The business advisory video series features interviews with SMP Committee Members Florin Toma, CPA, Romania, and Stuart Black, FCA, Australia. View all on the IFAC YouTube Channel.

The Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) Committee submitted this comment letter to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA)'s proposed changes to the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants addressing Responding to a Suspected Illegal Act.

This article highlights the value of review engagements, especially to SMPs in meeting the needs of their SME clients, and explains many of the key features of International Standard on Review Engagements 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements, released by the IAASB in September 2012. 

The business advisory video series features interviews with SMP Committee Members Florin Toma, CPA, Romania, and Stuart Black, FCA, Australia. View all on the IFAC YouTube Channel.

The SMP Committee’s Strategy and Work Plan for 2013–2016 outlines the committee’s objectives, strategic plan, and key outputs. It highlights how the SMP Committee’s planned activities align with and support IFAC’s overall strategy and work plan to support the worldwide accountancy profession. While this document contains the SMP Committee’s strategy for the four-year period 2013–2016, the work plan activities detailed are only for 2013. Work plans for the three subsequent years will be developed annually.

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), the global organization for the accountancy profession, today issued Policy Position Paper 7, Effective Governance, Risk Management, and Internal Control, to highlight good practice and the role of professional accountants in business.

Integrated and effective governance, risk management, and internal control within a robust ethical culture make an invaluable contribution to achieving sustained organizational success. At the same time, organizations often fail because of poor governance and/or ineffective and disconnected risk management and internal control.

“The recent global financial and sovereign debt crises have bought into greater focus the need for all organizations—in both the private and public sectors—to implement governance, risk management, and internal control as integrated parts of their management systems,” said IFAC CEO Ian Ball. “As the global organization for the accountancy profession, IFAC is encouraging and facilitating a better understanding of good practices in governance, risk management, and internal control, and greater global consistency in principles and guidelines to support effective implementation.”

IFAC is actively engaged in promoting relevant knowledge, experience, and learning so the profession can better support the more one million professional accountants worldwide working as employees, advisors, consultants, and self-employed owner-managers in commerce, industry, financial services, education, and the public and not-for-profit sectors. Governance, risk management, and internal controlare among the core competencies of professional accountants working in business, who play a leading and public interest role in planning, implementing, executing, evaluating, and improving these areas. 

“Organizations can be confident that professional accountants are able to contribute strongly to governance, risk management, and internal control,” stated Ball. “This policy position paper, and IFAC’s supporting publications, provide leadership and guidance to the profession and will help facilitate a common view of how organizations can effectively implement governance, risk management, and internal control.”

About IFAC
IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. IFAC is comprised of 173 members and associates in 129 countries and jurisdictions, representing approximately 2.5 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce.

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The Small and Medium Practices (SMP) Committee of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) today released the third edition of its Guide to Practice Management for Small- and Medium-Sized Practices (PM Guide). The comprehensive guide is comprised of eight standalone modules on a broad range of topics to help practitioners effectively market, manage, and grow their accounting practices.

“As 2012 comes to a close and economies globally remain sluggish, proper practice management is more important than ever for SMPs to achieve long-term sustainable success and remain competitive in the global marketplace for professional services,” said SMP Committee Chair Giancarlo Attolini. “The revised content in this edition reflects the rapid changes in technology, business needs, internationalization, and competition that continue to transform how practitioners and their clients operate. Smaller practices need to keep pace with these changes that can both enhance their own practices and form the basis of valuable advice for their clients.”

The new edition of the guide features improvements in content and functionality, including new and updated material on value pricing, knowledge networks, social media marketing, building a business advisory practice, and cloud computing. The eight tables of contents are now cross-linked to improve navigation, and the lists of further readings at the end of each module have been updated.

The guide is designed to be culture-neutral with easily translatable language for distribution by IFAC members to practitioners worldwide. The SMP Committee has developed a supplementary user guide, Companion Manual: Guide to Practice Management for SMPs, to help organizations understand the various ways they can use, translate, and adapt the PM Guide.

The third edition of the PM Guide can be downloaded free of charge.

About the SMP Committee
The SMP Committee of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) represents the interests of professional accountants operating in small- and medium-sized practices (SMPs). The committee develops guidance and tools and works to ensure the needs of the SMPs are considered by standard setters, regulators, and policy makers. The committee also speaks out on behalf of SMPs to raise awareness of their role and value, especially in supporting SMEs, and the importance of the small business sector overall.

About IFAC
IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. IFAC is comprised of 173 members and associates in 129 countries and jurisdictions, representing approximately 2.5 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce.

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During IFAC's 35^th Council Meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, in November 2012, IFAC held its annual seminar, A Fundamental Shift in Corporate Reporting. The seminar featured a keynote address by Prof. Mervyn King SC, chair of the International Integrated Reporting Council and chair of the King Committee on Corporate Governance in South Africa, which has published the King I, King II, and King III Reports on Corporate Governance.

This year’s seminar focused on drawing upon the experiences and perspectives of integrated reporting in practical terms—the South African experience, how to implement integrated reporting, and how to address the challenges and opportunities for small- and medium-sized entities and accountancy practices.

IFAC believes that establishing an integrated and effective system of governance, risk management, and internal control is desirable for all types of organizations and can make an invaluable contribution to achieving sustained organizational success. When organizations fail, the costs to society can be considerable.1 This was illustrated during the global financial and sovereign debt crises, when the failure of organizations—irrespective of size or structure, or whether in the private sector or public sector—led to a variety of adverse consequences.

IFAC, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Global Public Policy Committee (GPPC), with the support of the Inter-American Accounting Association, recently convened the sixth annual Contabilidad y Responsabilidad para el Crecimiento Económico Regional (Conference for Accounting and Accountability for Regional Economic Growth, or CReCER) in Managua, Nicaragua, hosted and organized by the Colegio de Contadores Públicos de Nicaragua (CCPN).

CReCER is comprised of a number of plenary and panel sessions, allowing leaders and representatives to exchange ideas, hear about country and sector case studies and experiences, and lay the groundwork for continued growth and development. The three-day conference featured leaders in the accountancy profession and senior global representatives with responsibilities for regulation and public financial management. Attendance was high—more than 600 attendees, 80 speakers, and participation by representatives from more than 30 countries from the region and beyond.

At the heart of CReCER is fostering economic development in the Latin America and Caribbean region through high-quality financial reporting and public sector financial management. CReCER 2012 focused on:

• lessons learned from country adoption of international standards, including the International Standards on Auditing, International Financial Reporting Standards for Small- and Medium-Sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs), and International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs), and the role of supreme audit institutions;
• ways to further support the role of small- and medium-sized practices and the needs of SMEs, and the role and strategic objective of professional accountancy organizations (PAOs) and the Grupo Latino-Americano d Normatizadores Contábeis (Group of Latin American Accounting Standard Setters, or GLASS).