A workshop on audit quality control, organized by the Bulgarian Institute of Certified Public Accountants with lecturers from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales was held from 30^th November to 4^th December 2009 in Sofia. The training was attended by quality reviewers from the ICPA and twenty inspectors and experts from CPOSA.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) was founded in 1880 and is the largest accountancy profession body in Europe. To day it outnumbers 134 000 members and 16 000 students from 140 countries. It has a staff of 600 people in six offices. The employees, performing audit quality control reviews, are certified public accountants that cease practising audit profession after being employed by the ICAEW.

The workshop lecturers were as follows: Mr Paul Simkins, Director of Quality Assurance Department at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, Dr Martin Manuzi, Director of the European Office and Head of European Affairs, and from the Quality Assurance Department - Mr John O’Donnel, Senior Reviewer Professional Standards and Mr Nick Reynolds, Reviewer Professional Standards. The presentations covered introduction to ICAEW’s strategy, structure and management; regulations relating to UK audit work; requirements of Directive 2006/43/EC on statutory audits of annual accounts and consolidated accounts and Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2008 on external quality assurance for statutory auditors and audit firms auditing public interest entities.

ICAEW’ representatives introduced their experience and the recent developments in the field of quality control review planning and organization, pre-visit, visit and follow-up documentation, etc.

Review planning is based on the risk-assessment approach, focused on the preliminary preparation of the review, aiming at the estimation of the number and the qualification of the reviewers to be assigned. Before applying this approach a large number of reviews were performed that were considered burdening by the smaller firms. Gradually, they switched to one-day visits in the small firms and a risk-based approach for a review selection. The process of visit organization is still an issue of permanent review and development.

Working in groups was very useful for the participants as regards of discussions of case studies taken from the activity and practice of the Quality Assurance Department of ICAEW. The participants were given the opportunity to deal with real data and to assess audit work on the ground of the information provided.