[SOLVED] Professional Partners target the ASX 200

Professional Partners target the ASX 200
Background
Your firm Professional Partners (PP) is a mid-sized accounting practice with about 350 staff
and offices in Perth and Melbourne. PP has specialised in small- and mid-capitalisation firms
operating in the extractive industries, including companies searching for minable deposits,
companies engaging in mining, and companies providing associated services (such as
geological and engineering consultants, mining software services, health and safety services
etc.). PP has built a very successful practice but revenue growth has been low in the past three
years. At a recent partners meeting it was agreed that in order to restart growth, PP needs to
target bigger firms. In anticipation of attracting larger firms with international operations, PP
has already identified firms that it believes could undertake work on its behalf in Indonesia
(The Jakarta Partnership), Brazil (Contadores Extraordinários), and South Africa (Dlamini,
Nkosi, and Ndlovu Partners). In order to progress this ambition, teams are being formed across
the practice to perform an initial assessment of prospective targets.
Each team is required to submit to the partners a report on their target, including an assessment
of business risks, inherent risks additional to those identified by the incumbent auditor and an
overall recommendation as to the suitability of the firm as an audit client (further details are
provided in the Deliverables section below).
The partners are very particular about presentation: the practice document style is 12-point
Times New Roman, with the default Microsoft Word margins (2.54cm top, bottom, left and
right), single line spacing, referencing using APA 7 and no appendices (apart from a reference
list).
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• the assignment cover page;
• the group sections (overview, business risks, conclusion and references);
• their own individual sections (inherent risk, reflection)
Tips
The main tip is to read the rubric! In previous semesters (where the assignment was similar)
many students submitted work that didn’t reflect what we were looking for in the various
sections. You should review the rubric in detail BEFORE you begin. In addition to the more
technical aspects of the business and risk analysis, there were three areas which could have
been substantially improved: the linkage of KAMs, conclusion and reflection.
The linkage of KAMs – it is not enough to simply state a new issue in your individual
discussion of a KAM. You need to link the KAM to an issue you have identified in the
overview of the business and/or the business risks section. Therefore your discussion of the
KAM should begin with explaining how this audit risk might arise from what you know
about the business. The idea is to replicate a real audit, where the auditor will think carefully
about the operations of their client in order to identify potential audit risks.
The conclusion – Many students seemed to leave the conclusion section to the last minute and
gave some vague response. Consequently, they didn’t give any consideration to the
commercial aspects of the assignment. After the analysis, you should give a clear
recommendation as to whether Amazing Auditors should continue to pursue the audit of your
firm and give sensible reasons as to why / why not.
The reflection– most students scored moderate but not outstanding results in this section,
primarily because they did not obtain feedback from other people during the assignment. You
may be familiar with writing reflection pieces after the fact, but the problem with this is that it
is too late. The idea with the reflections section is that you are clear on a model of teamwork
before you begin, and then use this model to improve the team’s performance whilst doing
the assignment. In other words, to score well in this section you need to be both giving and
receiving feedback during the process, not when it is all over! Therefore at your first planning
meeting you should consider how you will fulfill this aspect of the assignment as well as the
technical content.