Public Accounting Firm XY's possibility to increase its Process Maturity in Documenting Significant Classes of Transactions: Optimisation of a Business Process

Abstract

This bachelor thesis investigated the optimisation of a public accounting firm’s Significant Classes of Transactions (SCOT) documentation process. SCOTs are defined as an audit client’s major processes affecting significant financial statement accounts. Efficient documentation of SCOTs allows auditors to quickly identify any risks of material misstatement. Hence, this work’s main objective was to optimise the documentation process of the most important SCOTs for public accountants namely the order-to-cash (O2C), purchase-to-pay (P2P), and the financial statement closing process (FSCP). To achieve this goal, the following three sub-objectives were proposed: Understanding key concepts evolving around business process optimization, Determining the as-is documentation process on the three SCOTs: O2C, P2P and FSCP, Determining the to-be documentation process on the three SCOTs: O2C, P2P and FSCP