years: total assets above MDL 318 million, net revenue above MDL 636 million, or average headcount above 250.
- Entities preparing consolidated financial statements — irrespective of standalone size.
Where a statutory audit is required, it must be conducted in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (ISA), performed by a licensed audit firm registered with the Public Audit Supervisory Council, and completed within the timeframes set by law.
When a voluntary audit makes sense
Many companies that are not required to be audited still choose to commission one. The most common situations:
Change of CEO or CFO. Outgoing executives benefit from a clean closing line; incoming ones benefit from confirmed opening figures and known issues. Without an audit, the transition tends to surface problems six to twelve months later, by which point ownership of those problems is unclear.
Before a tax audit. A voluntary audit run ahead of an STS inspection identifies and corrects issues while the company still controls the timeline. Issues found by your own auditor can be fixed; issues found by the tax authority become liabilities.
Before a business reorganisation — merger, sale, or opening of a branch. Buyers, partners, and lenders almost always require audited or at least reviewed financial statements. A pre-transaction audit also tends to surface valuation-relevant issues that affect deal terms.
When ownership has concerns about the accuracy of accounting records. Discrepancies between management reporting and financial statements, unexplained variances, or simply a sense that something doesn’t reconcile — these are reasons enough for an audit, and the cost of confirming concerns is usually a fraction of the cost of letting them compound.
What an audit actually examines
An audit is a professional and independent assessment of a company’s accounting and financial statements. The scope of BULR’s audit work typically addresses:
- Reliability of financial reporting — whether the financial statements present a true and fair view in accordance with the applicable accounting framework (NAS or IFRS)
- Relevance of accounting policies — whether the company’s chosen policies are appropriate to its activities and consistently applied
- Contracts reviewed for civil and tax risk — material agreements assessed for legal validity, tax efficiency, and exposure to dispute
- Payables and receivables analysed — including ageing, recoverability, and the practical strategy for managing them
- Weaknesses in management and internal control systems identified — covering segregation of duties, authorisation procedures, reconciliation processes, and compliance touchpoints
The output is not a one-line “pass/fail” verdict. It is a structured report identifying findings, assessing materiality, and recommending action — corrections to be made, policies to be amended, controls to be strengthened, exposures to be addressed.
How the work is conducted
A professional audit is a time-bound process that requires preparation from both sides — the audited company and the auditor. The standard sequence:
1. Preparation. The audit schedule is set, scope and objectives are specified, and the documents required for review are identified. Clear scope discipline at this stage prevents the audit from drifting into work that isn’t useful or budgeted.
2. Information gathering and analysis. The auditor examines primary documents, the company’s charter, accounting policies, contracts, and accounting records — testing them against the applicable legal and accounting requirements. For statutory audits, this work follows ISA methodology in detail.
3. Findings and recommendations. Discrepancies are identified, materiality is assessed, and recommendations are formulated for correction or improvement. Where findings are significant, they are discussed with management before the report is finalised.
4. Report. The final audit report sets out findings, the auditor’s opinion (for statutory audits, this is one of: unqualified, qualified, adverse, or disclaimer of opinion), and recommendations for corrective action.
The 2026 context: why audit quality matters more
Several developments make 2026 a year when audit work is doing more than it used to:
- Tax authority reviews are becoming more data-driven — STS access to e-Factura data, integration of payroll and CNAS reporting, and tighter reconciliation between filed returns and underlying accounting all mean discrepancies surface more reliably than they did five years ago.
- The transfer pricing framework in force since January 2024 (MDL 20M information / MDL 50M file thresholds) makes audit-quality documentation a routine compliance requirement for companies in international groups.
- Beneficial ownership compliance under AML Law 66/2023 means audit work increasingly intersects with corporate governance and ownership transparency.
- Personal Data Protection Law 195/2024, taking effect 23 August 2026, introduces audit-relevant compliance obligations for almost every business — privacy notices, data processing agreements, retention policies, technical and organisational measures.
- Company-size threshold amendments transposing EU Directive 2023/2775 are scheduled for January 1, 2027 — meaning audits during 2026 still run under current thresholds, but companies sitting close to those thresholds should plan for the transition now.
For companies still operating below mandatory thresholds, this is the moment when voluntary audit work most clearly pays for itself — by surfacing issues that will matter under the next regulatory regime, before they become problems.
What BULR delivers
BULR offers audit and audit-adjacent services calibrated to what the engagement actually requires:
- Statutory audits for PIEs, medium and large entities, and consolidated reporting — under ISA, in compliance with Law 271/2017
- Voluntary audits for companies seeking confirmation of financial reporting reliability, ahead of transactions, or in connection with leadership transitions
- Targeted reviews — focused on specific accounts, processes, or compliance areas where a full audit isn’t the right tool
- Audit-adjacent advisory — accounting policy review, internal control improvement, transfer pricing documentation, AML and data protection compliance assessment
The work is delivered by a team that understands not just the audit standards, but how an audit fits into the broader picture of a company’s tax position, legal exposure, and commercial trajectory — because audits that ignore that context tend to produce reports that gather dust.
Getting started
The most useful first conversation is rarely about what the audit will cost. It’s about what specific question the audit needs to answer, what the consequences are if that question goes unanswered, and what scope of work efficiently addresses it.
Contact BULR’s audit team to discuss whether a statutory or voluntary audit fits your situation, or whether a more targeted review would deliver what you need.
We don’t just verify the numbers — we tell you what they mean, what to do about them, and what the next twelve months will require.