Outsourced Audit Solutions
Our ‘Outsource Audit Solution’ is designed to meet your specific needs, whether you’re seeking growth, aiming to minimize stress caused by high staff turnover or inexperienced employees, or an Audit Partner planning for retirement and requiring a succession plan to maintain top quality service for your clients. Trust Elderton Group to deliver the perfect solution for you.
Audit firms in Australia are hindered by a shortage of personnel that impacts their growth potential. Even skilled audit partners proficient in business development eventually find it uneconomical to take on more work.
This limitation can have serious repercussions, including staff departures due to overwork, escalating write-offs as managers cover for juniors, increased risk and burnout as partners take on managerial roles. It can also compromise audit quality due to shortcuts and heightened stress. The Big 4 and international networks address this with secondments and offshore resources that are unavailable to smaller firms.
Accounting complexity has also surged, exemplified by standards like AASB 9, 15, and 16, alongside the phase-out of Special Purpose Financial Reports. This poses a range of new challenges, including:
- Extensive learning demands.
- Rising complexity.
- Increased material misstatement risk.
- Inadequate coverage in professional qualifications.
- Lack of training for many audit partners and managers.
- Struggles for clients and audit committees with these intricate standards.
Outsource Audit Solutions:
We offer an avenue for Australian audit firms to address these challenges by providing access to highly skilled and trained audit professionals. We adapt our resources and services to match each audit firm’s specific requirements.
Enhancing Audit Quality:
The conventional audit model heavily relies on inexperienced staff for the bulk of audit work, including handling key audit risks, intricate accounting estimates, and complex accounting standards. We offer an alternative, moving away from this risky model by integrating trained, experienced auditors into the audit team.
– Our auditors are trained by Big 4 firms, ensuring high-quality expertise.
– Stringent recruitment policies and continuous professional development monitor auditor proficiency.
Facilitating Growth:
We can empower audit firms to pursue growth opportunities without the burden of staffing concerns. We provide a substantial pool of professional audit staff resources akin to the Big 4’s while sidestepping large teams’ fixed costs and complexities.
Mitigating Risks:
Smaller audit firms face significant risks when key team members leave during busy seasons, causing rushed recruitment, increased stress, and potential quality reduction. We alleviate this by offering a broader staff pool to manage such risks effectively.
Improving Audit Quality:
Recruiting and retaining talent is a challenge in the Australian audit market. Traditional models focusing on quick progression tend to strain audit quality. We break this cycle by supplying experienced, well-trained staff who can enhance audit quality through various means.
Increasing Profitability:
We offer an avenue to enhance the profitability of audit divisions, driven by competitive charge-out rates and reduced costs:
– Growth without substantial investments in new staff.
– Lower recruitment and training costs.
– Leverage existing firm resources.
– Greater leverage from partners and managers.
We tailor resources to augment existing audit teams, offering competitive charge-out rates for qualified professionals. The audit firm avoids training and recruitment costs and isn’t burdened by excess staff costs during off-peak periods.
In essence, the shortage of audit staff in Australia hampers growth prospects for firms. Outsourcing audits presents a solution by providing experienced professionals, improving audit quality, and facilitating growth, all while minimizing costs and risks associated with staffing.
Limited liability by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation
