External Audit Services at Bishop Fleming Accountants

Making a noticeable improvement to our client’s business is central to the audit work we do and the results we deliver. Creating value that makes a real difference to our client’s business – year after year – is intrinsic to our approach.

That is why we provide audit services to a vast number of corporate groups, owner-managed businesses, not-for-profit organisations and public sector organisations throughout the UK and internationally, in a wide range of specialist sectors, regardless of their size or status.

With extensive experience, a dedication to exceptional client service and value for money, you’ll receive meaningful insights into your business, whilst ensuring that strict compliance requirements are met.

With over 200 audit professionals throughout the firm, we make it a priority to understand your business and tailor our approach to your way of working. This also means we can minimise any disruption caused by the audit process whilst providing you with the insights that you’re seeking in order to help you run your successful business.

External Audit Services

At Bishop Fleming, we take the quality control of our audits very seriously. We submit ourselves to regular third-party reviews and regulatory visits by the Quality Assurance Directorate (QAD). A tightly controlled system of audit licensing within the firm means that your audit will be performed by fully qualified and appropriately experienced audit specialists.

Details of our Bishop Fleming registration can be viewed at www.auditregister.org.uk, under reference number C003811177, and details of our Bishop Fleming Bath Limited audit registration can be viewed under the above website, under reference number C003088558. Registered to carry out audit work in the UK and Ireland by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Audit Regulations can be accessed at www.icaew.com/regulations. The FRC Ethical Standard can be accessed at www.frc.org.uk/auditors/audit-assurance/standards-and-guidance.

We also specialise in specific sectors including;

This specialist approach means we already have key insights and can easily identify how a business is performing, pin-point trends and spot opportunities or problems at an early stage. Our unique insight means we can anticipate the particular issues that your business or organization faces.

Specialist Audit Services

As licenced members of the ATOL Reporting Accountants’ Scheme, we assist our travel industry clients to meet the robust financial compliance requirements of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Bishop Fleming has many years of practical experience with a large portfolio of travel industry clients and was one of the first to be certified by the CAA. As a result, we can offer expert assistance to any firms that are ATOL accredited. Our ATOL team has undertaken the necessary CAA training and is committed to an ongoing professional development programme to meet the challenges ahead.

With extensive experience, a dedication to exceptional client service and value for money, you’ll receive meaningful insights into your business whilst ensuring the CAA’s strict compliance requirements are met.

Grant audits play a crucial role in providing assurance to grant providers regarding the utilisation of grant funding by recipients.

These audits involve an independent and thorough examination of the figures outlined in the grant claim. Our auditors review the costs incurred, ensuring strict adherence to the terms and conditions specified by the grant. Following the audit, an accountant's report is generated, offering a clear statement on whether the expenditure aligns with the grant's requirements.

At Bishop Fleming Accountants, we bring expertise to grant audits, ensuring transparency and accountability in the use of grant funds.

SRA audits are mandatory for solicitors, law firms, or managers of legal practices dealing with client money. This requirement is particularly relevant for businesses engaged in conveyancing and probate work, where client funds are held during property transactions or probate processes. Holding client money triggers the need for an SRA audit.

While there are exemptions and limits outlined in the SRA rules, the fundamental criterion for an audit is if a business holds client money at any point during its service. 

At Bishop Fleming, we understand the nuances of SRA regulations. An SRA Audit is an annual requirement, ensuring solicitors report the financial transactions passing through their client accounts. Trust us to guide you through the complexities of SRA compliance, offering tailored solutions to meet the unique needs of your legal practice.

At Bishop Fleming, we deliver comprehensive audit services and expert advice tailored to all occupational pension schemes. Our extensive client base involves managing small defined benefit schemes, medium-sized hybrid schemes, and large multi-employer schemes with assets. 

Trust Bishop Fleming to be your partner in navigating the complexities of pension scheme audits. Our commitment is to provide you with tailored solutions and expert guidance to ensure the financial integrity and compliance of your pension scheme.

How we do Audit

We’ve been performing audits for years, and we’ve never been more excited about the value of our audits than today.  Our audit will be substantive in nature, focusing on the verification of year-end balances and P&L trends. The substantive audit will be supported by using our data analytics tools.

The demand from clients, investors and regulators alike for more forward-looking and insightful audits is increasing. With higher data volumes and the shift from manual to automated processes, companies are moving beyond traditional audit activities toward an environment of more sophisticated analysis to derive more value from the audit process.

Clients now expect an audit to not only involve risk assessments but are also looking for the audit to highlight potential areas of operational and business improvements.

Our data analytics tools use your data to perform complex data interrogation routines.  Results from our procedures are presented in dashboard visualisation, which is easily understandable and can be used to evaluate abnormal transactions identified from individual tests.

Creating value that makes a real difference to a client’s business – year after year – is intrinsic to our audit approach. At Bishop Fleming, we continue to explore ways to drive efficiencies in our audit process whilst providing true value in terms of the insights we can give to our clients.

We believe data analytics provides us with a privileged insight into your business, and we use this knowledge to add value through our more advanced data analytics tools, which use the fundamental principles of double-entry accounting. By extracting data from your system, we can analyse relationships between transactions, nominal accounts, and balances, identifying the source and destination of transactions, so that more meaningful conclusions can be drawn across a high volume of transactions where manual techniques would be impossible.

One of the many ways we can create value that makes a real difference to your business or organisation is through the delivery of remote auditing.  

Put simply, remote audits are performed virtually rather than on-premise, and whilst it is not a new concept, it has gained prominence during the Coronavirus as a means of continuing with compliance. Because auditing remotely can be done very efficiently, it is likely to evolve and become more common. For that reason, together with traditional audit processes, we are keen to continue offering remote audits as a part of a new flexible and optional approach to how we can add value.

Background

“We found our remote audit with the Bishop Fleming team worked really well this year and was a very smooth process.  The audit team kept in regular contact both by email, over the phone and at the virtual planning and completion meetings. We agreed what was needed, by when and in what format.  We were able to provide them with the required information very easily through the Bishop Fleming secure electronic portal.  We are looking forward to the audit running in a similar way in the coming year.”

Susie Beasley-Suffolk, Director of Central Services, We Care Home Improvements

Key contacts

Joe Scaife

Partner and Head of Audit

0117 9100260

Email Joe

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