Specialist independent SMSF audit firm Evolv is set to introduce a new facility to help streamline the interaction between auditors and accountants and improve procedural efficiency.
“It’s an accounting workpapers module and we’re calling it Audit Ready. What it seeks to do is automate the accounting workpaper preparation piece for the accountants,” Evolv chief executive and founder Ron Phipps-Ellis told delegates at the SMSF Auditors Association of Australia Conference held in Melbourne last week.
“One of the main features that we hope you as auditors will benefit most from is the array of what we call pre-audit alerts we have built into the accounting workpapers piece. What it does is it highlights a range of audit issues that as an auditor, if you’re using software, you would normally find when you’re actually starting to perform the audit.
“So the goal that we’re trying to achieve is to have those issues addressed up front by the accountants.”
To this end, Audit Ready will identify a range of validation errors for the accountant similar to those that are produced by Evolv’s audit software.
“If the accountants can address those validation errors before the audit is commenced, the number of audit queries will actually reduce,” Phipps-Ellis noted.
The new facility has to date been tested among existing accounting clients.
“We’ve been finding that there is tremendous success with the testing that we’ve been doing and we’re about to release Audit Ready probably in a couple of months’ time,” he revealed.
The new facility continues the specialist audit firm’s ongoing commitment to provide SMSF auditors with better tools to make the compulsory process as smooth as possible.
In August 2020, the organisation launched a function within its existing software allowing auditors to focus on areas of potential risk or concern.
