Trainee auditor's blogs

Holidays? exam results and final accounts

22 September 2009

“The month of July for any trainee is generally summarised by one word…. EXAMS!!!! As the month of July progresses every trainee starts counting the days to when we receive our results – have we passed or have we not quite made it?

The Audit Commission in fairness has a really good pass rate for the professional exams we regularly have pass rates in the high 80s for some modules and even for some hard modules we have 100% pass rates (we had that for my previous sitting).

Towards the end of the month of July I’d be lying if I said that the results are beginning to get to me – I’m shaking like a leaf and kind of struggling to concentrate. I’ve also been charged by the trainees to organise the results day bash. Now that’s pressure – if I fail – I still need to turn up. No rest for the wicked!

However when results do actually get released – relief. After a long wait (where the computer crashed and the results website was down for most of the morning), I managed a pass – in fact my strongest set of exams since I’ve been at the Commission. After that it was a case of celebrating during happy hour cocktails with the Commission folk in some plush bar in London – never drinking again after that one.

Work wise we have a number of deadlines which are happening at around the same time. We have our Use of Resources deadline (you may remember CAA), coupled with the beginning of our Local Government accounts. This represents a huge project which lasts from the beginning of July (ish) all the way through to the beginning of September. This period in theory shouldn’t be quite as stressful as health accounts deadlines.

In addition to the above, work needs to be completed on the Housing Benefits audit, which will end in September, and work on health bodies which looks at the movement from the old Accounting regime (known as UK GAAP) to the new (well not so new, but important for the public sector) international regime known as IFRS. I’m not getting involved in all of this – its enough work as it is without having multiple deadlines of my own going on.

When you get involved in local Government final accounts auditing you are immediately struck by the size of the audit – there are so many complex and varied items which need to be tested as part of our audit – ranging from simply ensuring that the authority have disclosed items correctly, to delving into the figures themselves and testing them for accuracy and legitimacy. Sounds harder then it is, as most of the testing is prescribed and determined by the team leader and audit manager, based upon the level of risk associated to that area of the audit. Because all public sector organisations have a number of statutory targets (for example – Local Authorities need to have a ‘balanced budget’) and various borrowing targets, many of the risks are inherent. Ultimately this builds upon the work which was undertaken in January time or so.

When you undertake an audit, you always ask the authority to provide summary documentation to help you with your understanding and help you. This generally comes in various guises and interpretations. Needless to say one of the occupational hazards when you do audit is where you have documentation, which is for the best part, unintelligible to all other than the author.

July and August also represent the time of year when we get lots of temp staff/contractors in. It’s more a reflection of the core business of the job – we tend to work in peaks and troughs here at the Commission – and the months from April/May to September tend to be the busiest, and in this case will require additional personnel. Contractors tend to come and go but there are some who stay permanently. However it’s usually a time where the offices are pretty busy and where you get some good banter in the office.

I’m going to wind this down to a close now – when I next rock the boat :) I’ll be talking about college, work for the month of Sept – holidays and reflections on my two year anniversary at the Audit Commission!"

Speak soon!

Ciao

Posted by: LW