An audit for any existing company small or large is a huge undertaking, respectively, that affects every aspect of the company from lower level to upper management that they have rightly planned on tackling within the year.
Once you get into the motion of having an audit performed on an annual basis you can tackle it as part of normal business operations.
But you don’t just go out and have an audit done for the first time, it is planned a year in advance unless you are a brand new company/organization. I’ll bet they have been working with auditors for many months already to audit the current year financial statements.
My comments are based on my experience.