THE certified public accountants (CPAs) as of this writing are gathering for the 69th Annual Convention of the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants at Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City. I just arrived at Waterfront and we had a good lineup of speakers for the public practice sector, where I belong as a practitioner in the accountancy profession. The convention is well attended and particularly in the public practice sector, because there are so many requirements and updates that a public practitioner nowadays have to contend with. Gone are the days when any CPA can just sign an auditor’s report. One has to be accredited now—and it is not just a matter of accreditation—the auditor should really possess the skills and expertise and knowledge to be able to render an opinion on the financial statements.
In an updated infographic developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), which highlights the role CPAs play in financial and business decisions (source: blog.AICPA.org), 91 percent of business decision-makers (BDMs) respect CPAs as valuable assets to their organizations, three out of four BDMs equate CPAs with integrity, and more than half regard CPAs as objective financial experts.
We do not have the same infographic here in the Philippines but I hope we can measure up to the same statistics, especially on integrity. I would like to believe that the CPAs now scored a lot better than in the past decades in the area of integrity. There is a global watch not only on the capability of a CPA to handle his or her audit engagements, but also on the integrity of the professional.
With corporate governance being strictly implemented in most organizations, particularly on the larger corporations, the need for a qualified CPA with integrity is more apparent and urgent.
With technology advancing at a fast speed, the CPA should also be tech-savvy to catch up with technological changes or else be left behind. In digital CPA survey released in 2012 in the same blog of AICPA, only 17 percent of CPAs say they have a minimal role or no part in helping clients embrace cloud, mobile and other emerging technologies that are crucial in decision-making. Here in the Philippines, there is a need to educate more CPAs on technology especially in the provinces. One would be surprised that not many CPAs are well versed in the use of computers. Some do not even have e-mail addresses.
Technology can help a lot in enabling CPAs in performing their audit work efficiently and with more quality. Computer-aided audit tools or systems will cut audit time to more than 80 percent to 90 percent. There is also a local accounting software in the market developed by our smart software developers, which does not only generate financial reports in real-time, but can be linked directly to the tax reports (which also includes the value-added tax relief system) required by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) without having to transfer it to another file. These reports can be generated directly from such accounting software. With clients using this software, reports required for audit by CPAs can be generated much faster and more accurately.
As far as I know, the present accounting softwares in the market now, which are mostly imported from abroad, do not yet have this capability of linking directly to the tax reports required by the BIR. The figures have to be transferred to another file to generate the tax reports.
Nonetheless, I can see a rosy future. The CPA profession is heading toward a future, where CPAs are not only sought after for their skills and expertise but for their reputation of integrity and good governance. In fact, when compared to a decade ago, it is a big leap to the much-improved profession now. Credit goes to our regulating agencies and in part too, to the global stringent requirements for compliance with accounting standards.
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Wilma Miranda is the chairman of the Media Affairs Committee of Finex; managing partner of Inventor, Miranda & Associates, CPAs; treasurer of KPS Outsourcing Inc.; and executive vice president of MICE Asia Inc. The opinions expressed herein are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of these institutions.