Are You Correctly Identifying the Relevance Intersection?

You may be prioritizing the wrong factors. That could cost you clients. Worse, it could make you and your audits irrelevant.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

If we can’t demonstrate to our clients that our work is relevant, then the audit will go the way of the dinosaur. Relevance underpins the other attributes.

Relevance is not a one-time event. It’s a continuous process, woven through everything your firm does. You build it one step at a time. This should be done with every audit, so this becomes core to the fabric of the firm’s culture.

MORE: Lack of Relevance Drives Audit Commoditization | Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership | Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing | Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Without understanding what’s relevant to the client, we can’t practice business-mindedness and help improve our client’s business. With an understanding of the relevance and how the standards impact the client’s business and industry, the quality of audits goes up. Relevance helps you evaluate innovative audit methodologies because you understand how they can be used to obtain the required audit evidence. Finally, relevance empowers your staff to do their best work because audit isn’t reduced to filling out endless checklists.

But what does relevance mean?

READ MORE →

Auditing Standards ‘Yellow Book’ Updated

Words "time for an update" on clock face

The changes are more than just technical.

By CPA Trendlines Research

America has a wealth of governments. They’re all over the place. Municipal governments. County governments. Parishes, boroughs, villages, hamlets. Special purpose local governments. School districts, fire districts, tax districts. Independent authorities, tribal councils and councils of governments. State governments, territorial governments and, of course, the big one in Washington, District of Columbia, with its thousands of branches, arms and agencies.

Love them or hate them, there they are. Tens of thousands of governments. And they all have one thing in common: they need to be audited.

MORE: Firms Culling Clients as Staffing Woes Persist | Revenue Up at 59% of Accounting Firms … and More Good News | ChatGPT for the Reluctant Accountant | Survey Shows Challenges, Priorities Shifting | Can Big Data Spot Financial Fraud? | Accountants Torn Over 2024 Economy, Offer Advice | SURVEY: Are You Offering the Right Services? | SURVEY: 42% of Accountants Turn Away Work Over Staff Shortages | Talent Gap Widening: Be Very Scared
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Or, to put it another way, they need auditors.

Being governments, their accounting and auditing standards are different from those of nongovernmental entities.
READ MORE →

Lack of Relevance Drives Audit Commoditization

Premium service providers collect premium fees.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

We are all willing to pay more for something that has been custom-created just for us or when we see that the service provider has gone above and beyond to deliver additional value for us. But without relevance, there is little chance that your clients will see any additional value in the audit. For the client, the only reason to get an audit is to meet a regulatory or banking requirement.

MORE: Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership | Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

As a profession, our actions have contributed to commoditization, but every CPA firm I talk to complains about how audit is becoming commoditized. When someone complains to me about commoditization, the first thing I ask is, what do you do when you’re under a little fee pressure from your client? Oh, lower my fee. So, why are you lowering your fee? Because quite often, whether you’re thinking about it or not, you probably haven’t delivered anything more than 24 pages with an audit report on it.

READ MORE →

Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership

As CPAs, we exercise due professional care in all we do. When we perform audits, the bar is higher.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

In my work with auditors around the country, and as I’ve thought about where audit is headed, I’ve developed a framework of five key attributes of successful leadership for audit. If we focus on these five attributes, I truly believe we can transform audit from the checklist exercise that it’s becoming into a service that genuinely adds value to our clients.

MORE: Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing | Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Let’s look at each of these five crucial attributes of successful audit leadership:

READ MORE →

Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing

Relevance empowers staff to do their best work because an audit isn’t reduced to checklists.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

If we can’t demonstrate to our clients that our work is relevant, then the audit will go the way of the dinosaur. Relevance underpins the other attributes.

MORE: Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Relevance is not a one-time event. It’s a continuous process woven through everything your firm does. You build it one step at a time. This should be done with every audit, so this becomes core to the fabric of the firm’s culture.
READ MORE →

Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master

Make your audits more relevant and provide value-added insights and services to your clients.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

The question professionals should always ask is, “Are we leaving the profession better than we found it?” So, let’s ask: Are we leaving the audit profession in better shape than it was when we inherited it?

MORE: Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Right now, we’re not providing value, but I honestly believe it’s not too late. The future of audit is ours to create or a future that will happen to us, and not necessarily a future we would prefer.

It will take leadership to change the future of audits. We have to take ownership of the process.

READ MORE →

Can Big Data Spot Financial Fraud?

woman leaning toward desktop computer screen

Google searches give auditors a glimpse of true sales.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Google Trends is a free service at the world’s most widely used search engine. In an instant, users can see how often a keyword has been the target of a search.

MORE: Will Unclogging the Accounting Pro Pipeline Kill Mobility? | Accountants Cozy Up to Clients with CAS | CPAs Culling Clients for Better Work-Life Balance | Women-Owned Businesses Upbeat but Need Help | Accountants to the Rescue as Startups Struggle | Looking for Recent Grads? Good Luck
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

When that keyword is a product, the searches tend to reveal something about sales.

And that should be of interest to auditors.
READ MORE →