Audit quality indicators: what is measured today
What Achekam does and does not measure for audit quality indicators, which real work figures a firm can use instead, and how to build a simple set.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Every audit firm says quality comes first. Fewer can show it with anything other than inspection results, which arrive late, cover a handful of files and describe last year's work. Audit quality indicators were meant to fill that gap: measures a firm watches during the year so it can act before an inspector finds the problem.
The idea is sound. The difficulty is that indicators are only as good as the data behind them, and many firms end up with a dashboard of numbers nobody trusts. This article is plain about what Achekam measures today, which of its figures are real and usable, and how to build a small indicator set by hand that a partner can actually act on.
What indicators are for
An audit quality indicator is a measure that tells the firm something about the conditions for good audits: the time senior people spent on files, whether work was reviewed on schedule, how often files came back, how much consultation took place. None of them proves quality on its own. Together, over time, they show where to look.
Under ISQM 1 a firm designs a system of quality management tailored to itself, including how it monitors that system. Indicators are one way to feed that monitoring with something more regular than an annual file review. The IAASB's page on ISQM 1 describes the standard's requirement for firms to design, implement and operate a system of quality management suited to the firm and its engagements.
The intervention centre has no source of indicators yet
Achekam has a screen called the Partner Quality Intervention Centre, carrying a badge that reads "ISQM 1 / AQI". It is important to know what it does not do. It has no screen that records an indicator value or opens an intervention, and nothing feeds it from the audit file. Three other quality menu entries open the same screen.
So, today, Achekam does not compute audit quality indicators for a firm. If your quality manual says indicators are tracked in Achekam, change the wording, or an inspector who opens the screen will find it empty.
Figures that are real
Several figures Achekam does keep are genuine and useful as raw material:
- Returned by review, items completed, hours and on-time rate. Achekam keeps no staff appraisals, but the Performance Reviews menu entry opens a table of each person's work figures, and those figures are real.
- Planned against logged hours. Staff can compare each engagement's planned hours with hours logged, and see a people-by-weeks capacity plan, in which a week with no capacity recorded shows as "not set".
- Time by person and engagement. Time Reports offers ten reports for a chosen period, including staff time, engagement time and utilisation, exportable as CSV, XLSX or PDF.
- Review notes. A reviewer raises notes on a working paper, the preparer answers and the reviewer clears them, and each note's history is kept.
- Consultations. Staff can take a technical consultation from question to conclusion and closure.
- Quality registers. Professional judgements, quality incidents, complaints and inspection progress are kept on the server with every version.
Building a simple indicator set by hand
Start with five or six indicators, not twenty. Each should have a source you trust, an owner, and a question it answers.
| Indicator | Where the figure comes from | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Partner and manager hours on each audit | Time Reports, engagement time by person | Did senior people spend time on the file? |
| Hours used against budget | Hours: Allocated vs Consumed | Which files ran over, and when did we notice? |
| Work returned by review | Performance Reviews table | Where is work bouncing between levels? |
| Review notes still open near the report date | Review Notes on each engagement | Was review finished before sign-off? |
| Consultations per audit with significant risks | Technical Consultations | Are difficult matters being consulted on? |
| Inspection and internal findings by area | Quality registers | Are the same weaknesses recurring? |
Export the figures once a quarter into a simple workbook kept by the quality partner, and record what was decided. The calculation is manual, but the inputs are not invented, which is what gives the set its credibility.
Be wary of using a single figure as a target. Once "fewer review notes" becomes a goal, reviewers raise fewer notes. Indicators should start a conversation, not end one.
Using them without judging people
Most of these figures describe people's work, which makes them easy to misuse. Achekam's own reports are built on a clear principle: the Team Activity page states recorded and captured time against working hours as facts about the work, not as a judgement of the person, and any AI reading of it drops findings about character or effort.
Apply the same rule to indicators. Report them by engagement, team or partner portfolio rather than as a ranking of individuals, and when a figure looks wrong, ask what happened to the work before asking who was responsible. The way to bring these figures into individual conversations fairly is covered in work figures for staff reviews.
Indicators also tell you which completed files to look at. A file that ran far over budget with little partner time is a natural candidate for a post-issuance file review.
A first quarter
Pick four indicators from the table, export the figures for the last completed quarter, and discuss them at the next partners' meeting. Write down one action for each indicator that looks wrong. Next quarter, check whether the action made a difference before adding anything new.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
