audit & assurance

technology is moving quickly. are you keeping up?

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

auditors, like most accountants, tend to be conservative in nature. we tend to be reluctant to change unless we’re on a burning platform.

more by alan anderson
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

as i’ve said before, audit is at a crossroads. we can continue the way we’ve been doing audit and will likely go extinct. or we can make changes that will keep audit relevant and valuable for the next generations.
read more →

and how to rethink client service.

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

“we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – albert einstein

when most auditors hear the word “innovation,” they think it has to do with getting more technology. but that’s only a small part of what innovation means. innovation isn’t just throwing more technology at your audit processes. that approach is often just replicating with technology what you have done in paper for decades.

more: how to advance from audit to advisory | create a culture of audit quality assurance | what quality in audit leadership means | business-minded approach helps build a better firm | are you looking at the big picture? | meet your client all year, not just during audit | give your audit teams tasks that increase business acumen | are you using the right business model? | give advice while remaining independent | stop mixing up your v’s and losing your best people | empower your team by dumping c and d clients | the new formula for an accounting business
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

according to an article in forbes, “innovation is the rethinking or reimagining of a business process that already exists.” applied to audit, innovation is reimagining what audit is and what audit can be. it’s the transformation of audit from a commoditized compliance-only function to a sought-after and highly valued service that produces benefits to the clients who use that service and to the firms who provide that service.

innovation is the spark that gets you to a new state. it’s the a-ha moment that drives the action to change. innovation can lead to transformation, but only if done with the intention of transformation. it means being willing to try doing things differently and being willing to try doing different things.
read more →

moving from quality control to quality assurance lets you advance from auditing and accounting to assurance and advisory.

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

for decades, a&a has stood for audit and accounting. it’s been focused on compliance. but sooner than we may want to believe, business owners and stakeholders will be using technology to provide the assurance they need.

this is already happening. to remain viable, we need to move a&a from audit and accounting to assurance and advisory.

more: create a culture of audit quality assurance | what quality in audit leadership means | meet your client all year, not just during audit | give advice while remaining independent | the new formula for an accounting business | don’t risk losing good employees for bad clients | four questions to make your firm more successful as a business | say adios to audit fee pressure | deliver more audit value by getting out of the conference room | six essential elements in audit planning | before the audit: more than just planning | five crucial attributes for successful audit leadership
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

now all auditors take the quality control standards of our profession seriously. but quality control that only happens at the end is more about satisfying the minimum requirements for compliance. it won’t let you move out of providing the commodity service that clients need to keep their stakeholders happy. quality at the end doesn’t provide an opportunity to really look under the hood and think about what the client really wants.
read more →

get a better result in less time.

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

for way too long, many firm leaders have equated quality in their audits with making it through the peer review process. peer review is important, but making quality all about that is like the american car executives whose production lines needed a guy with a rubber mallet at the end of the production line to make sure the door fit right. that’s quality control.

more: what quality in audit leadership means | business-minded approach helps build a better firm | are you looking at the big picture? | meet your client all year, not just during audit | give your audit teams tasks that increase business acumen | are you using the right business model? | give advice while remaining independent | stop mixing up your v’s and losing your best people | empower your team by dumping c and d clients | the new formula for an accounting business | how to upgrade c and d clients | eleven types of audit clients and which to fire | don’t risk losing good employees for bad clients | can a service center model solve audit staffing shortages? | don’t take on audits in an industry you don’t understand
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

quality assurance is making the guy with the rubber mallet irrelevant. the first-time right mindset is taking the japanese approach and making sure the door is designed so it fits correctly from the beginning.

quality control is at the end. quality assurance starts at the beginning and continues throughout the entire process. it’s not a one-time event.
read more →

you can’t build it in at the end.

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

“it takes less time to do things right than to explain why you did them wrong.” – henry wadsworth longfellow

many audit firms think about quality as a task carried out at the end of the audit by the quality control reviewer. the problem with that thinking is that sometimes the qc reviewer misses major problems. for example, i was working with the new qc reviewer at one firm who spent most of the review time looking at the superficial details of formatting and punctuation, but almost disastrously missing a $3 million error that i spotted right away because the relationships between the numbers didn’t make sense.

more: business-minded approach helps build a better firm | are you looking at the big picture? | meet your client all year, not just during audit | give your audit teams tasks that increase business acumen | are you using the right business model? | give advice while remaining independent | stop mixing up your v’s and losing your best people | empower your team by dumping c and d clients | the new formula for an accounting business | how to upgrade c and d clients | eleven types of audit clients and which to fire | don’t risk losing good employees for bad clients
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

quality in audit shouldn’t be just an extra step at the end of the audit, but it should be an approach woven into the fabric of the firm. quality is an attitude of “first time right” that permeates every task and every step in the audit. if you leave quality for the end, you’ll be challenged at delivering quality in your audits.
read more →

six key insights that could apply to any accounting firm.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

an organization’s culture should be one of its most valuable assets. it could also be a make-or-break liability.

and that goes double for audit firms, where integrity and professionalism are all-important.

