Rehmann is a top 50 firm (#38 on the 2018 Accounting Today list) with 24 offices across Michigan, Ohio, and Florida. Its firm-wide assurance department requests thousands of (primarily bank) confirmations every year. Initially, Rehmann rolled out the Confirmation platform to only a few offices, but once the faster confirmation replies and overall time savings became evident, use of Confirmation quickly expanded throughout the company and is now a tool that the entire assurance department, more than 200 auditors, relies on daily.

Brent Pruim, now a Strategic Analyst with Rehmann, started with the company as an auditor himself, managing audits and preparing tax returns. Today, he’s the tech liaison for his department, the leader of the information technology general controls team, and a member of his department’s IT subcommittee. In his current role, Pruim is responsible for leading the charge to ensure Rehmann is identifying the audit of the future. Pruim often speaks at industry events — for organizations like AICPA, the MICPA (Michigan), GFOA, AGA, MTA, and more — about this exact topic; about how technology is changing and will change the audit and tax industries. Day-to-day, he makes sure Rehmann is taking advantage of the efficiencies offered by emerging tech in the industry, including how Confirmation fits into his charge of leading the company toward the future. 

Sustituir la incertidumbre por seguridad 

Pruim’s audit experience includes both public- and private-sector audits, security being an equal concern between the two. “Our clients are very busy people — they want to make sure the data they share with us is secure, but don’t want to spend a lot of time managing the risks that come with sharing this type of information,” he says. “With paper confirmations, we would request that clients complete a confirmation form using a MS Word or Excel document, then print, sign, and send it back to us. That’s a very time-consuming process and certainly not the most secure way to share confidential information.”

Since instituting Confirmation, these transactions have become much easier and far more secure. Pruim explained, “It’s helped us organize a very routine part of our audit process. We have been able to streamline that process and stop chasing paper. Confirmation gives us and our clients a great level of comfort that we no longer have confidential information on pieces of paper floating around in the mail.”

“Confirmation gives us and our clients a great level of comfort that we no longer have confidential information on pieces of paper floating around in the mail.” 

Brent Pruim,  Rehmann Strategic Analyst

Pruim and his IT team use various security measures when evaluating partnerships, so to have his and Rehmann’s seal of approval on the security of Confirmation speaks volumes. Security comes in many forms. The status of each confirmation is now always at the ready, eliminating uncertainties that come along with the paper process. No more wondering about the mail delivery time, or who mailed what and when. Two-way communication via Confirmation relieves this concern. As Pruim puts it, “With Confirmation, you can utilize notifications, and if you’re questioning whether something is coming in or being processed at any point, you can simply check — it’s all at your fingertips.” 

Pruim continued, “Before using Confirmation we could be chasing down paper confirmations for weeks. We would call the financial institution, and they might say they never received anything, meaning you have to contact the client and inconvenience them to sign a new confirmation so you can mail it out. Avoiding issues and uncertainties like this can end up saving us several hours over the course of a single engagement.” Simply put, there were no warm fuzzy feelings before. Now, the answers are all one click away for Rehmann’s audit teams.

Better Communication Has Its Benefits 

Pruim forma a los asociados en el uso de Confirmation y ayuda a los clientes cuando es necesario. En el camino, Pruim destaca haber logrado una serie de ventajas clave tanto para sus colegas de Rehmann como para los clientes de la firma.

Mejores relaciones con los clientes
Pruim stresses the importance of the initial communication with a client — letting them know they’ll be receiving emailed confirmation-related requests from Confirmation, what that means, and from there, firm-to-client communication through Confirmation becomes a very self-sustaining process.

Y eso es algo bueno para las relaciones con los clientes de Rehmann, dice Pruim. “En cuanto les explicamos que empleamos esta tecnología para hacer las cosas más fáciles y seguras, lo comprenden inmediatamente. Presionan un botón de su correo electrónico y con eso nos autorizan a confirmar las cuentas. Con un solo clic. Por mi parte, es lo que más mejora la experiencia del cliente. No tenemos que volver a ponernos en contacto con ellos para hacer solicitudes”.

“Los clientes nos autorizan con un solo clic. Es lo que más mejora la experiencia del cliente. No tenemos que volver a ponernos en contacto con ellos para hacer solicitudes.”

Brent Pruim,  Rehmann Strategic Analyst

Mejores notas de auditoría
Otra gran ventaja de usar Confirmation es que si aparece un saldo imprevisto, el equipo de Pruim es capaz de reconfirmarlo, sin coste alguno y de inmediato. “La persona que confirma normalmente suele responder bastante rápido también. Esa interacción con la persona que hace la confirmación, unido al hecho de que puedes hacerle preguntas sobre las incertidumbres, la convierte en una función superútil”, afirma Pruim. Esta comunicación bidireccional da como resultado una pista de auditoría del proceso que es fácil de seguir y que puede volver a llevarse a cabo. Una comunicación clara facilita los negocios y el proceso de circularización auditorías no es una excepción.

