CPA firms’ audit departments are experiencing greater stress than ever before due to shorter time frames, increased complexity of the client portfolio, and lack of qualified employees. It is no wonder that modern CPA firm management opts to hire expert audit managers who can manage their audit projects on their own without any supervision by partners.

The role of auditing has always been precise; however, the combination of factors such as understaffing and increasing demands from clients has forced some firms to consider carefully who leads their projects. In this blog, we will examine what reasons are behind this trend and what factors firms need to take into consideration when they decide to hire professional audit managers.

Why CPA Firms Are Choosing to Hire Expert Audit Managers Today

The decision to hire expert audit managers is seldom made after just one instance, but usually is a gradual process in which the partners find themselves overwhelmed by the number of engagements. With more clients on their books and greater depth in the audits required, firms must have some form of management between the staff accountants and partners capable of managing the practicalities of the job. 

Where firms delay making this hire, the expense may be evident in many ways, from missed deadlines to employee exhaustion and business partners who simply don’t have the time anymore to develop business. Recognizing all of these stresses, one can easily understand why audit leadership has become essential.

How Growing Client Portfolios Strain Partner Bandwidth

With an increasing number of clients of a firm, the partners become even busier in going through work papers, managing client relations, and even making new contacts. With no manager overseeing the audit process in a firm, most of the technical management that is supposed to be done at the middle level is left to busy partners.

The firms which use an audit manager to come in alleviate this pressure by providing the partners another level of review before the work is presented to them. By itself, this can help reduce the time from finishing fieldwork to the sign-off process because less problems are found during the final review.

Why Staff-Level Accountants Cannot Fill the Leadership Gap

Staff accountants play an important role in field work; however, they do not possess enough experience to perform complicated risk assessments or communicate with the client controllers. Assigning these tasks to the staff accountant without giving him/her an official designation of manager results in inconsistent work and oversight of technical problems. This problem manifests itself particularly clearly in multi-entity or high-risk audits.

Organizations that realize this gap and opt to hire an audit manager for CPA firm operations have less number of review notes at the time of signing off by the partners. This is because the manager acts as the point of quality control that the level of accountants cannot do alone.

How to Hire an Audit Manager for CPA Firm Growth

After the decision is made to have audit leadership in place, the next challenge for the organization is the recruiting process because suitable candidates are difficult to come by within the industry. Organizations that plan ahead when making this particular recruitment will likely have more success finding the right candidate. In this section, the actual process of recruiting will be discussed.

An employee hired in desperation will likely not meet the required standards because of inexperience compared to the demands of the audit. It may take more time than expected to search for an appropriate individual.

Defining the Scope and Technical Requirements of the Role

Prior to creating the job posting, the firm’s management must identify what the audit manager is responsible for, including the industries and client size and the amount of contact he or she would have with those clients. An audit manager responsible for auditing employee benefit plans will need a different level of technical skills than a manager dealing with non-profits or construction firms.

The reason why some firms may miss out on this crucial step is because they will end up having a technically competent manager but someone whose skills are not aligned with their clients' needs. This process becomes very important during those occasions where the firm chooses to hire professional audit managers for specific niches.

Evaluating Candidates Beyond Technical Certifications

CPA accreditation and good technical skills can be seen as the basic qualifications needed to perform well in this role, but there is more than that which needs to be considered. The skills of managing the team, communicating with clients and handling pressure in the last few weeks before the filing are among the things that need to be looked at by the firm.

Interview questions which relate to behavioral engagements pose much more value than a general technical interview. Organizations which incorporate this process in their procedures are better prepared when they want to hire expert audit managers USA wide because they will have a benchmarking process which applies irrespective of the location of the candidate.

What to Look for When You Hire Professional Audit Managers

Not all seasoned accountants are destined to become great audit managers, and it is therefore important for firms to have a good understanding of how to differentiate between good candidates and outstanding ones. It is important to combine both expertise and managerial skills to see an audit assignment through with an attention to schedule. This part describes what to look for.

These factors are equally important when it comes to firms looking to hire their first audit manager compared to those looking to replace a departing one, seeing that the standards need to be kept the same regardless of the size of the firm. The selection factors should remain the same whether a firm looks to hire an audit manager for a CPA firm for operations in one office or more.

Prioritizing Industry-Specific Audit Experience

The manager who has been operating in a particular industry for several years will be able to spot patterns that even the best generalists cannot. He knows where risks usually reside in the financial statements of that industry and is able to help his team get on track quicker. It is not hard to understand that this person will need much less time to adjust to a new firm if the firm operates in the same industry.

For firms that wish to hire expert audit managers who have expertise in a particular industry vertical, it is important that they consider this factor, despite the fact that the person may have a longer resume because he works in other sectors.

Assessing Leadership and Client Communication Skills

The auditor manager spends much of his/her time communicating with client staff to sort out any pending issues and keep their fieldwork team up to date with deadlines. Ineffective communication in this particular position causes problems for the clients and confusion in junior staff, both of which lead to delays in the engagement process. A good candidate should be able to communicate difficult issues to the client controller.

Here is another place where firms can get a return on referencing those who have experience leading previous engagement teams. A manager who is good at mentoring his employees will tend to have good retention rates in his audit group, but also the whole audit department.

How CPA Firms Hire Expert Audit Managers USA-Wide to Scale Operations

Geographic mobility has altered the way in which firms conduct themselves when it comes to this hiring process, considering that remote and hybrid work options have broadened the talent pool considerably past the confines of the firm’s own metropolitan region. firms who used to be restricted to hiring local applicants are now able to hire expert audit managers USA wide. 

The widening of the geographic search does not imply lowering the standards, on the contrary, it provides firms with greater opportunity to be selective since the number of eligible candidates has increased substantially.

Building a Remote-Ready Audit Management Structure

The audit manager operating from a remote location or following a hybrid model necessitates an organization to formalize the informal procedures that used to take place in the workplace, like having daily huddles, sharing review checklists, and having a formal escalation process in case of any open items. The use of cloud technology for work papers would facilitate this process.

With this investment done beforehand by such firms, the remote audit manager will prove to be equally efficient compared to his/her counterparts in the office, most times more focused especially at the end of the engagement when pressure is high. This is among the main reasons why many firms today hire expert audit managers with specialized skills despite their inability to come to the office.

Expanding the Talent Search Beyond Local Markets

Conducting a search in one city usually implies that you compete with all the other organizations from the same city for the same few individuals. With a nationwide search, businesses can recruit those managers with the specific industry experience they require, regardless of whether that individual is located in the neighboring state or far away. The nationwide search strategy has proven to be particularly useful for smaller cities.

A national search is also an asset in terms of negotiations for businesses because while it is true that the candidate has choices other than the firm he or she is interviewing with, the firm too has choices to make.

It seems that the pressure on the CPA firm’s audit department is not going away and those that choose to rely on partners and young professionals to solve the problem of lack of leaders will only continue to face bottlenecks every year. Adding a specialized audit leader to the firm turns the table and provides partners with necessary assistance, employees with a source of technical knowledge and clients with faster processing of their audits. To hire expert audit managers is an option for firms that know what they want from such specialists and are open for remote workers.

Looking to enhance your audit team through the use of experienced leaders? Collaborate with The Fino Partners, an outsourcing partner that is renowned for enabling CPA firms to grow through financial and staffing services that scale up audits.