QCM Review Results

Guidance on performing and reporting on quality control material (QCM) reviews was eliminated from peer review guidance. QCM reviews that commenced prior to the effective date of the clarified peer review standards will be the last QCM reviews accepted and made available via this webpage. For more information on how to evaluate QCM in peer reviews under the clarified peer review standards, including use of the results of examinations performed under the SSAEs and other resources and means, see the May 2022 Reviewers Alert.

The superseded peer review guidance described:

• QCM as materials that are suitable for adoption by a firm as an integral part of that firm’s system of quality control. Such materials provide guidance to assist firms in performing and reporting in conformity with professional standards. They may include (but are not limited to) engagement aids, including accounting and auditing manuals, checklists, questionnaires, work programs, computer-aided accounting and auditing tools, and similar materials intended for use by accounting and auditing engagement teams.
• A QCM Review as a study and appraisal by an independent evaluator, known as a QCM reviewer, of an organization’s (hereinafter referred to as provider) system of quality control to develop and maintain the QCM, and the actual materials that result from that system. The system represents the provider’s policies and procedures that the provider has designed, and is expected to follow, when developing and maintaining the materials. The QCM reviewer has two objectives: 1) determining whether the system is appropriately designed and whether the organization is complying with its system in order to produce reliable aids, and 2) determining whether specific QCM that are listed in the report or in an attachment to the report are reliable aids. Users of the materials, primarily CPA firms and their peer reviewers, are interested in this type of review to assess whether they can place some degree of reliance on the design of the materials.

The superseded peer review guidance required that providers allow the AICPA and National PRC to disclose certain QCM review information. Therefore, the QCM review reports and related acceptance letters (documents) for QCM reviews with effective dates in the last three years, that commenced prior to the effective date of the clarified peer review standards, are available via this webpage. However, the documents will only be available through June 2023. Peer reviewers should encourage their peer review clients to obtain the results of examinations performed under the SSAEs on QCM, when available, directly from their QCM provider if they do not already do so.