Work figures for staff reviews, not appraisals
Which real work figures Achekam keeps per person, why it holds no appraisals, and how a firm can use the figures fairly in staff reviews.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
The mid-year review conversation in most accounting firms runs on memory. The manager remembers the file that went badly in March and has forgotten the six that went well since. The staff member remembers the overtime and not the review notes. Neither has numbers, so the conversation drifts towards impressions.
Figures help, provided they are the right ones and used the right way. Achekam keeps a small set of real figures about each person's work. It does not keep appraisals, and that distinction shapes how a firm should use what is there.
What opens under Performance Reviews
The name of the menu entry suggests more than it delivers. Achekam keeps no staff appraisals: there is no rating scale, no objectives form and no space for a manager's comments. The Performance Reviews entry opens a table of each person's work figures.
Those figures are real, drawn from the work recorded in the system:
- Items completed: work the person finished in the period.
- Returned by review: how often their work came back from a reviewer.
- Hours: the time they recorded.
- On-time rate: how much of their work met its due date.
Treat the table as evidence to bring to a review, not as the review itself.
Reading each figure with care
Every one of these numbers is true and every one can mislead when it is read alone.
Items completed depends on what was allocated. A senior given three complex audits will finish fewer items than a trainee given twenty bank reconciliations. Compare people doing similar work, or compare a person with their own earlier periods.
Returned by review is the most sensitive figure. Working papers move through preparation, manager review and partner review, and a paper sent back needs a written reason, so each return leaves a trail. That trail is useful because it lets you read the reasons, not just count them. A paper returned because the client changed a figure after preparation says nothing about the preparer. One returned three times for the same missing lead schedule says a great deal. Read a sample of reasons before discussing the number.
Hours reflect recording discipline as much as effort. Where automatic time capture is on, it uses only counts of key presses, clicks and scrolling, never the keys typed, and the captured time reaches the timesheet only when the person confirms it, by default. So the hours figure is what the person accepted as their time.
On-time rate inherits every unrealistic deadline a manager set. If the due dates were wrong, the rate is wrong too.
Facts about the work, not judgements of the person
Two other screens give context. The Team Activity page shows each person's recorded and captured time against their working hours, and the work due on them next, stated as facts about the work rather than a judgement of the person. Leaders can ask for an AI reading of that report, but it may only rank and explain the report's own facts; anything about a person's character or effort is dropped.
Time Reports adds ten reports for a chosen period, including staff time, engagement time and utilisation, which can be exported as CSV, XLSX or PDF. Utilisation there is never based on keyboard or mouse activity.
That design reflects a sound rule for the review conversation as well. Say what happened to the work and who owned it: "four of your papers on the retail audit came back for missing cut-off testing". Do not turn it into a verdict on the person. "Careless" is an opinion the figures cannot support; the missing cut-off tests are a fact the person can act on. The Team Activity report explains how that page is built.
Holding the appraisal somewhere else
Because Achekam holds no appraisals, decide where yours live. Most firms keep them in an HR file or a separate system, with the objectives agreed at the start of the year, the evidence gathered during it and the outcome signed by both people.
The link to quality is not optional for audit firms. ISQM 1 expects a firm's resources, its people included, to support quality, and the way people are evaluated, paid and promoted is part of that. ACCA's article on ISQM 1 and its eight components is a readable summary of the system a firm must design, resources among them.
A practical way to join the two: at each review, export the person's time reports for the period, add a copy of the Performance Reviews figures, and note in the appraisal which facts were discussed and what the person said about them.
Using the numbers fairly
A short checklist before any review meeting:
- Pull the figures for the same period for everyone at the same level.
- Read the reasons behind a sample of returned items, not just the count.
- Check whether due dates were realistic before discussing the on-time rate.
- Ask the person to explain any figure that surprises you before forming a view.
- Record the conversation in the appraisal, outside Achekam, with the agreed actions.
Figures also say something about the firm. If the returned-by-review count is high across a whole team, the cause may be the methodology, the briefing or the reviewer, which is a question for the firm's own audit quality indicators, not for any one appraisal.
Before the next review round
Open the Performance Reviews table for your team now, well before the review meetings, and read it next to the Team Activity page. Note one fact per person worth discussing and one question to ask them, and keep both for the appraisal file.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
