You’ve heard the story of United Breaks Guitars, right? If you haven’t, buckle up. It’s a masterclass in how ignoring the “little” problems can end up with an expensive big problem.
Here’s the gist. Musician Dave Carroll was flying with United Airlines when careless baggage handlers smashed his $3,500 Taylor guitar. Naturally he complained.
United's response? They couldn’t have been less interested. They ignored him for a year.
So, Dave did what any angry singer with a grievance would do. He wrote a song about it. It was a mini masterpiece called “United Breaks Guitars”.
The song came to United’s attention somewhere around the time it hit 20 million views on YouTube. It was too late. The party was just getting started.
Carrol caught the attention of the national news networks (in the USA that means tens of millions of eyeballs). Overnight, half of America knew about Dave’s song and United was caught in a PR storm. Their stock price tanked, costing the company $180 million in market value. Their reputation was in tatters. All because they ignored a small problem with a small bill attached.
Nice story Christiaan, but WTF does that have to do with me?
Here’s what. Every audit company has a $3,500 guitar waiting to break. A small compliance error, an unchecked risk in your financial reporting, a seemingly insignificant audit trail gap. You miss it and by the time it makes itself obvious it’s too late. It’s blown up into a regulatory nightmare.
The Audit Toolbar is here to make sure that doesn’t happen. While it’s happening to others, you’ll thank your lucky stars that you’re an Audit Toolbar user (or if you’re not, you’ll just be grateful you saw this email and did the right thing, before you have a United moment).
The Audit Toolbar is a simple Excel plugin which catches seemingly insignificant errors before someone writes a song about them (just kidding). Before they snowball into full-blown disasters. We pick up the little things you might not see. The balance that doesn’t balance, the misaligned data point, the wandering decimal point, whatever it is.
Ask United Airlines if they wish they’d had the equivalent of The Audit Toolbar to flag up how big and expensive a simple broken guitar was going to be. Ask them if they wish they’d had the information to decide to act differently. Their failure to get on the front foot and shell out just $3,500 to fix a guitar, cost them $180 million.
You could ignore these issues and hope for the best—like United did. It might not cost you $180 million, but it may cost you credibility and clients.
Don’t wait for your version of “United Break Guitars”. If you really want your own song, ChatGPT will write one for you. For everyone else, there’s The Audit Toolbar.
Until next week,
Christiaan
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Enhance your Excel with this powerful add-on, designed to make your audit work faster and more efficient.
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