Where Achekam's statutory thresholds come from
Where the statutory rules behind Achekam's decisions are held, how a firm reads them and their change log, and why no single person can change one.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
When software tells a firm that a client needs an audit, or that an audit file may be destroyed on a certain date, a careful partner asks the next question: says who? A threshold buried in code, changed silently in an update, is not something a professional can rely on, and it is certainly not something a firm can defend to a regulator.
Achekam's answer is the Regulatory Rule Book. The statutory figures its decisions depend on are held as approved rules that a firm can read, with a record of every change, and that no single person can alter. This article explains what the rule book holds, who can see and change it, what is still awaiting approval in Nigeria and Kenya, and what a firm should do when it thinks a rule is wrong.
Rules held as approved data
The rule book holds the statutory rules that Achekam's decisions use, as data rather than as numbers scattered through code. Two South African examples show how it works:
- Public interest score thresholds. Companies Regulation 26(2) sets how the score is counted, and Regulation 28(1) sets audit thresholds of 350 and 100, the lower one applying to internally compiled statements. When staff prepare a South African client's public interest score and a different person reviews it, the thresholds Achekam applies come from the approved rule book.
- Audit file retention. IRBA Board Notice 512 of 2023, Rule 4, requires the final engagement file to be assembled within 60 days of the report date and kept for at least five years, for audits of periods beginning on or after 15 December 2024. Achekam's rule book holds this rule as approved and uses it to set the retention date.
Rules carry the dates they apply from. For Nigeria, Achekam holds no tax rule for periods before 1 January 2026 and refuses to compute those periods. In Kenya, rules whose start date the research did not find begin on 1 January 2026, so earlier Kenyan periods are refused rather than computed on a guess.
Reading the rule book and its change log
A firm's partners and administrators can read the approved rules under QUALITY & GOVERNANCE > Regulatory Rule Book, together with each rule's change log.
That access is worth using. Before relying on an outcome for a client, a partner can see which rule produced it, what figure it holds and when it last changed. When an inspector or a quality reviewer asks how the firm determined that a client needed an audit, the answer can point to a specific approved rule rather than "the system said so".
A useful habit is to read the rule book after any change in the law you know about. If IRBA, CIPC or a tax authority announces a change and the rule book has not yet caught up, the firm should know before relying on an outcome.
Who changes a rule: never one person alone
Only Achekam's platform administrators change the rules, and never one person alone. A firm's own users, however senior, cannot edit a threshold or a rate.
That can feel restrictive, but it protects every firm on the platform. A rule changed by one person in error would alter decisions for every firm that relies on it. Requiring more than one person makes a mistaken or careless change much less likely, and the change log records what happened.
Rules awaiting approval in Nigeria and Kenya
The Nigerian and Kenyan rule sets are newer, and the approval step is visible in how they behave. Every Nigerian and Kenyan tax figure in Achekam's rule book was seeded "under review", and Achekam computes nothing from a figure until an Achekam platform administrator approves it. No firm user can change a rate. Whether any row has since been approved on the live service was not checked when this was written, so do not assume either way.
Three Nigerian figures are contested in the sources: the small-company turnover, the minimum-ETR turnover threshold and the PAYE remittance day. Achekam does not use them until one platform administrator chooses a candidate with a reason and a different administrator approves it. Until then, the size class shows as UNDETERMINED, with what each candidate would give.
For a Nigerian or Kenyan firm, that means some outcomes will be refused or shown as undetermined rather than calculated. That is deliberate: a refusal is safer than a confident answer built on an unapproved figure. Nigerian and Kenyan rules awaiting approval covers what this means day to day.
When the firm disagrees with a rule
Sometimes a firm will read a rule and think it is wrong, out of date, or applied too broadly to an unusual client.
- Check the source. Read the regulation or notice itself. IRBA publishes the Auditing Profession Act and the notices issued under it on its legislation page; other rules point to the Companies Act, the Regulations or the relevant tax law.
- Record the firm's view. Staff can take a technical consultation on an engagement from question to conclusion and closure, which gives the firm's reasoning a home in its quality records.
- Make the professional decision. Achekam's outcome informs, but the firm decides. For a South African client's public interest score, for example, a partner records the engagement type.
- Tell Achekam. If the rule itself is wrong, report it, with the source, so platform administrators can review it through their own approval process.
What the firm should not do is work around the rule quietly. If the firm departs from what the rule book indicates, the reason should be written down, reviewed and kept with the engagement.
How the public interest score thresholds play out for a client is covered in when a South African company must be audited.
Ask your quality partner to open the Regulatory Rule Book this week, read the rules your engagements rely on most, and note anything that needs a conversation.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
