A partner from a CPA firm once told me that by lunchtime, her group worked with six different systems. The system for workpapers, the system for confirmations, the system for timesheets, the system for PBCs from clients, and two more systems that had been added over time.
None of these systems was intrinsically the wrong choice. What went wrong was what was happening among them.
It doesnāt happen by design. It happens incrementally. One system was adopted to satisfy a regulation, another to streamline the interface with customers, and a third because an old system provider raised its fees. The technology stack builds up over time without a coherent plan for how it will all fit together.
The result is an audit software for CPA firms that works well in isolation but can create friction across the engagement. Data does not always flow smoothly between systems. People may need to re-enter the same client information. Review notes can sit in one application while supporting documents live in another.
The result is not necessarily too much technology. There are too many disconnected workflows.
The real cost is not the subscription fee
Most partnerships know how much each license costs. What few can understand is the cost of disconnections. This is a harder number to determine, but it is present in almost everything that is done.
This comes through in the extra hour spent on moving a spreadsheet from one system into another, formatting it appropriately, and putting it back into the other system. It is seen in discrepancies between versions of a document that may appear in two systems and go unnoticed until a reviewer spots them during crunch week.
Training also includes this cost. Instead of training new staff on a single workflow, they must be trained on several, and those systems may not have been designed to work together.
For companies that assess audit software for CPA firms, the issue, therefore, should not be solely about the software subscription cost. The more important aspect is the amount of time spent integrating these systems.
Why audit evidence workflows deserve particular attention
The PCAOB’s modernization of AS 2310, The Auditor’s Use of Confirmation, raises awareness regarding this topic even further. AS 2310, which applies to audits of fiscal years ending on or after June 15, 2025, provides guidance on audit evidence obtained through confirmation procedures and emphasizes the auditor’s control over the entire process.
For CPA firms, the confirmation process creates even more inefficiencies because confirmation requests might originate in one system, responses might come through another, and related evidence documents might need to be transferred again to compile the engagement file. The greater the number of handoffs, the more room there is for delays, incomplete documentation, and ineffectiveness.
Moreover, AS 2310 specifies situations in which it is reasonable to obtain relevant and reliable audit evidence by accessing information from a knowledgeable external source. In such a case, the methods of collecting, controlling, documenting, and connecting external evidence become a critical component of the audit technology workflow.
The message to the firms here is not about unifying the audit processes within a single application. It is about controllable, traceable, and connected audit evidence workflows.
CPA firms already know technology integration is a problem
But this is not a mere software management issue. Technology adoption and integration have become crucial management issues at CPA firms. As per the recent AICPA PCPS survey, technology adoption and integration were found to be the number one issue at firms with employees between 101 and 500, and technology and AI-enabled change were the top issues at the largest firms.
It is critical to understand the difference between the two. A firm might have contemporary cloud systems, artificial intelligence, and audit software, but its inefficient workflow can result from ineffective integration of these tools.
The CPA.com Audit Transformation Survey highlights the same situation: firms have adopted cloud technology and AI but continue working on the changes necessary to integrate these technologies into a risk-based audit system.
What is needed, then, is not just improvement in tools, but the creation of a technology stack that minimizes the manual process of handing them over and the duplication of tasks that firms are already using.
What consolidation actually solves
Limiting the sprawl of audit tools does not have to involve switching from one audit platform to another to completely replace all of a company’s current solutions. Instead, it is about eliminating handoffs that add no value and tying together workflows with too many disconnects.
This would result in fewer duplicate client data entries, less evidence transfer across different solutions, and improved transparency regarding which requests were made, what was collected, and who documented it. In addition, it will make the auditing process more transparent, so the partner, quality reviewer, insurer, or regulatory body can easily see how evidence was handled throughout.
In addition, staffing is another factor to consider when implementing audit tools. Each system implies a learning curve and more work. Eliminating handoffs could mean consolidating workflows, making staff onboarding easier, and reducing the number of disconnects in which information is lost or manually manipulated.
For companies with a core engagement platform, solving the problem might involve consolidating workflows around it and integrating them with the current technology stack.
What to look for in an audit management platform
Not all audit management platforms address fragmentation in the same way. When assessing an audit management platform or specialized audit workflow tool, accounting firms should avoid focusing on the length of the feature list and instead ask how much work is done outside the tool.
It is not about which tool has the most features; it is about which tool best meets the firm’s current workflow, helps eliminate unnecessary handoffs, maintains proper controls, and makes the review process more convenient for both staff and reviewers.
Some considerations include:
- How many times do staff members have to input the same client data?
- How many manual handoffs are necessary to fulfill the request-response-review-documentation process?
- Is the tool able to connect with the firm’s current engagement and document management systems?
- Are partners able to see the status of the engagement without having to look across several dashboards?
- Is there a consistent and traceable record of requests, responses, evidence, and related documentation within the system?
- How much of the work is performed manually in spreadsheets, email, and other systems?
As always, cost is relevant, but it is not the only one. Even though the cost may be low, a lot of costs will be added in the process of transferring the information from one system to another. At the same time, it could be very disruptive to switch the core audit management system if the problem is a disconnected specialized workflow.
It all comes down to the following question ā how much time does the firm’s team have to spend outside the system to perform certain actions?
Where AuditConfirm fits
Reducing the number of audit tools used in a CPA firm’s audit stack doesn’t always need to involve finding a single audit tool to replace a firm’s existing audit platform.
It’s about the disconnected audit evidence workflows ā in this case, the collection, control, and documentation of audit confirmations and external financial evidence.
AuditConfirm integrates confirmations, direct-source financial evidence, bank statements, request management, and documentation in one connected workflow.
Rather than using different tools to make a confirmation request in one system, track its status in a different one, and then move the generated evidence into yet another section of the engagement file, a lot of these tasks can be handled in one system.
AuditConfirm is meant to complement your CPA firm’s existing technology, rather than replace it, and makes managing audit confirmation and other evidence workflows easier and faster.
So rather than asking yourself whether there is an all-in-one audit platform that can replace your entire audit stack, it would make more sense to ask which disconnected workflows create the most problems in your engagements and how they can be better integrated.
AuditConfirm is the solution to one such problem.
If you are looking for audit software for CPA firms that can help streamline your evidence-gathering processes without requiring you to abandon your current audit stack, AuditConfirm is a good option to consider.
It will help you manage the important aspects of your audits more effectively by connecting your workflows.
FAQs
Audit software for CPA firms is technology designed to support audit workflows, including evidence collection, confirmations, workpapers, engagement management, and review. Different platforms cover different parts of the audit process, so firms should evaluate how well their tools work together.
Switching to a single audit platform can reduce manual handoffs between systems, keeping client information, evidence, and workflow status more connected. However, firms do not always need to replace their entire audit stack. Consolidating disconnected specialized workflows can also reduce tool sprawl.
An audit management platform can support broader engagement activities, potentially from planning through fieldwork and sign-off. A confirmation tool focuses specifically on obtaining and managing confirmation evidence. Firms should choose the approach that fits their existing technology stack and workflow.
The best audit platform for accounting firms is not necessarily the one with the longest feature list. Firms should consider workflow coverage, integrations, security, audit trails, ease of use, regulatory requirements, and the number of manual handoffs the platform eliminates.
Reducing the number of disconnected workflows can simplify onboarding and make processes easier for staff to learn. The benefit comes from having fewer interfaces, handoffs, and separate processes to manageānot simply from having fewer software licenses.