They were selected on the basis of recommendations from state CPA society peer review directors and peer review team captains. The firms had consistent unmodified peer review reports, a significant portion of their practices devoted to NPOs and the overall appearance of successful firms. NPO audit breakdown. Firms averaged 125 hours per NPO audit, with the breakdown shown at right. For a new client, firms averaged 14 extra hours per audit, spent mainly in planning but also some in the field and some in generating the final report.
Planning is critical to audit efficiency, many practitioners believe.
As a staff person, I didn't understand why we did some procedures except that they were in the workpapers from the year before. Today, on any audit, Lynn's firm spends time getting to know a client and its systems in advance. We can understand its entire operation, as opposed to understanding a bunch of procedures that we'd done previously. As part of the planning process, the firms surveyed reviewed the prior year's workpapers to familiarize themselves with client issues and to seek out possible past inefficiencies in their own work and possible improvements. Other steps included Meeting with clients to discuss the process and identify client responsibilities.