Professional accounting organizations (PAOs)

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is essential for all professional accountants, irrespective of their role or sector. Traditional CPD systems focus on recording and measuring inputs, such as time spent on CPD activities, but fail to capture whether actual learning has occurred. This publication provides guidance intended for Professional Accountancy Organizations (PAOs) and other stakeholders seeking to implement output based CPD systems as a more genuine measure of learning and professional improvement.

Focused on enhancing lifelong learning and supporting improvements in continuing education systems for professional accountants, the EU-REPARIS Audit Training of Trainers Program explores ways of modernizing the skills of the profession to provide effective financial reporting support to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and private sector enterprises.

Small- and medium-sized practices (SMPs) have an important role to play in supplying professional services to their small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) clients. Understanding the range, requirements and benefits of available professional services is essential for practitioners and SMPs to be able to tailor the various services to meet the needs of their SME clients, as well as helping them to choose the right service for their needs.

Six countries, members of the EU-REPARIS Program’s Education Community of Practice (EduCop) – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia FYR, Montenegro and Serbia – participated in an Accountancy Education Benchmarking Study between March 2015 and May 2016. The Study was a comprehensive assessment of the countries’ 14 universities and PAOs, which together provide 25 academic and professional accountancy education programs to around 4,120 enrolled students.

This institutional analysis has three main objectives. Firstly, to provide policy options to the Chamber of Auditors of Poland (KIBR) on the areas remarked on and raised in previous analytical reports, notably the Accounting & Auditing (Update) ROSC report of December 2013. Secondly, to provide policy options to KIBR on the areas that it is specifically considering. And thirdly, to assess KIBR’s performance against matters suggested by IFAC as important in the establishment and development of a professional accountancy body.

This report provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the audit market in Poland. It features a range of data, including on the estimated number of companies that require audits, the number and type of auditors and audit firms, leading audit firms, and the auditors of the largest companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

Traditional audit methods served auditors for decades but as technology advances and stakeholders’ expectations evolve, so does the need for auditors to innovate and transform their approaches in order to keep pace with demand. This publication describes some of the opportunities that new technologies, especially the use of audit data analytics, can offer for audits of entities of all sizes. It also provides a few tips which might be useful for practitioners, Small and Medium Sized Practices (SMPs) and Professional Accountancy Organizations (PAOs) as they support their members.

The Accounting Market Study has been designed to provide relevant information for multiple uses, including the gathering of statistics for IFAC. It also offers quantitative information and feedback on aspects of the functioning of the accounting market to enable better understanding of the market for regulatory purposes.

Smaller audits are considered “a specialty”, with their own unique set of challenges for practitioners to address when engaging with smaller clients. This publication highlights some of those challenges and provides related insights that might be useful for practitioners, Small and Medium Sized Practices (SMPs) and Professional Accounting Organizations (PAOs) as they support their members.

Professional accountants recognize that achieving and maintaining the highest levels of professional competence help them win business and retain clients. Professional Accountancy Organizations (PAOs) have an important role to play in encouraging, facilitating and monitoring life-long learning. With the support of participating PAOs involved in the EU-REPARIS Audit Training of Trainers program, the World Bank Centre for Financial Reporting Reform has produced a short practical guide on Continuing Professional Development (CPD).