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The Future of Financial Reporting in the Public Sector
Proposed amendments to Kenya’s Public Finance Management (PFM) Act, giving Chief Financial Officers only one month to submit their Annual Financial Statements to the Auditor General after the end of the financial year, are sending shockwaves through the public sector accounting community in Kenya, reports international auditing and financial reporting software company, Caseware Africa.
CPA Rexon Wachira, a public sector consultant at Caseware Africa’s Nairobi office, says the process of compiling and reviewing these entities’ Annual Financial Statements typically takes public sector financial professionals three months or longer, challenged by the fact that in the fourth quarter in a year, reports must be submitted in the same period as well. “There is grave concern that it may not be possible to produce Annual Financial Statements so quickly,” he says.
Stephan van der Merwe (CA) SA, Specialist in Public Sector Solutions at Caseware Africa, notes that audit opinion is typically used to measure the entity’s performance. “The better your audit opinion is, the better the assessment of your entity’s performance, which is another reason why these Annual Financial Statements can take a long time to prepare; every entity wants to be very thorough to ensure they get a good audit opinion. Now with the proposed tighter deadlines, this could pose a huge risk for entities, and therefore, introducing efficiency into the process is now more important than ever before,” he says.
While the amendment is still in the pipeline, Caseware Africa says now is the time for public sector entities to review their processes and do away with time-consuming and error-prone manual systems to ensure that their reporting is more efficient, accurate and compliant.
Caseware’s IPSAS and IFRS Financial Statement solutions enable public sector finance professionals to automate the preparation of compliant financial statements on either International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) or International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), whichever is required. This includes flexible lead sheets and a centralised document manager to organise all working paper collateral. Both these solutions simplify collaboration, consolidation and assure preparers of compliance with international standards.
Mr. van der Merwe notes: “In the East African public sector, several entities have successfully implemented either Caseware Africa’s IPSAS or IFRS Financial Statements solutions for process efficiency, data integrity and compliance. In the past, the focus among Kenya’s public sector customers was mainly on harnessing Caseware Africa to reduce manual processing, but we now see a sharp surge in interest in using our solutions to achieve compliance in terms of both international standards and reporting deadlines.”
Caseware Africa launches Trust Tax
Caseware Africa, part of the Adapt IT group, has launched a holistic, cloud-based tax return solution designed especially for trusts. Michael Mncube, Tax Product Manager at Caseware Africa, says that the new software enables tax practitioners to handle all tax administrative matters relating to trusts in one application, including the preparation, calculation, and submission of IRP6 and ITR12T tax returns directly to SARS.
“Administering trusts is complex and the tax authorities are especially rigorous in their oversight of trusts, thus further raising the stakes for administrators. Trust Tax provides practitioners with a single application that makes it possible to keep track of all trustees and beneficiaries, as well as managing all trust administration and tax-related matters,” he says.
“In the age of remote work, practitioners are enabled with greater flexibility as Trust Tax is offered via Caseware Cloud, which means it is available from any location, on any device, at any time.”
Trust Tax is also included with Caseware CloudTax, a tax management platform that provides tax practitioners with an invaluable overview of their entire client base, and corporate tax teams with a unified view of all tax return-related matters for all their taxpayers. It integrates directly with SARS e-filing.
“The cloud offers many time-saving features that will help users get more done faster. Of particular importance in Trust Tax, is the ability to collaborate directly with taxpayers in the app to assemble supporting documentation, as well as maintaining a single copy of all taxpayer records to preserve data integrity,” he says. Other important features include the ability to manage and monitor deadlines, and a full suite of checklists, questionnaires, and schedules that intelligently expand or collapse according to the complexity of the return. Trust Tax also automatically links to the latest SARS forms and calculation frameworks, so all returns are automatically compliant.
“Trust Tax will greatly help to optimise efficiency for tax practitioners in a complex area of tax administration. Like all CaseWare products, it is designed to help practitioners use their time more effectively while enhancing the service they deliver to clients. What we are especially excited about is that with the introduction of Trust Tax, practitioners can now, when combined with both Corporate Tax and Individual Tax, manage all their provisional and annual tax returns for all their clients on a single cloud platform.” Mr Mncube concludes.