An excerpt on appointment of auditors from one of the leading Polish newspapers Rzeczpospolita.

There are a few articles here on one large page, one of them dealing with what an audit report is and what it’s supposed to contain. This is anodyne and will be what you would expect from your own country, if it is in line with IFAC standards.

Another article talks about what the audit thresholds are. I’m going to write a separate article on audit thresholds comparing different countries in our region, but Poland has the fairly sensible levels of any SA, and for an Sp. z o.o. it’s 2/3 of the following: 1) Turnover 5 million Euros in the preceding year, 2) gross assets of 2.5 million Euros in the preceding year and 3) 50 employees on average in the year. The article offers a PLN interpretation of these levels for this calendar year end. I do not really want to reproduce that as not every company has calendar year and it is also not hard to work it out whether your Company in Poland has mandatory audit or not, and if you’re not sure, ask me and I’ll tell you for free.

The most interesting article in this audit related supplement, though, is probably the one which states that in line with article 64 paragraph 1 part 4 of the Act on Accounting,  if the management needs to appoint an auditor it should be in time so that he/she can observe any material inventory counts.

So what that means in practice is that you’re probably OK if you have no stock or fixed assets. If on the other hand you do have these and they were due for a count, the auditor is risking big trouble if they come in and give an opinion on the figures not having attended the count. If this is of interest in your case, please look up the much larger on that subject below.

In the worst case there will be Companies who did their stock-counts without the observance of an auditor and they later discover they need to appoint one. Three alternative things can then happen. The first is that you chance on an ethical but unhelpful auditor, who refuses to take on an audit if the stocktake is already done. If you only meet such auditors, then you won’t be able to get the audit done and you’ll be in breach of the Act if you were over the size criterion or are a joint-stock company.

The second option is where the auditor says I can do this, but later pulls a qualification on you because of not having been able to attend the counts. You then have to file an audit report which isn’t 100% clean, and then live with the fact that you may not be able to declare a dividend and that the tax office will come breathing down you necks wondering what is going in. I don’t think it’s ethical for an auditor to lead the client into taking them by not being clear that they intend from the moment they are hired to give a modified audit report, but some people seriously justify it to themselves that it’s the client’s fault for not coming early enough.

Then there is the option where the auditor is both helpful and ethical, in that they take part in other procedures designed to make good the absence of an actual attendance at the time of the stocktake. Some auditors can use their business understanding and imagination to gain the assurance they need professionally without needing to do the whole stocktake over again. You may need to shop around to find these ones. I can certainly help you find people who approach their work in that more constructive period though.

In the very worst case, you may need to do the stock take again, but beware, you cannot do that officially after one month from year end anyway, and it involves extra work on the reconciliation afterwards, which will be on the shoulders of your chief accountant.

If you’re late appointing, don’t delay it any more – that’s the moral of the story!

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