How to check whoever signs your AFS is qualified to do it

An unqualified person signing your annual financial statements is a liability you won't see until the revenue authorities, your bank or a potential buyer questions your credibility. Most small business owners assume whoever they hired to prepare their AFS must be qualified to sign them off. They often aren't.

Your statements need two things: a preparer (who builds them) and a signatory (who certifies them). These are not always the same person, and more importantly, not everyone with an accounting qualification can legally sign off on a set of financial statements. Spotting the gap between "my accountant did my books" and "my accountant is registered to compile statements" is your first line of defence against trouble.

The oversight that costs you credibility

You receive your AFS back. They look professional. Numbers are in place. Your accountant has signed them. You submit them to SARS, your bank or a prospective investor, and the question comes back: is this person registered with the SAICPA (South African Institute of Chartered Professional Accountants) or SAIPA (South African Institute of Professional Accountants)?

If the answer is no—or worse, if you don't know—your entire set of statements now carries doubt. SARS doesn't reject unregistered signatures outright on small compilations, but banks increasingly ask, and any third party with a duty of care (a funder, a buyer, an auditor reviewing your prior year) will flag it. You've now got statements that look legitimate but lack the verification stamp that buyers and lenders expect. Resubmitting them with a proper signature takes time and cost you didn't budget for. Some small companies have had loan applications delayed or requests denied because the AFS signatory wasn't registered.

How to check before you hire

Ask your accountant directly: "Are you registered with SAICPA or SAIPA?" If they hedge, go quiet or say "we're working on it," walk. There's no grey area here. You can verify the registration yourself. Both bodies maintain public registers on their websites. Enter the person's name and confirm they have active status. If they're registered, they'll also have a visible acronym like CA(SA) or CPA(SA) after their name. If you see only "accounting" or "bookkeeper" or "tax consultant" without a professional designation, they may not be eligible to sign compiled statements.

Ask also what type of engagement they're offering. Are they preparing your statements under the compilation framework (permitted for smaller or non-complex entities) or under some other arrangement? A compilation engagement has specific rules about who can sign. Not every qualified accountant takes on compilation work; some only do bookkeeping or tax returns. Make sure your provider is set up to deliver what you need and is entitled to sign it.

The sneaky variant: outsourced preppers

Some practices use junior staff or external preparers to do the work, then a partner signs. That's fine—it happens in every firm. But some accountants sign off on work they've barely reviewed, or they sign as a favour to a colleague who isn't registered. Occasionally an unregistered person prepares the statements and an accountant signs without doing proper verification, which is fraud. Check that whoever is signing has actually supervised or reviewed the work. A one-liner email from your accountant saying "I've reviewed these and they're correct" is not the same as a proper compilation engagement with a letter of engagement and a clear scope.

Why this matters to your next step

If you're hiring a new provider to compile your AFS, make registration a non-negotiable question, asked and verified before engagement. If you're already working with someone and haven't checked, do it now—ring them, ask them to confirm their registration and provide the details. If they're not registered and you've already signed statements, that's not a crisis, but don't repeat it. When you file future statements, they need to carry a registered signature.

Finding an accountant qualified to sign off on your statements means checking their credentials before you hand over your books. Strove's verified providers in this category have already been checked against their professional registrations, which saves you the back-and-forth and the risk of ending up with statements nobody will trust.