The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), with the support of the Small and Medium Sized Practices (SMPs) Committee that acts as its strategic advisor, supports the SMP sector through a number of initiatives. These initiatives are designed to raise the profile and build the capacity of SMPs globally, as well as increase awareness about their role and value, especially in supporting small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
This virtual workshop allowed participants to gain further insights into several recent activities of IFAC’s SMP Committee, including providing key insights of the 2018 Global SMP Survey and learning about available tools, resources and guidance to help SMPs provide services to their SME clients.
Presentations were made by Monica Foerster, Chair of the IFAC Small and Medium Practices Committee (SMP) and George Willie, member of the SMP Committee and Task Force Chair.

Context

Monica Foerster provided an overview of the key findings of the most recent 2018 Global SMP Survey results and highlighted the challenges and opportunities for SMPs and SMEs in the Europe and Central Asia region, as well as for 8 countries of Eastern Europe. The 8 countries of Eastern Europe include the Western Balkans, Croatia and Romania who was the most significant respondent of the group (90%). The presentation highlighted the impact of technological development and the need for SMPs to adapt and leverage technological advances in their practices as well as manage challenges related to talent management and the difficulty for SMPs to attract new generation talent in the profession. Further, legislation differences in the 8 countries impacted the comparison to Global and Europe, when it comes to fee composition of SMPs revenues, as in many of these countries there is still a requirement for mandatory audit even of small businesses. As such, in the 8 countries, there is a higher ratio of traditional services (such as accounting, audit, compilations) compared to the fee composition of SMPs in Europe and the Global survey results.

The presentation also highlighted the main opportunities for SMPs ahead, including:

• Focus on new services and/or specialization (for example, develop capability to offer and market new services and choose fields where the firm has high degree of industry and/or technical understanding); and
• Becoming a Trusted Advisor to their SME clients (understanding and listening to client needs, using their broad experience/expertise to help clients accomplish their goals, creating an ongoing relationship with clients and providing more than core accounting services).

George Willie spoke about new tools and resources developed by IFAC aimed at supporting SMPs providing services to their SME clients, with a specific focus on the updated Guide to Practice Management for Small- and Medium-Sized Practices and its new module on “Leveraging Technology”, as well as the updated Guide to Using the ISAs in the Audits of SMEs.
Participants were able to connect remotely from Belgrade, Bucharest, Philippines, Podgorica, Pristina, Qatar, Sarajevo, Skopje, Sofia, Tbilisi, Tirana, Nigeria and Vienna.

Please visit the Audit Training of Trainers page for more information about its activities.