Plow, thank you for the awesome comments/infos you are providing on this board. Your posts are actually one the the main reason I am preparing to pull the trigger.
You mention 1 million + transactions. I do not feel that each individual transaction is being audited. What would be audited are the P&L's, balance sheets, register tape rolls and Point of Sales report to match, and all expense reports. I owned a few restaurants/bars in the past, and I can assure you that individual tickets do not come into account during an audit. What an S&L audit might be looking for, for example, would be making sure that income, food cost, bar cost and labor costs actually jive, and prove that the books are on the up and up. What I am trying to say, is reconciliation of 3 small entities should not take this long. Something doesn't jive in my opinion.