Actually the current procedure is rather a legal issue: the contracted auditor has to be registered at the Court of Registration of Companies.
The process is the following:
1. Negotiation with auditor
2. Contract auditor
3. Register auditor at the Court of Registration
If I understood correctly, wealready have a contract with EY for 2015 (step 2), but E&Y is registered only until Dec 31, 2015 as an auditor - so step 3 is missing.
As EY will finalize the audit of our Annual Report only in Feb 2016, their registration at the court will be expired by then - so the extension of registration has to be filed to the Court.
I managed to reach Attila (EY).
The current issue is about as I tried to explain but they phrased it in a confusing way by using “renewal" instead of “extension" and not putting a contractual deadline to it.
So what Attila exlained and requested in more detail is as follows:
We need to extend the deadline of our current (2015) auditor contract - practically to May 31, 2016 as that is the official end of fiscal year 2015 (this is the legal deadline of filing the Annual Reports in Hungary). EY will audit our report earlier (Feb, 2016) but better be safe than modifying it again if anything happens.
This extension to May 31, 2016 should be filed to the Court of Registration in Hungary.
As I mentioned client-auditor relations have 2 layers:
1 a formal legal decision of the company to appoint auditor until a certain period of time, which is to be registered by the Court.
2 a contractual relation between client and auditor based on teh content of the contract.
These 2 layers are not fully connected: The contract covers a certain task (in this case the final audit of year 2015 for a certain amount of cash).
The legal appointment however is defining the date until when the auditor may legally act as an auditor (which can be changed anytime by owners’ decision).
=> Currently EY’s representation is until Dec 31, 2015 in our court registration papers. So if they file their final audit to the court in Feb, 2016. The court will turn it down saying their audit appointment is not valid any longer. That’s why we have to extend it.
Actually we should have appointed them until the end of _fiscal year_ of 2015 and not _calendar year_ on the first hand to avoid such confusion, but I guess B&M was too busy think in practical terms (as always).
So for the next period (2016) I suggest to sign the appointment with whoever gives the best offer as follows:
Task: audit of 2016, but the appointment valid until May 31, 2017.
I hope it clarifies it. The only question is if we want to do it with the help of B&M or shall we look around for other options...
Normally it’s B&M who files any legal documents to the Court of Registration.