[Webinar] Risk and Audit Overview – 2025/2026 Municipal Financial Year

In this practical session hosted by Business Engineering, Philip de Bruin is joined by Cornel Ebersohn - PhoenixERP Project Director - to unpack the key risk and audit issues facing municipalities in the 2025/26 financial year. Cornel's central argument is simple: if your data is credible, your controls are working, your people are accountable, and your systems provide a reliable audit trail, the audit outcome becomes a consequence of good management - not a target to chase or a crisis to manage. Five key risk areas for the 2025/26 audit: 1. Accurate data - not a year-end exercise, but a continuous daily discipline. Poor data quality is the root cause of most audit findings 2. Revenue and debt management - GRAP 104 implementation makes debtor data, billing accuracy and indigent register records more critical than ever 3. Expenditure and supply chain - UIFW expenditure is an identified emerging risk for the current year, with Circular 68 compliance and consequence management under AG scrutiny 4. Asset management - depreciation calculated post-year and asset registers not maintained continuously are creating cascading audit and budget problems 5. Governance and accountability - outdated delegations, audit committees not sitting, and the absence of consequence management are direct contributors to municipalities losing their equitable share Three practical priorities before the next audit: 1. Fix the data - especially debtor and property data feeding into GRAP 104 impairment calculations 2. Fix the controls - document them, communicate them, assign ownership, and measure whether they are working. Filed policies are not controls 3. Build accountability - every risk must have a named owner with the qualifications and authority to manage it On technology: Only 34% of auditees have effective information system controls in place. Technology must be part of the control environment - not a parallel system. Workflow, integration and a single version of the truth across billing, property, assets and expenditure are what reduce risk. If you cannot trust your data from your system, you have introduced risk by default. The closing lesson from Cornel: 57% of municipalities stuck on unqualified but not clean audits have repeat findings they are not resolving. Fix the root cause of the process failure - not just the transaction. You cannot journal your way to a clean audit.