When the Auditor Asks, “How Did You Get There?”
Aug 25, 2026
In Government Pricing (GP), most of the work around compliance goes into getting the numbers right. This is understandable given how heavily scrutinized this area is. But the documentation supporting those numbers – the methodologies, assumptions, data sources, and decision rationale – often gets far less attention. In an audit, that's where the real exposure lives.
Government auditors don't just review calculations; they often start with the documentation. They expect clear, comprehensive, contemporaneous records showing exactly how each figure was derived and why. When that trail is incomplete or hard to reconstruct, audits tend to go deeper, last longer, and even accurate results can be challenged.
The gaps we see most often:
Methodologies and decision-making frameworks that exist in practice but never made it to the policy/SOP
Assumptions applied inconsistently or applied consistently but without documented support
No clear trail connecting the reported figures back to the source data
Control and validation procedures that are weak or undocumented
Critical knowledge that sits with a vendor rather than with the internal team responsible for review, approval, and certification
That last gap matters more than most companies realize. If a vendor produces the numbers and is the owner of the methodology, the individual certifying the calculations, usually under penalty of perjury, may be signing off on a process they likely can't fully explain.
In an audit, these gaps translate into prolonged inquiries, financial exposure, and, for the individual certifying your submissions, potential personal risk.
The Pricing Group works with manufacturers to close these gaps by building the documentation, traceability, and internal ownership that make GP reporting genuinely defensible, not just accurate.
If documentation is an area you've been meaning to address, or you'd like a review of how yours would withstand a government audit, we'd welcome a short conversation about how we can help.