Using the ISA 315 first-time implementation guide
How to use the IAASB's ISA 315 First-Time Implementation Guide to train staff and test risk templates, while keeping the standard as the authority.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
When ISA 315 (Revised 2019) arrived, many firms reached for whatever summary was quickest to read. The IAASB's own First-Time Implementation Guide was the obvious choice: written by the board that issued the standard and focused on what changed. It is a good document. It is also, by the IAASB's own account, not the standard, and a firm that builds its risk assessment templates from the guide alone can end up with gaps that an inspector reading the standard will find.
This article covers what the guide is for, how to use it to train people and test templates, and why the standard's own text has to stay the reference point.
What the guide covers
The IAASB describes its ISA 315 First-Time Implementation Guide as focusing on the more substantial changes made to ISA 315 (Revised 2019), and as meant to help stakeholders understand and apply the revised standard as intended. The IAASB's page for the implementation guide carries the document and explains how it relates to the standard.
The standard it supports, ISA 315 (Revised 2019), Identifying and Assessing the Risks of Material Misstatement, sets out clarified and enhanced requirements, and enhanced application material, to support the auditor's risk assessment process. The IAASB made it effective for audits of financial statements for periods beginning on or after 15 December 2021. Several year-ends have passed since then, so for most firms the live question is no longer first-time adoption. It is whether the templates in use today still match what the standard says.
Only the standard is authoritative
The IAASB is explicit on two points. The guide does not amend or override ISA 315 (Revised 2019), whose text alone is authoritative. And reading the guide is not a substitute for reading the standard.
Those are not throwaway disclaimers. They have practical consequences:
- A requirement the guide does not discuss is still a requirement.
- An example in the guide illustrates one approach; it sets neither a minimum nor a ceiling.
- Where the guide's wording and the standard's seem to differ, the standard governs.
- A template whose stated basis is "the implementation guide", rather than paragraphs of the standard, rests on an unclear foundation.
Using the guide to train staff and test templates
The guide's strength is explanation. It is written to help people see why requirements are framed the way they are, which is exactly what a training session needs. One workable format:
- Read the relevant section of the standard together first, requirement and application material.
- Use the guide's explanation and examples to discuss what the requirement is aiming at.
- Take a completed risk assessment from a real file, with the client's identity removed, and ask whether it meets the requirement as the standard words it.
- Note every place where the template made it easy to skip something.
The fourth step turns training into template testing. Staff who have just read a requirement are well placed to notice where a template asks the wrong question, or fails to ask the right one.
Checking the risk assessment templates
A formal review of the firm's templates works best paragraph by paragraph:
- List each requirement in ISA 315 (Revised 2019) and map it to the template field, section or step that addresses it.
- Mark requirements with no home in the template, and fields that no longer correspond to anything in the standard.
- Check that the template captures reasoning, not only a rating. A high, medium or low box with no explanation does not show how the assessment was reached.
- Check the link forward to responses. The IAASB states that the revised risk assessment requirements are intended to support more focused responses under ISA 330. A template that assesses risks but leaves the planned responses unconnected throws that benefit away.
Record the review itself: who carried it out, against which text, and what changed as a result. The assessment on an individual engagement is covered in risk assessment under ISA 315.
Publishing a revised template in Achekam
In Achekam, a firm's partners keep the firm's own methodology and working-paper templates beside Achekam's platform methodology, which they can adopt, and a template version is published only by someone other than its author. For a risk assessment template rewritten after a review like the one above, that rule builds in a second reader: the person who redrafted it cannot also release it to every engagement.
Achekam also ships working-paper template packs written in its own words, covering audit areas, ISA for LCE, review and related-services engagements, ISAE 3000 and more, for a firm to adopt and approve. The catalogue is marked as unapproved platform content until the firm adopts it. Treat those packs as you would any outside material: a starting point that someone in the firm checks against the standard before adoption, not a replacement for that check. Firm methodology and templates describes the wider library.
Older material that can mislead
Risk assessment guidance written before the revision lingers in firm libraries: old training slides, inherited checklists, textbooks and practice guides. IFAC, for example, states that the fourth edition of its guide to using the ISAs in audits of small and medium-sized entities pre-dates ISA 315 (Revised 2019). Much of that guide remains useful, but its risk assessment content needs checking against the current standard before anyone relies on it.
A simple piece of housekeeping helps. Tag every risk assessment resource in the firm's library with the version of ISA 315 it was written for, and either retire or annotate anything that pre-dates the revision.
The implementation guide is the best companion to ISA 315 (Revised 2019) that the IAASB has given practitioners. Keep it in that role: open beside the standard, never in place of it.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
