Piers here (again).
You can’t see me, but I’m holding up my hand and solemnly swearing that I won’t mention Christiaan’s award every week. But I’m going to shout about it one more time.
In case you’ve been living on a desert island without Wi-Fi, you’ll know that our co-founder Christiann Coetzee was crowned the overall winner of the 2024 SAICA Top35under35 award for all of South Africa at the Top 35 Under 35s.
We haven’t been so proud since we balanced the books at our first audit.
Christiaan, you're an absolute legend, and while this win is yours, it’s also a win for auditors everywhere, proving our industry is not stuck in the past.
Speaking of the past, do you ever stop and think how far we’ve come?
Let’s do that right now. Let’s talk about old-school auditing and the progress we’ve made as an industry. I mean seriously, read this and tell me you aren’t thanking your lucky stars on a daily basis that you’re auditing in 2024 and not 1984.
Back in the day we wrote things on paper with a pencil. We added up with calculators that had a motor in them (I know right?). Automation meant getting someone else to do it for you.
Today we’re spoiled. Thanks to laptops loaded with Excel (and The Audit Toolbar 😉), auditors can now calculate faster than green grass through a goose.
Thirty years ago, storage meant rows of filing cabinets filled with reams of paper. An audit was a paper file. Lose one sheet? Congratulations, you just failed your audit.
Now it’s all stored in The Cloud and everything you need is just a Wi-Fi code away, anywhere on Planet Earth.
If I wanted to speak to you in the 1980s, I had to go to the phone on my desk, and keep my fingers crossed you were by the phone on your desk. “Quick turnaround” meant putting a first-class stamp on it.
In 2024 everything is immediate. Instant emails, mobile phones, always-on Slack channels, and audit teams syncing in real time across time zones. Need a lie down?
Who remembers a team of auditors spending days at the client’s office, manually combing through piles of paper, and all going to DEFCON 5 when someone spilled a cup of coffee on everything?
Today it’s all remote. We can share digital documents and discuss them from our sunbed. And in the background, The Audit Toolbar is automating the grunt work and giving us back hours of time.
There was a time when typos meant redoing hours of work. We got through more Tippex than coffee.
Today you just fire up The Audit Toolbar and ask for real-time error checks and automated validations, saving you hours of time and a big Tippex bill.
We’ve come a long way, but we’re not done yet. With tools like The Audit Toolbar, we’re not just keeping up with the times, we’re playing our part in shaping the future.
So once more here’s to Christiaan, to the future of auditing, and to leaving the 1980s where it belongs. Firmly in the past.
Until next week when Christiaan will be back
Piers
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Enhance your Excel with this powerful add-on, designed to make your audit work faster and more efficient.
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