One of the greatest frustrations felt by SEC reporting companies is the amount of time required by the auditing company to review the "edgarized" proof, especially as a filing deadline looms. To decrease the amount of time necessary to compare the Word version of the 10-K annual report to the EDGARized pdf proof, the auditors may want to consider utilizing the tools available in Adobe Acrobat's Professional software. This is not the "free" downloadable version of Adobe's "Reader", but the cost is minimal to obtain the tool. In fact, we obtained the Reader Version 8 for only $150 from an online store that is 100% legit and licensed. (Call for more information if interested.)
Once Adobe Acrobat Professional is opened, then go to the menu bar and select "Tools" - then "Compare Documents." Then one simply browses to a pdf copy of the Word file (which can be made by printing the Word file to pdf), and also selects the pdf copy of the EDGARized proof. Adobe can then do a side-by-side report that indicates anything that is different from the two documents.
A couple hints: Insert blank pages as appropriate in either document so what is on any given page is aligned with what is on the other document's similar page. This makes reading the "side-by-side" report much easier. Also note that sometimes Adobe finds differences that really are not (it errs on the conservative side!). These are typically instances in which a word wraps differently at the end of a paragraph in one document than in the other. So those are easily ignored.
Of course, auditors will likely want to manually review every line and figure in the tables one by one, but using Adobe's "Compare Documents" feature can greatly increase the level of assurance and the speed with which the text portion of two documents can be compared.
