ATF Audits
What Happens In An ATF To FFL Audit?
Many of you have already been audited by an ATF Field Inspector, sometimes known as IOI. Some of you, however, have been in business for way to long with out a single audit. Lets go into what an ATF Inspector does during an audit and why they do it.
The ATF is tasked with regulating the retail sale of firearms to end buyers from gun dealers. Why do they need to do this you may ask… Well… That’s what a lot of individuals in this country wonder everyday. What are they protecting? What are they accomplishing by doing this? My answer, or more so, my opinion, the ATF as a whole is a rather unnecessary entity just like the FED, the Dept of Ed, the EPA in many ways, etc… They are over reaching factions of our government.
Ok… Now that I’m done with my rant for the day, lets get into the ins and outs of ATF audits and how you can always make sure that you pass every single one without failure, or more importantly, without having your license revoked for mistakes.
When an ATF Inspector shows up at your place of business, they will usually come unannounced. Their intention in this is to catch you in your daily routine and not give you a chance to prepare for the audit. From their perspective, its more real. From ours, it sucks. You have to stop your day, sometimes close up shop while you tend to the every whim of this Inspector. You are a business owner to make money, RIGHT? These audits can take hours, days, sometimes weeks if you run a lot of inventory through your shop. I’ve heard of an audit that lasted almost 10 days and the owner was pretty much forced to close up until the audit was complete. This audit took so long because he had never been audited in 25 years and all he had was paper stacks upon paper stacks and had no system to track and organize his business.
When the IOI gets there, they are going to start by making sure you have all the necessary forms and licenses displayed correctly. You need your FFL posted for starters, next you need your local business license displayed, then your TPT (Transaction Privilege Tax) if required in your area, next you need the Youth Handgun Safety Act form displayed. These are the main things that are required to be displayed in most businesses and then one or two extra things for the gun dealers.
Next, they are going to take a full inventory of your current existing in store stock of firearms and other serial numbered items. ie: suppressors, stripped receivers, etc… This can take some time depending on how much stock you keep but having a good system that you can access all of this info quickly for printing is a huge time saver.
Next they are going to want to compare their records with yours and this is the part that takes the longest usually. However, once again, with a good ffl software, you would be reducing the amount of time they are there by at least 50% if not more. Once they are done comparing the records, then comes the fun part, they start analyzing the 4473, or ATF sale forms. They look at every detail and some Inspectors are wanting to find mistakes so they can justify taking your license. This is so unconstitutional, but hey, nothing will happen if we don’t do something.
If you are the perfect RoboDealer, and you never make a single mistake, fine… But if you are like me and are not 100% perfectly organized, this is where you could seriously have some faults. The first time I was audited, I had 34 instances of mistakes and I had only sold 154 guns at that point. That is a 22% fail rate. Not very good in my book.
Obviously I went with software as my solution to this problem. Check out TAD Software and tell me it is not the best you have ever seen for the price. TADsoft will easily fix every problem that has been presented and then some.
You can check out the software by following this link. 14 day free trials are offered and 100% money back guarantee if you are not satisfied.
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Yours Truly,
Bryan Kowacich – World’s Foremost Leading Expert In Firearms Software