Vaerah’s services: Auditing

Typical audit workflow

The following is a typical suggested sequence of tasks to perform in order to get an audited investment published.

1. Create an investment prospectus draft but do not post it right now. Many hastily cobble a terrible prospectus together, post it on the forum and act surprised when it invariably gets demolished by the investors. Don’t do that, it’s going to cost a lot to reverse a bad start.
2. Contact an auditor and find out if an audit is useful for the specific situation. Have ready the investment intended interest rate, duration, special clauses (i.e. exit strategy), the number of your accounts and all your characters and corporations full API keys. API keys are created at this EvE Online web site page.
3. The auditor will state his / her fee. Usually those fees are to be paid after the produced audit has been accepted by the applicant but before it is published.
4. Listen to the possible auditor suggestions and criticism and update the prospectus accordingly and send the new draft revision to the auditor for further review.
5. After the auditor is OK, proceed posting the prospectus, clearly indicating to the investors that they should not send any money before the audit is out. Many experienced investors will say “Reserving NNN ISK pending audit” anyway. An alternate option is to coordinate with the auditor about a specific date and time when to post both prospectus and audit together.
6. If the investment fills (often the case for audited investments) and you were to post collateral, then proceed sending it to the intended Collateral Holder (the auditor often does that as well) and have him post about collateral reception on the investment thread.
7. The auditor posts the audit report and investors send the money.
8. The investment has now officially started.
9. At investment maturity, send the investment money (also known as “principal”) plus interest back to the investors.
10. Only after each of them confirmed receipt of principal plus interest, the Collateral Holder (if any) will release the collateral back. In case some investors just won’t confirm receipt within a certain time frame, the auditor will check the investee wallet records to check that he actually sent the due money to everybody.

Audits gotchas and cautions

• Audits cannot magically make investments safe! An investee could be totally competent, have all the required skills, have learned doing a certain business for years and yet have an hidden agenda about scamming the Investors. Auditors cannot certify good will, auditors don’t have X-Ray brain machines to see the true intentions of the Investees.
• Audits are about information, not about safety. An audit may tell if an investee is actually trained to perform a certain activity but it may not tell that the investee will want to perform it without scamming.
• Just because an investee is honest and competent, does not mean he won’t fail to deliver on his promises. Certain incidents, albeit rare, may occur and they may affect the investee ability to deliver.
• Audits are not meant to completely replace investors due diligence in investigating about the investment and investee, nor are meant to take choices for them. Investors must always be conscious of the fact that investments always come with risks and of the fact they are meant to invest money they can afford to lose.
• Just because somebody claims to be an auditor does not mean he is one or is able to perform as one or is worth trusting enough to be one. You should practice extreme caution when some never seen character starts claiming he’s an auditor. It’s always best to find out if he’s talking the truth by looking at his past posts history. If shady or empty, then refuse being audited by that person! Auditors tend to get full API keys off the investees, this gives them great powers over the investees and full knowledge about their strategies and secrets.
• Bar very few exceptions, an audit is not an audit if the investee won’t give the auditor all his characters and corporations full API keys. Only EvE-mails may be excluded for privacy. Investees who are not fine with this, will have to do without an audit.

Known established auditors

At the moment of writing, the only active auditor is Vaerah Vahrokha.

The others either quit, stepped down or play sporadically. An alphabetical order listing is provided anyway.

Breaker77
Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazzac Elentria
Shar Tegral