Over the years, people have complained — myself included — that PCAOB inspection reports were not exactly useful documents. Sixty-odd pages of audit and legalese don’t exactly make for riveting content.
However! In the new EY and PwC inspection reports that were released today, you’ll note executive summaries that list tables for the “Effects of Audit Deficiencies on Audit Opinions,” “Most Frequently Identified Audit Deficiencies” and “Areas in which Audit Deficiencies Were Most Frequently Identified.” It’s a decent snapshot of the firm’s performance of these audits, what kind of audit problems occurred and where they occurred within the financial statements.
This is particularly exciting because I mentioned the lack of executive summaries not that long ago. I’m not saying you have me to thank, but I’ve heard that my writings do get passed around PCAOB HQ (if only after being scrubbed for colorful language).
Now all we need are for the users to be identified, letter grades for audit quality, a tl;dr section, and you’ll see these inspection reports in every Hudson News.
