COVID-19 and the accounting profession: The impact, the challenges, the future Sprott School of Business

Accounting Today is a leading provider of online business news for the accounting community, offering breaking news, in-depth features, and a host of resources and services. It’s no secret the pandemic pushed many organizations to fast-track their digital transformation. Since auditors could no longer make on-site visits, they had to adapt. From reimagining how has covid affected the accounting profession auditing to speeding up digital transformation, here are a few of the changes that were spurred on by COVID-19. The pandemic may not yet be behind us, but organizations have had to quickly adjust to the disruption and, in particular, the way business is now done. COVID-19 has led to an extremely difficult year for everyone across the globe.

Some stated that their firms moved staff out of cubicles and into individual offices for social distancing. Others said they plan to downsize office space due to a reduced need for physical space. One firm was able to negotiate a lower rent with its landlord for lease renewal.

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This could involve gamified learning experiences, interactive workshops, and engaging initiatives demystifying the accounting world. With so much business activity squeezed and substantial doubt about when business will resume something of a normal pattern, companies that had problems may face a struggle to survive. On March 4, the SEC issued a temporary exemption from meeting deadlines that fall between March 1 and April 30 for filing annual reports, proxy statements, and other regulatory documents. Companies have to explain why they need the exemption, which extended the deadlines 45 days, and refer to the SEC order in their public statements. Organisations can enhance their financial operations’ efficiency, accuracy, and responsiveness by adopting platforms that offer them self-service cust… To learn more about how Checkpoint Edge can help you regain control of your accounting and financial statements, watch our latest webcast Financial Reporting in the Times of COVID-19.

Because of this, our expertise is needed more than ever. From questions about the CARES act to adjusting business models to needing general insights on financial health and resilience, we can help current and new clients find the way through the fog. COVID-19 has propelled many professionals and firms further into advisory services, and this need will continue – offering a great opportunity for the industry. To understand the temporary and long-term changes to the accounting profession that resulted from the crisis, the authors reached out to CPAs working in public accounting and industry, and asked them about their experiences. We focused on understanding how the pandemic and its economic consequences have changed our profession, both in the short term and the long term. Our survey comprised a list of open-ended questions, covering topics including challenges identified by staff and customers, hiring and layoffs, pay cuts or furlough, technologies related to working-from-home, work-life balance, and office set-up.

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Because goodwill numbers tend to be large, this could also be an area of intense scrutiny this year. If you haven’t already, expect to have a robust discussion about impairments with auditors. As the country makes its way through, and eventually out of, the coronavirus pandemic, the institute leaders stressed the opportunities and responsibilities that accountants bear. Accountants are facing unique challenges during the coronavirus pandemic — but the profession is rising to the meet them at all levels, according to leaders from the American Institute of CPAs.

Now the firm has five or six Zoom meetings a day, Nettleton said, and meetings with clients also take place on the app. “It really took a pandemic to, I believe, get the profession to embrace this remote-work concept,” Bourke said. Some organizations, he says, will have to change their governance and management model (financing, amortization periods, life of assets, etc.) to compensate for the loss of revenues.

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“You have to be prepared to work remotely,” he said, whether it’s because of a hurricane or a global health pandemic. One benefit of the cloud, Nettleton said, is that employees can access it from wherever. If a storm knocks out power at a worker’s home, that person can go to McDonald’s or Starbucks and continue working.

• At the firm’s offices, Bourke said, workers have two or three monitors and docking stations for their laptops.
• Eliminate the encampment and send a message, this is not going to be tolerated.
• — Joseph Radigan is a financial writer based in New York.
• Recruiting and retaining talent will likely remain a big challenge for many CPA firms moving forward.

The lockdown began in mid-March, a few weeks before the income tax filing deadline. Even though the due date was eventually extended, that situation is an excellent example of the challenge that many small firms had to face—an urgent foray into the online world. And by that, I mean, this thing that seemed to start at Columbia is literally spreading. That reality, that taking a different tack that was supposed to be full of learnings and lessons from the stumbles of her peers, the fact that didn’t really work suggests that there’s something really intractable going on here. And I wonder how you’re thinking about this intractable situation that’s now arrived on these college campuses. Republicans in New York and across the country began to call for her to step down from her position as president of Columbia.

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Face-to-face meetings with clients remain an essential part of the audit process. Potential travel restrictions caused by the pandemic could make those in-person meetings difficult. Shehata said it may mean some modifications to normal audit procedures. In addition, travel restrictions might prevent visiting the client. In the face of disruptions to global supply chains and other business activity, the SEC and the PCAOB in mid-February issued limited guidance to public companies and auditors for how they should manage their response to the pandemic.

For most companies, right now is a time to react, adapt and survive. As for the technologies related to working from home, many accountants stated that working remotely was not new to them. Several CPA firms among our respondents were able to adjust to working virtually very quickly. “We utilized Microsoft Teams and VPN prior to COVID,” one spokesman reported, “and our Teams usage has skyrocketed during COVID for both video calls and document sharing.” Zoom and Skype are also popular choices for video conferencing. For those new to the technologies, the learning curve did not appear to be very steep, and people learned to adapt swiftly. Some bigger firms even provided a financial stipend for employees to purchase or upgrade equipment such as laptops and routers.