The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) updated its standard-setting, research and rulemaking agendas to reflect recently completed projects on modernizing the PCAOB's older standards and rules, Accounting Today reported. 

“As part of establishing and maintaining PCAOB standards, the PCAOB considers current and emerging audit issues and determines the need for engaging in standard-setting or conducting research on standards related issues,” the PCAOB stated. “The standard-setting agenda is primarily focused on enhancing investor protection by prioritizing the areas where improvements to PCAOB standards could have the most significant impact on audit quality and the public interest.”

Since 2022, the PCAOB noted that it has completed four standard-setting projects and issued proposals on six more standard-setting and rulemaking projects. On May 13, the PCAOB completed two of its projects, approving standards on quality control and the general responsibilities of the auditing in conducting an audit, which still have to be approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The PCAOB has added two projects to its short-term standard-setting agenda: Inventory, which moved over from the mid-term standard-setting agenda, and Other Reporting, a new project on the short-term agenda, Accounting Today reported

Another new project, on internal audit, has now been added to the mid-term agenda. This project would update one of its older standards, AS 2605, Consideration of the Internal Audit Function, in connection with the Interim Standards project to reflect changes in the auditing and reporting environment.

The PCAOB also updated the anticipated timeline for one project, the Attestation Standards Update, which is now slated for 2025, and it has now removed the project on Follow-On Disciplinary Proceedings from its agenda. Accounting Today noted that the removal of that project is surprising in light of the tougher stance that the both the PCAOB and the SEC have taken recently with audit firms.

The PCAOB has been in the process of updating many of the older standards that it inherited from the AICPA after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 led to the establishment of the PCAOB in 2003. When SEC chairman Gary Gensler appointed Erica Williams as PCAOB chair in 2022,  he encouraged her to spearhead this effort, Accounting Today previously reported.