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outsourcing

Is it possible for auditing work to one day be outsourced like some of the IT sector has? Or do the various exams, credit hours etc prevent that? 


We've slowly started outsourcing work already - the testing of documents clerically, the testing of journal entries for completeness and filtering the entries using certain criteria, independence work, rollforwards of prior year schedules,financial statement tie-outs, etc. I'd say about 10-15% of our work is being outsourced, and I can probably see it keep going up.

At the same time, I can never see it fully being outsourced since there is still a matter of face to face conversations with your clients to discuss accounting issues, to build relationships so as to increase the Firms' revenues, to make inquiries of key client personnel. Plus, in order for staff to go through the heirarchy and become partners, they'd probably need to understand all the procedures that an audit entails.

Are we completely immune from globalization? No, but I can't see the entire job being outsourced. Who knows, maybe the Firms will give it a shot and it will become the new normal. As of now, I like that such work is being outsourced, it frees up the staff to do focus on other areas.


Comments

Anonymous said…
"As of now, I like that such work is being outsourced, it frees up the staff to do focus on other areas."

That makes a big assumption that the work is completed to a certain standard. From my experience as a senior, this standard is rarely met and someone on the on-shore engagement team ends up redoing it all after already wasting time coordinating with India.
notfordisplay said…
I'd say it's hit or miss, just like it is with any senior-staff team in the US to be honest. The odds of having a bad senior-staff team is about the same as the odds of having a bad team from India. We've had primarily good experiences based on what I've been hearing from the seniors.
Anonymous said…
I've had about ten different staff from India. Not one has been able to produce something satisfactory and this is after spending about an hour on the phone and providing written instruction.
Anonymous said…
My company is currently outsourcing our internal audit services, in addition to our permanent staff, to handle almost all type of assignment in peak period.
However, to ensure the maximum quality, the outsourcing staff only get in charge for fieldwork process, meanwhile, the review process is still under the permanent staff's responsibility.
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This post is good and describe the life of the auditor that want to be in IT field.
Len Stephens said…
Outsourcing is a trend that is becoming more common in information technology and other industries for services that have usually been regarded to managing a business.
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