Secure rooms for financial audits, regulatory exams and certification audits: handling request lists, auditor questions and evidence retention, with costs.
Q&A tied to documents, granular permissions, dynamic watermarking, document rights control, two-factor login and a full audit trail, with AI tools that help find evidence fast; from $149 a month, which suits a room reused every audit cycle.
Request lists and task tracking sit beside the data room, so a long auditor request list can be assigned, chased and closed in one place; SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
Q&A, redaction, watermarking and a full audit trail with SOC 2 and ISO 27001, a dependable choice for regulatory responses that external counsel helps to run.
Professional-services file sharing from $55 a month with HIPAA support, SSO, e-signature and rights management; practical for recurring audits with an accounting firm, though it has no Q&A module.
Enterprise content management from $15 per user per month with SSO, HIPAA support and broad integrations, useful when the evidence already lives in Box; no Q&A or rights management in our data.
Audits are not deals, but they create the same problem: an outside party needs to inspect sensitive files, ask questions about them and leave with a record of what it saw. Most companies handle this every year, sometimes several times a year, and many still do it through email attachments and a shared drive that the auditors forget to log out of.
| Review | Who asks | Typical evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Year-end financial audit | External auditor | Ledgers, reconciliations, contracts, board minutes |
| Regulatory examination | Banking, insurance or healthcare regulator | Policies, risk reports, complaint logs, customer files |
| Security certification audit | SOC 2 or ISO 27001 auditor | Access reviews, change tickets, incident records, policies |
| Tax inquiry | Tax authority, sometimes via advisers | Returns, transfer pricing files, intercompany agreements |
| Internal audit or investigation | Internal audit, audit committee | Process documentation, emails, approvals |
| Customer or vendor audit | A large customer’s risk team | Security questionnaires, certificates, test results |
The common thread is a request list. Auditors send a numbered list of items, sometimes called a PBC list (“prepared by client”), and the work is a loop of uploading, questioning and closing items.
The audit request cycle
Step three is where the time goes. An auditor reviews a reconciliation, asks for the supporting invoices, then asks about one invoice. When that conversation happens by email, nobody can later reconstruct which version of which file answered which question. A room that keeps the question thread next to the document fixes that.
Structure that mirrors the request list. Number folders to match the auditor’s list, or use a platform with built-in request tracking. DealRoom is designed around request lists in our data; the other rooms here handle it with numbered folders and Q&A.
Questions attached to evidence. Ellty, DealRoom and Firmex all include Q&A in our data. ShareFile and Box do not, so follow-up questions would sit in email or comments.
Time-limited, view-only access. Auditors need to read and sometimes download working papers, but examiners and customer auditors often only need to view. Set expiry dates on their access so it ends with the engagement.
Watermarking and rights control. Regulatory exams can involve customer files and personal data. Dynamic watermarking names the viewer on every page; document rights control limits printing and saving. All five rooms on this page watermark in our data, and four offer rights control. Box does not.
Single sign-on for internal staff. Large organisations may require SSO for anyone uploading evidence. DealRoom, Firmex and Ellty do not list SSO in our data; ShareFile and Box do.
Retention. Evidence from one audit is often requested again in the next. Export the room, including the audit trail and the Q&A, at the end of each engagement and store it under your records policy.
Both work. A standing compliance room with a folder per year suits companies that face the same auditor every year; it keeps prior-year evidence one click away and the bill predictable. A room per engagement suits one-off reviews, such as a regulator’s thematic exam or a customer audit, where you want access to end cleanly when the review does.
A useful middle path: keep one standing room for recurring audits and open short-term rooms for anything unusual, so that an examiner never sees last year’s internal audit findings by accident.
| If your audit work is | Lean towards | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring, with lots of follow-up questions | Ellty | Q&A on documents, rights control and a flat monthly price |
| Driven by long request lists across many owners | DealRoom | Request lists and task tracking built in |
| Regulatory responses run with external counsel | Firmex | Q&A, redaction and a strong audit trail |
| Mostly routine exchange with your accounting firm | Citrix ShareFile | Low entry price, SSO and HIPAA support |
| Built on evidence already stored in Box | Box | No migration, SSO and integrations |
Full reviews: DealRoom, Firmex, Citrix ShareFile, Box.
Audit rooms are opened every year, so annual cost matters more than the entry price. Per-user tools look cheap until every finance, HR and IT owner needs a seat. A flat monthly room is easier to forecast, and you can close it between cycles if the provider keeps an archive. Ask whether archived rooms are billed. Our pricing page compares the main models, and the security features guide explains which controls auditors tend to check.
A PBC (prepared by client) list is the auditor's numbered list of documents and schedules the company must provide. Mirroring its numbering in the data room makes it easy to see which items are open and which are closed.
Usually yes for working papers they must retain, but limit it to the audit team and keep watermarking on. Regulators and customer auditors often need view-only access.
It depends on the regulation and your records policy, but several years is common. Export each engagement's room, including the audit trail and Q&A, and store it so it can be produced again if asked.
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