Audit trainees: ICAN registration and training records
Why a Nigerian audit firm must register its audit trainees with ICAN, and the records that back a managing partner's attestation of their training.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in Nigeria
Three years from now, someone who joined your firm this month as a graduate trainee may apply to ICAN for a practice licence. When that happens, a link will arrive in the managing partner's inbox asking for an attestation of the applicant's training. The managing partner will need to say, with confidence, that the person trained in the firm for the period ICAN requires, and that the firm was properly registered while they did.
If the trainee was never registered, or nobody can show what they worked on, that attestation becomes uncomfortable. The work of getting it right happens now, on the day the trainee starts.
Registering every trainee with ICAN
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria is direct about this: all audit trainees, both Qualified Audit Trainees and Student Audit Trainees, must be registered with the Institute. Its Professional Practice Department assists members through the registration process.
Both categories matter. A firm may be careful to register qualified staff who are working towards a licence and forget the students who are still writing examinations. ICAN's statement covers both, and a firm that registers one group and not the other is out of step with it.
Practical steps when a trainee joins:
- Establish which category they fall into and register them accordingly, with the Professional Practice Department's help if needed.
- Keep the registration confirmation on the trainee's personnel file.
- Note the registration date: it may matter more than the employment start date when the training period is later counted.
- Diarise a check each year that every trainee in the firm appears as registered.
The training period behind a future licence
ICAN's conditions for a fresh practice licence explain why registration is not a formality. An applicant must have at least 36 months of full-time and continuous registered practice attachment in an ICAN-registered audit firm.
Three words in that condition deserve attention. "Full-time" and "continuous" mean a trainee who drifts between part-time arrangements, or leaves and returns, may struggle to show the period cleanly. "Registered" means time spent before the attachment was registered may not count. ICAN publishes these requirements in its conditions and procedures for a fresh practice licence application, which also sets out how the application moves through the District Society and the sponsoring firm.
The district matters too. The applicant must be a financial member of the Institute and of a District Society that confirms the applicant trained, or is training or working, in an ICAN-registered audit firm in that district. A firm that knows which District Society its trainees belong to can help them stay in good standing there.
What the managing partner is attesting to
The application is made on ICAN's members' portal. A district clearance link goes to the District Chairman, and an attestation link goes to the managing partner, as sponsor, of the firm where the applicant received the 36 months of practical training.
That puts the firm's own records at the centre. A managing partner asked to attest years after the fact should not rely on memory. They should be able to open a file showing when the trainee was registered, when they worked, on what kind of engagements, and under whose supervision. The firm's own route to a practice licence is covered separately in obtaining an ICAN practice licence.
Adding trainees to the firm's systems properly
Records begin with how a trainee is set up. In Achekam, a firm administrator invites colleagues by an e-mailed link, gives each one a role, and can suspend, reactivate or remove them later. The subscription's seat limit is checked on every addition, so plan seats before the intake arrives rather than on the trainees' first morning.
Give each trainee a role that matches the work they will do, not a senior role for convenience. When a trainee leaves, suspend or remove them rather than letting the account sit. That history of who was given access, when, and in what role, becomes part of the evidence that the person was working in the firm during the period.
Timesheets as a record of work done
The strongest evidence of a training attachment is the work itself. Timesheets that record what each trainee did, week by week, provide it.
In Achekam, staff submit weekly timesheets, and a manager, partner or administrator approves them or returns them for correction. By default, time becomes billable only after someone other than the person who recorded it has approved it. For a training record, that approval step matters as much as the time itself: each week is reviewed by a supervisor who can later confirm it.
Time Reports then offers ten reports for a chosen period, including staff time and engagement time, exportable as CSV, XLSX or PDF. Run a staff time report for each trainee at the end of each year and keep it with their personnel file. Utilisation in those reports is never based on keyboard or mouse activity, so it reflects recorded and approved time, not surveillance.
A useful annual pack for each trainee contains:
- The ICAN registration confirmation and its date.
- The year's staff time report, exported from Time Reports.
- A list of engagements worked on, by type: audits, reviews, tax, advisory.
- Any breaks in the attachment, with dates and reasons.
- The supervisor's short written assessment.
An annual trainee review
Once a year, ideally before ICAN's practice monitoring cycle comes around, the partner responsible for training should sit with the list of trainees and ask four questions. Is every trainee registered in the right category? Is each one's attachment still full-time and continuous? Do the timesheets show a fair spread of audit work, rather than months of a single task? And would the managing partner be comfortable attesting to this person's training today, on the evidence in the file?
Where an answer is no, fix it while the trainee is still with the firm. The same Professional Practice Department that handles trainee registration also monitors practice firms, as explained in preparing for ICAN's practice monitoring.
Pull a list of every trainee currently in the firm, and check each one against ICAN's registration this week. Register anyone missing, then make the annual pack a standing task for the partner who supervises training.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