Ease of Use Leads to More Opportunities

Para sus colegas asociados de Rehmann en el departamento de seguros, Pruim no tiene que complicarse mucho la vida con los nuevos usuarios de Confirmation, más allá de proporcionarles credenciales de inicio de sesión y ofrecerles una visión general rápida de la interfaz. “El sistema funciona a la perfección y es muy fácil de usar. La mayoría de nuestros asociados y clientes aprenden a utilizar el sistema con una clase de 5 o 10 minutos. Trabajamos con numerosos formularios a lo largo de la auditoría, y el uso de esta tecnología para confirmar las cuentas nos da la seguridad de haber realizado correctamente el procedimiento de confirmación con la documentación adecuada”, afirma Pruim.

Inspirada por la facilidad de adopción en todo el equipo de auditoría, Confirmation brinda una oportunidad al equipo de Pruim para explorar nuevos usos de la tecnología que incrementen la eficiencia. “Nos estamos preparando para que la introducción de confirmaciones y descargas por lotes para cada cliente sea una tarea conjunta, una tarea más administrativa. Confirmation realmente nos va a permitir emplear nuestro tiempo de forma distinta. Por ejemplo, si un asociado tiene un día sin tareas asignadas en la oficina, en noviembre o diciembre puede solicitar las autorizaciones de todas las próximas auditorías de toda la oficina e ir adelantando trabajo con estas confirmaciones. De este modo, la tarea de confirmar las cuentas se completa antes de iniciar el trabajo de campo de auditoría. Además, el poder contar con personal administrativo para realizar esta tarea libera tiempo que nuestros asociados pueden invertir en ofrecer servicios de valor añadido a nuestros clientes”. Muchos otros usuarios de Confirmation se han dado cuenta de la ventaja que supone centralizar las confirmaciones de esta forma.

Results by the Numbers

Al usar Confirmation, Rehmann ha aumentado las confirmaciones totales anuales completadas de activos, pasivos y seguridad entre un 13 % y un 20 % o más cada año. Ahí van algunas cifras:

Confirmaciones completadas
Activo
2016: 1763
2017: 2195
2018: 2904

Liability
2016: 219
2017: 248
2018: 316

Security
2016: 10
2017: 18
2018: 39

En 2018, las confirmaciones de activos aumentaron en más de un 32 % en comparación con 2017. Esto significa que la certeza para la firma y sus clientes está aumentando, y que el departamento de seguros trabaja con mayor claridad y precisión que antes y está incrementando esa precisión día a día.

While there are no hard numbers to report, Pruim says ample time is being saved. He notes, “The response time for a confirmation is extremely fast — we’ll have some within 24 hours, and that’s where the real time savings comes from. There’s a lot less back and forth. We complete thousands of confirmations per year, so if we’re saving an hour on each one, that’s huge. For clients with 20, sometimes more than 30, accounts, we’re taking what’s essentially a decentralized, time-consuming process and putting it into a very centralized structured process. For those larger accounts, it’s amazing how much time you can save.”

Efficiency is a timeless key to doing business effectively, and Pruim already has his eye on how the audit business could evolve to become even more efficient in the future.

La auditoria del futuro

With his expertise in and exposure to technology advancements within the accounting profession, and the application of those advancements within Rehmann, Pruim is a great resource to provide perspective on what the audit of the future could look like.

Si bien admite que a corto plazo no es probable que haya robots de auditoría que vayan a realizar el trabajo de campo, Pruim sí ve cambios emocionantes en el horizonte. ¿Su primera observación? La tecnología en la profesión no es una moda pasajera. “Hay muchas dudas en nuestra profesión a la hora de adoptar la tecnología y las herramientas emergentes, pero cuando hablo con la directiva y los máximos responsables, son muy abiertos y entienden lo que se avecina. Lo apoyan y aceptan este cambio. El cambio va a llegar muy rápido, y nuestra profesión tiene que estar preparada para esta transformación”, añade.

As for Pruim’s perspective on what will define the audit of the future in a single word, it’s data. The second word? Advisory-driven. But going paperless is still a big first step for many firms and clients alike. “At Rehmann we’re essentially paperless, but industry-wide we’re still in a pivotal spot. While we’re not rolling out with paper binders to do audits, we’re still scanning audit support. We still receive a significant amount of paper from clients. In fact, now that we can confirm via paper through Confirmation, I expect the percentage of our overall confirmations that run through Confirmation, currently around 75 percent, to increase even more,” Pruim predicts.

What else does Pruim see when looking ahead? Here’s a few things he has top of mind.

• Data-driven processes: We’ll spend a lot more time analyzing data.
• Volume of data: The more data we obtain through cloud-based accounting application connectors, and utilizing the blockchain to verify the transactions, the more fluidly we can audit, while providing valuable insight to our clients by utilizing these tools.
• In 10 to 15 years: The jury is still out, but the concept of continuous audits could become a reality, which could make the audit process more ongoing, more advisory-based, and more seamless than it is now.

When we asked Pruim if “busy season” could ever become a thing of the past, he noted that different industry sectors have different busy seasons now (public vs. private, for example), and that while those spikes could smooth out a bit if the audit process does in fact become more constant, he doubts they will fade entirely.

Only time will tell what the audit of the future holds, but with the steps Rehmann is putting in place, the firm will surely benefit as an early adopter.