CPA Best Practice Program and CA ANZ Reviews

Identify the Body and the Review Programme

Identify whether CPA Australia or Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) issued the notice. Each body runs its own programme and supplies its own instructions.

CPA Australia’s public-practice help confirms the Best Practice Program’s former Quality Review name. Public practice certificate holders must participate when selected. Selection frequency reflects the services provided and compliance or professional indemnity insurance history.

The Australian CA ANZ quality and practice review programme examines quality systems and their operation. Most eligible Australian members receive a full review involving manuals and selected engagement files. A smaller group qualifies for self-assessment. Its New Zealand process has different standards and instructions.

For Australian reviews, distinguish APES 320 for non-assurance services from ASQM 1 for assurance and related services. A practice offering both needs to identify which framework governs the work under examination. CA ANZ also identifies the APES 325 risk framework in its Australian review findings.

Read the Assessment Request Before Preparing Records

Read the actual notice before assembling a submission. Establish the selected member and practice, then confirm which services and records the assessment covers.

Use this preparation sequence to organise the response:

1. Save the notice and any attachments together. Record its response channel, stated timetable and contact person.
2. List each requested item using the issuing body’s wording. Assign a responsible person and identify the existing record that answers it.
3. Ask the issuing body about an unclear request. Preserve its answer beside the request so everyone prepares to the same instruction.
4. Check the response against the notice before submitting. Retain the exact submitted versions and the submission acknowledgement.

This is a suggested working method for your practice. The notice determines the required material and submission process. A previous assessment’s checklist can help locate records, but it cannot establish what the current assessment requires.

For example, distinguish a request for the practice’s manual from a request for evidence that a procedure operated. Sending the manual twice leaves the second request unanswered.

Show How the Practice’s Controls Operate

Connect each requested policy to evidence from the services your practice performs. Acceptance records can show how the practice assessed a client. Staff allocation and supervision records can explain who performed the work and who reviewed it.

CPA Australia’s quality-management guidance explains that assessors look for evidence supporting the manual’s procedures. A manual describing periodic monitoring needs a record showing that monitoring occurred. An unused template cannot establish that an engagement received review.

Consider a fictional forensic engagement examining payments to a related business. Its payment schedule cites the source statement filename and page for each entry. The engagement file also contains the agreed scope, the preparer’s work and the reviewer’s recorded questions.

A reviewer asks why one outgoing payment appears twice. The preparer identifies an overlapping statement extract and removes the duplicate from the schedule. The revised total, explanation and reviewer’s clearance remain together. That record shows the query and its resolution without concealing the earlier version.

The payment schedule supports the review of work performed. The practice’s acceptance and competence decisions require their own evidence. Keep those records in the working papers so the reviewer can follow the engagement from instruction through to the issued result.

Handle Reviewer Questions and Proposed Findings

Keep a request-and-response record that identifies the issue before proposing a remedy. A missing document, an unexplained procedure and a substantive weakness require different responses.

If a signed review record exists but was omitted, supply it with its file location. If the submitted record is unclear, explain what it records and attach the supporting evidence. If the procedure did not occur, acknowledge that fact and assess the affected work.

The principal needs to check a proposed finding against the engagement file and the requirement identified by the reviewer. Quote the relevant request in the response and explain any factual disagreement with evidence. Preserve the correspondence and follow the body’s stated process for resolving the issue.

For CA ANZ’s Australian full-review route, the reviewer discusses findings and sends summarised findings to CA ANZ. The resulting review letter formalises the outcome and any further action. Treat that letter as the source for the required response.

Close Corrective Actions With Evidence

Assign each final finding to a person who can complete the correction and demonstrate its result. Record the required action and deadline from the outcome letter or assessment instructions.

For the fictional duplicate-payment finding, a completed action could include the corrected schedule and a check of other schedules using overlapping extracts. Record which work was checked, what changed and who reviewed the correction. Updating a procedure alone leaves the effect on completed work unresolved.

Where the finding concerns the quality system, address the relevant APES 320 requirement. Include the APES 325 risk record when the body requests it or the finding requires a change to it.

Before closing the assessment file, reconcile each final finding with the response submitted and the evidence of completed action. Identify any continuing monitoring or follow-up required by the body. CPA Australia explains that its completion letter addresses evidence available at assessment, rather than certifying ongoing APES 320 compliance.

Close an item only when your record shows what the body required, what the practice completed and whether the body requires anything further.