so it’s troubling when the public company accounting oversight board reports steadily worsening part i.a. deficiency rates among global network firms.

more: audit fees continue to climb | cfos see ai as top risk and opportunity | does accounting belong in stem? | accounting arc | opportunity awaits incoming aicpa ceo | artificial intelligence may already be plateauing | regulation, geopolitical instability spark concern | ten ways to manage price increases | survey says 57% of firms are raising prices next year | how will private equity impact accounting careers? | eleven questions about kids, wealth and the family business | twelve years and out: seasoned accountants join the exodus
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

how much worse? the deficiency rate for global network firms in the u.s. has basically doubled since 2020. and non-affiliate firms are twice as bad.

part i.a. deficiencies are cited when a firm does not obtain enough audit evidence to support its opinion on a public company’s financial statements or internal controls.
read more →

how this one attribute strengthens others.

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

“far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” – theodore roosevelt

when you think about business leaders like bill gates or reed hastings, the founder of netflix, it’s clear that these people did not create their empires by focusing on narrow measures like realization rates or increasing their profit margin. neither of these organizations would have become the household names they are if their founders had had such narrow views, and if they had not been able to move these very large companies in new directions in response to changes in the world.

more: are you looking at the big picture? | meet your client all year, not just during audit | give your audit teams tasks that increase business acumen | are you using the right business model? | give advice while remaining independent | stop mixing up your v’s and losing your best people | empower your team by dumping c and d clients | the new formula for an accounting business | how to upgrade c and d clients | eleven types of audit clients and which to fire | don’t risk losing good employees for bad clients | can a service center model solve audit staffing shortages? | don’t take on audits in an industry you don’t understand | four questions to make your firm more successful as a business
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

business-mindedness in audit has deeper dimensions than making a reasonable profit and delivering an audit report on time. even if you’re not concerned about the future of audit, strengthening the attribute of business-mindedness in your firm will strengthen your firm and make it more attractive to clients and team members. let’s talk about some of the tangible benefits.
read more →

reinforce the teaching in every experience.

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

another method for ingraining a business-mindedness attitude into the culture of the firm is to treat every experience as a learning opportunity. partners take staff accountants to lunch with clients all the time, and the three of them talk business. but most partners never do anything with that experience. a better approach is to have a follow-up meeting where the partner asks the staff accountant questions about what they heard and what they learned during the conversation. this could even be on the car ride back to the office.

more: meet your client all year, not just during audit | give your audit teams tasks that increase business acumen | stop mixing up your v’s and losing your best people | how to upgrade c and d clients | can a service center model solve audit staffing shortages? | move to advisory and assurance with relevance | use eight audit exit items to deepen client relationships | know your three audit w’s | planning lays the foundation of audit relevance | are you correctly identifying the relevance intersection? | traditional audits don’t deserve premium billing
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

business-mindedness means we take seriously the development of the talent in our firms so that what we reward is business acumen, having great conversations with clients and with the team, and coming up with valuable advice for the clients. but instead, what many firms value is the chargeable hour. they don’t want to take the time out of chargeable hour budgets to have those conversations or to reinforce the learning from meetings with clients.
read more →

will there be more work? most likely.

by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future

when you’re a client-serving firm, the service doesn’t end with delivery of the financial statement audit. client service should be perceived as a continuous, ongoing process that is supported by the culture with accountability measures. client service is a relationship that is developed by habit.

more: give your audit teams tasks that increase business acumen | are you using the right business model? | empower your team by dumping c and d clients | eleven types of audit clients and which to fire | don’t take on audits in an industry you don’t understand | how ‘business expert cpas’ get their own business wrong | exceptional audit client service demands effective communication | five ways to prevent audit bottlenecks
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

cpa firms tend to get bogged down in the work, so i developed a process for developing those relationships. i would sit down with the team and tell the senior accountant and the manager that they needed to meet at least quarterly with their counterpart at the client. the senior would meet with the controller. the manager would meet with the cfo. my responsibility would be to meet with the ceo or the business owner. these meetings could be phone calls but at least one of those meetings would be for lunch. if they desired, the senior and manager could have a joint lunch meeting with the controller and the cfo.
read more →

audit partners seeing modest optimism across companies.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

auditors have a special sense of what’s happening in american business. they see the numbers that others don’t. they prepare their firms and clients for what’s to come.

this year, audit partners are sensing a guarded confidence in the economy, albeit with considerable nervousness about the geopolitical situation, according to the center for audit quality’s 2024 audit partner pulse survey.

more: ten ways to manage price increases | survey says 57% of firms are raising prices next year | twelve years and out: seasoned accountants join the exodus | survey shows big opportunities in small business | the slow, painful death of the 150-hour rule | partners: your middle managers are getting squeezed | in-person conferences still essential | accounting arc
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

 

geopolitical instability

for the first time, geopolitical instability ranks in the top five economic risks facing companies over the next 12 months.

in fact, it ranks third, a fear substantially more serious than that of cybersecurity and rising interest rates.
read more →