As an auditor in a big 4 (not pwc) with almost 4 years experience, I don't ask my client to dig documents unless their filing is messy.....if my client wants me to dig the documents myself....that is fine.......but he/she (account assistant) must guide me through their filling system, if I cant find any of it, I will ask client again to confirm if my understanding of their filling system is correct...... if I follow their guidance and I don't find some of it.....I will compile a list and push it to the client and get the client to find for me.........
Clearing shit is not an auditors job......it is clients job.... it's stated in stated in risk management policy we can't clear client's messy account...if client pass us a listing and we discover multiple mistakes halfway through testing, we'll push it back to the client and tell the client our findings so that client can re-fix the whole thing.... if i fix client shit, wat if client doesn't agree with the way i'm fixing it? or if the way i'm fixing it is incorrect coz as an outsider my knowledge of company is not in depth? But most importantly, it's a waste of time for me to fix it.....coz as an auditor deadline and time cost is crucial.....
Providing listing is also client job........ ie: you can't expect an auditor to split a receivables list between trade receivables and other non-trade receivables coz obviously we dunno the who's wat...... but of course, if the receivables list has some sort of a code/number which makes it easier to distinguish between the 2, by all means we'll split it ourselves.....
BDO being a mid-tier company is understood they've sub-par client...EY has the biggest number of clients in Malaysia, they do very crappy job/high volume job with low fees, KPMG has many sub-par client too but fees quoted by KPMG for crappy job/high volume job exceeds those quoted by EY quite frequently, Deloitte also has many sub-par clients...
PWC on the other hand has the least amount of sub-par clients, thus they are not used to doing things like fixing shit as many of their other client' dont' require them to do so..........But, PWC is quite good in client liasing as compared to other big 4, I know for sure Deloitte and KPMG loose out to PWC in terms of client liasing....Plus, PWC audit methodology very often is more detailed than the other big 4 and thus they'll ask quite a lot of questions as compared to other auditors..........I am not from PWC but I have friends who worked in all the big 4 so we sorta know wat other big 4 is like.........
Depends on wat client wants in an auditor actually, some clients only require the auditor who comes in and go then give them the financial statements without much emphasis value adding services (ie: management letter points, identification of control deficiencies, a more accurate/usable financial statemetns)...then maybe consider some other audit firms other than PWC....
I have clients who are ex-auditor themselves, for most of them their accounts are quite clean, but most of the time these ex-auditors are quite nasty too and they dont' tolerate stupid questions or associates who asked multiple times on the same thing....etc..but I am very ok working with these clients coz they get their jobs done by making sure the account is clean and all necessary listing is available, all documents are properly filled...basically they know everything including reasons for variances between last year and this year figure, fluctuations in GP margin....all I need to do is to make sure I perform properly as an auditor.......
As an ex-auditor yourself, maybe you could consider to do some improvements so that you can be one of those ex-auditor who gets his/her work done properly so that you get to be nasty in a JUSTIFIED way to stupid auditors who ask you stupid questions? maybe you get the shit fixed before auditor comes in? Or, get your subordinate to do it......one of the very valuable lessons in audit that I've learnt is to there's no shortcut/no escape/no-pushing-responsibilities around in audit/account related work coz in the end you'll still need to do it one-way properly or another......that having said...it's better for you to suffer first (ie: by fixing the shit) and enjoy later (ie: scolding and complaining about auditors who are stupid/impolite/coming in late to client places..etc)..
I am gonna skip most of it and just read the last part cause its too long.
You just don't understand do ya? You think it is easy to clean shit ah? When you join commercial, the shit is already there, and its not easy to clean because there are gazillion type of accounting softwares out there that no one auditor would be familiar with. We try our best to clean up but the shit is always there. Some shits are pretty hard to clean up.
Maybe instead of continuing to ask stupid questions, you should start totry to understand teh difficulties that commercial people face unlike you auditors have a simple job..yeah its simple although you have to put up with long hours. You just check that is all. I see you are still very infancy age in accountancy. 4 years? bAH what is that?
Wait until you go to commercial and then get bombarded by auditors asking stupid questions and you putting up with all the schedule preparation, only then you will know. I know you will, because there is this thing called karma.