What’s new with CCH Axcess™ Audit?

Firms have been turning to CCH Axcess™ solutions to improve audit efficiency and profitability while simultaneously driving better audit quality. By adopting cloud audit software, firms can enjoy an integrated audit approach that improves efficiency while enhancing risk assessment, leading to satisfied clients and better peer reviews.

CCH Axcess Audit was the subject of a recent Audit Talks LIVE webinar. The webinar featured Patrick Tokarski, the Director of the National Assurance Technical Group at CliftonLarsonAllen, joined by Colleen Knuff and Andrea Hearn from the Wolters Kluwer Audit Product Management team. They discussed what is new inside the CCH Axcess Audit solutions, including CCH Axcess™ Financial Prep, CCH Axcess™ Knowledge Coach, and CCH Axcess™ Engagement.

Watch the full webinar on-demand

Integrated Audit Approach drives efficiency

Most firms have some waste of professionals’ time and effort lurking in their audit processes. Having a single source of the truth is one way to eliminate some of that waste, by eliminating the need to log in and out of different audit solutions or having to touch data more than once. The CCH Axcess™ platform helps firms have a single source of the truth by making data easily accessible and flowing data through the process into other parts of your audit. The solutions within the platform are integrated, so the overall audit process requires fewer clicks. Fewer clicks contribute to an optimized digital audit process.

The Wolters Kluwer Integrated Audit Approach continues to work off of these principles to provide higher quality, more efficient audits while meeting all professional standards and AICPA peer review requirements. Our approach is designed to help firms turn efficiency into profits.

Efficiency is about clicks and keystrokes. For pretty much everything, the rules are the same. If we're doing an audit, or if we're doing a tax return, we have the same rules we follow. If I can save some clicks, I'm really adding efficiency to my engagement.

 – Patrick Tokarski, Director, National Assurance Technical Group, CLA

CCH Axcess Financial Prep

CCH Axcess Financial Prep is a cloud-based trial balance for the preparation of balances for business tax returns. Many features in Financial Prep help reduce or eliminate the steps required to import trial balances. The solution integrates with QuickBooks Online, Xero, and CCH Axcess™ Tax.

Two recent feature updates help further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the CCH Axcess Audit workflow. The Copy Engagement feature gives the ability to create a copy of an existing engagement with some flexibility in the options of what to include in your new engagement. Patrick Tokarski has observed two useful benefits of this feature for his firm. First, it allows CLA to create an audit template to be used across similar clients, for example, clients in the same industry. Second, it ensures better consistency. When a CLA professional wants to create individual engagements for each entity, they can make a copy and bring over the trial balance, many journal entries and work papers using Copy Engagement. In this way, they could be sure the data is consistent while saving a lot of time.

A second new feature, Save and Add Another Journal Entry, allows professionals to take the prior year tax groups, prepare work papers, and get adjustments lined up without having to post one and then go back out and start again. Yet again, the Save and Add functionality removes excess clicks for more streamlined efficiency.

The future of CCH Axcess Audit

The Audit Talks LIVE webinar went on to discuss more information about Financial Prep before moving on to a run-down of new enhancements in CCH Axcess Knowledge Coach. For all the details, be sure to watch the full on-demand webinar.

Additionally, the CCH Axcess Engagement Early Adopter is underway currently at a variety of firms. The combination of Financial Prep, Knowledge Coach and Engagement on the CCH Axcess platform will become the new CCH Axcess Audit. This integrated approach will deliver an end-to-end solution allowing firms to audit in the cloud.