Updating the firm's methodology for new standards

A practical cycle for changing audit templates, checklists and training when standards such as ISA 240 (Revised) take effect, and who checks.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Every few years a cluster of standards changes at once, and a firm's audit methodology has to catch up. December 2026 is one of those moments. A firm that leaves the work until the first affected year-end will find its seniors running a revised standard on a template written for the old one, with a fraud discussion memo that asks last decade's questions.

Updating methodology is not glamorous work, but it is where a firm's understanding of a new standard becomes something an audit team actually uses. This article describes a cycle that South African, Nigerian and Kenyan practices can run each year, and where Achekam helps and where it does not.

Start with the dates, from the source

The IAASB states that ISA 240 (Revised) on fraud, ISA 570 (Revised 2024) on going concern, and ISSA 5000, its general requirements for sustainability assurance engagements, become effective in December 2026 and are included in its 2026 Handbook. The IAASB page for that Handbook marks it as the current edition and was dated Sep 30, 2026. The Handbook runs to five volumes covering quality management, auditing, review, sustainability, other assurance and related services. The IAASB's page for the 2026 Handbook is the place to confirm what is in force and from when.

Effective dates are not the only planning question. The IAASB encourages jurisdictions to consider adopting ISA 240 (Revised), ISA 570 (Revised 2024) and the narrow-scope amendments for listed and public interest entities early, as a cohesive package. Its page on ISA 240 (Revised), dated July 2025, still called those narrow-scope amendments forthcoming, so check their status before you plan around them. Whether early adoption is open to your firm depends on how your local regulator or professional body has adopted the standards; confirm that with them rather than with a training provider's slide.

Read the standard, not just the guide

Implementation guides are useful, and teams love them, because they are shorter and friendlier than the standards. The danger is that a methodology gets rewritten from the guide alone. The IAASB is explicit about the status of such material: it states that its first-time implementation guide for ISA 315 does not amend or override ISA 315 (Revised 2019), whose text alone is authoritative.

The same discipline applies to the fraud and going concern revisions. Whoever drafts the methodology change should work from the requirements and application material of the standard itself, and use guides, webinars and articles to test their understanding, not to replace it. A requirement missed in the template will be missed on every file that uses it.

What actually changes in the methodology

A revised standard usually touches more than one document. A useful inventory for each change:

• Planning templates. Risk assessment forms, engagement team discussion memos and planning checklists.
• Work programmes. Procedures added, removed or reworded in the affected audit areas.
• Completion documents. Representation letters, reporting checklists and auditor's report wording.
• Review checklists. What a manager, partner or engagement quality reviewer is now expected to look for.
• Training. Who needs it, by when, and how the firm records that it happened.
• Transition notes. Which engagements use the new template and which finish on the old one, decided by period start date rather than by when the file was opened.

Keep a single change log that ties each template edit to the paragraph of the standard that caused it. When a reviewer later asks why a question was added, the answer is one look away.

Publishing the change: a second pair of eyes in Achekam

In Achekam a firm's partners keep their own methodology and working-paper templates beside Achekam's platform methodology, which the firm can adopt. A new version of a firm template is published only by someone other than the person who wrote it. That rule is useful exactly when standards change, because the person who rewrote the fraud template is the person least likely to see what they left out.

Achekam also ships template packs written in its own words, covering audit areas, ISA for LCE, ISRE 2400 and 2410 reviews, ISRS 4400 and 4410, ISAE 3000, B-BBEE, public sector, internal audit, forensic work and Nigerian and Kenyan statutory and tax packs. The catalogue is marked as unapproved platform content until the firm adopts it, and adopting a pack is the firm's decision and its responsibility. When a standard changes, treat an adopted pack exactly as you treat your own templates: read it against the new requirements before you rely on it.

No live feed: name the person who watches

Achekam does not pull a live feed of standards and regulatory changes. Its Standards & Regulatory Updates page shows what Achekam's knowledge base records, not an automatic stream from the IAASB, IRBA, FRC Nigeria, ICAN or ICPAK. So the firm needs a person, not a screen, who watches for change.

Give one partner or technical manager that job, with a short monthly routine: check the IAASB's publications, the local regulator's notices and the professional body's member communications, and log anything that might affect the methodology. A blank month is still worth recording, because it shows the watch happened.

A yearly cycle that keeps up

A cycle a mid-sized practice can sustain:

1. Scan. Twice a year, list standards coming into effect in the next two reporting cycles.
2. Assess. For each, decide which templates, checklists and training it touches.
3. Draft. One author per change, working from the standard's text.
4. Review and publish. A second person reviews and publishes the new template version.
5. Train. Before the first engagement that needs the new version starts.
6. Monitor. In the firm's monitoring reviews, check that teams used the right version.

For how firm templates and platform content sit side by side, read the firm's methodology and templates, and before adopting Achekam's packs, see adopting template packs.

Methodology that is updated on a cycle stops being a scramble. The next cluster of revisions will arrive in its own time; the firm that already has the routine will simply run it again.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.