For Vietnam Association of Certified Public Accountants Vacpa

support from foreign and international experts and organizations. The team of accountants and auditors in Vietnam is also growing in quantity and quality. Vietnam has also become a member of many international federations and associations such as the International Federation of Accountants IFAC, the ASEAN Federation of Accountants AFA, etc. Up to now, the legal framework for accounting and auditing services has been gradually developed and perfected, as shown through the following legal documents:

- Decision No. 480/2013/QD-TTg dated March 18, 2013 of the Prime Minister approving the accounting and auditing strategy to 2020, with a vision to 2030

- Accounting Law 2015

- Tax Administration Law 2006

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- The Law on Independent Auditing 2011, the highest legal document regulating independent auditing activities in Vietnam, effective since 2012, has created a legal framework for the auditing services market.

In addition, the Ministry of Finance is currently translating the set of international financial reporting standards with the aim of helping Vietnamese enterprises and accounting firms gain more complete knowledge and understanding of this set of standards and achieve the basic goal that by 2025-2030, listed companies on the Vietnamese stock exchange will apply IFRS and encourage other enterprises to apply it. However, in the long term, the State needs to take actions to further strengthen the accounting and auditing management apparatus such as: researching the establishment of the Vietnam Accounting Council, the Vietnam Accounting Standards Committee, the Vietnam Auditing Standards Committee,... with experts with in-depth knowledge and experience, truly independent and specialized in translating/drafting related standards combined with a team of experienced experts and researchers in the field to complete the construction and development of a system of accounting and auditing standards approaching international standards.

The legal framework for developing financial statement auditing services has been reviewed in several studies and specific proposals have been made. However, these reviews are not many and have not really had a strong impact on the market, most of which often refer to the target audience of businesses - buyers and have not really promoted the development of suppliers. Accounting and auditing services are areas where the legal framework needs to be reviewed to have strong impacts and promote the development of the market.

One of the research results of LATS shows that the role of the audit staff capacity of the audit firm and the professionalism of the audit firm/auditor have an impact on the audit time. These factors belong to the audit firm in organizing, managing and

capacity of auditing firms. However, there should also be sanctions from the state to create motivations and requirements to help auditing firms truly develop sustainably, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of depth of expertise and professionalism. In addition, many studies have shown that audit fees are one of the important factors affecting auditing services. In particular, the context of the Vietnamese auditing market with fierce competition has a large difference in auditing fees between firms. Many small or newly established auditing firms offer very low fees, forcing many auditing firms to lower their fees to a low level that does not ensure quality, including many foreign auditing firms that also have to lower their fees in the Vietnamese market. Specifically, when analyzing the revenue and number of customers in the summary document of audit results compiled by VACPA, if the revenue of auditing companies is divided by the number of customers to calculate the average revenue per customer, it shows that there is a huge difference between auditing firms, even some companies have an average revenue of less than 20 million VND. In particular, these firms have a fairly large number of customers. In 2018, this firm had over 130 customers but the revenue was less than 1.7 billion and only had 13 professional staff and 5 practicing auditors and many auditing firms have a similar situation. With low fees, of which audit time is one of the factors, the basis for forming the audit fee will not be able to ensure enough time to perform audits with high quality. Companies like this show that if we calculate the number of clients and the number of auditors and practicing auditors, we will see a huge overload of audit time for employees. This leads to worrying questions about the quality of audit services. Therefore, management agencies need to issue a legal framework related to audit fees, specifically audit fees, conduct audit bidding and strictly manage the process of selecting audit fees in a transparent and public manner to limit unfair competition in auditing. And above all, competent state agencies need to have strict regulations on the conditions and regulations on the number of clients allowed to be compared with the correlation of the audit staff capacity of the auditing firm.

At the same time, the Ministry of Finance continues to take the lead and directly implement accounting and auditing development strategies in all aspects. Firstly, specify the content of the strategy in each stage and continue to be the focal point for mobilizing and gathering forces to participate in research, drafting legal documents, accounting and auditing standards, and accounting regimes in the direction of approaching and harmonizing with international practices. Secondly, more strongly implement the project to apply and announce the application of international financial reporting standards IFRS and applicable guidelines, and carry out the updating of the Vietnamese accounting standards system.

Vietnam in accordance with international practices. Third, closely monitor, inspect, and implement accounting policies and regimes and promptly detect difficulties and problems of units for timely resolution. Fourth, implement professional management and support enterprises providing accounting and auditing services to develop. Fifth, assist professional organizations, Chief Accountants Clubs and preside over coordination relationships in the process of implementing activities; strengthen coordination with professional associations, domestic and international organizations and take advantage of technical support resources, experience of experts in research activities and learning from experiences of countries around the world, training high-quality human resources in both quantity and quality.

To ensure the transparency and honesty of published financial information, especially for public companies, competent state agencies need to develop a process for inspecting and monitoring the implementation of accounting standards and regimes to have consistent inspection and monitoring activities. At the same time, there must be sanctions that are sufficiently deterrent and strictly punish fraudulent acts in the preparation and publication of financial statements of public interest entities with the purpose of manipulating the market, manipulating profits, etc., with the aim of deceiving investors and creditors. For auditing firms/auditing firms with evidence of professional ethics violations such as carelessness, violation of independence, etc., or failure to comply with the auditing process according to the guiding standards, etc., causing damage to users, there must also be stricter sanctions to protect the position, trust and reputation of the profession.

Auditing with the role of providing reasonable assurance on the reliability of financial information, helping users to increase their confidence in published financial statements to contribute to making useful economic decisions, therefore, auditing services need to be performed with high quality. However, in recent years, confidence in the quality of this service not only in Vietnam but also in the world has been shaken quite a lot. The audit failure of many auditing firms stems from one of the reasons as stated in the reality in chapter 4, that the audit quality is still a questionable question, the cause of which is largely due to the overload of many enterprises, due to the capacity of human resources and lack of experience of auditors,... when the number of working hours is not enough to be able to perform the audit process according to the standards. In many developed countries in the world and in the region, auditing quality is an issue of interest to research and implement. In Vietnam, state agencies have recognized the importance of auditing quality, however, implementing and controlling auditing firms in providing quality services is still a difficulty. In order to implement the strategy of further expanding the scope of businesses that must perform auditing,

Annual financial statements, state agencies also need to have strategies to control auditing firms providing quality services. Through analyzing the current situation, the current workload overload for auditors and the audit time required to perform an audit contract cannot be guaranteed and is one of the causes of careless errors in auditing or incomplete procedures, incomplete records, ... leading to audit conclusions that are not really appropriate. Therefore, above all, strengthening the quality of auditing in Vietnam from the management agencies and auditing companies is a very important task, in substance, not just a formality. To strengthen this, management agencies such as the Ministry of Finance need to have measures that are both mandatory and encouraging so that auditing firms are self-aware in complying with the requirements to ensure quality auditing. And when the KSCL audit is carried out seriously, the results of the audit service will create trust from users.

Solutions to improve audit quality can be implemented in the entire audit field, for each audit and at many levels, combining many different methods. For management agencies, it is necessary to complete the regulations on auditing quality of audit activities; have regulations and sanctions to strictly handle violations of the law in the process of providing audit services, violations of professional ethics, these regulations need to be clear, with strict penalties, preventive and deterrent; and as presented above, completing the system of accounting and auditing standards and standards on controlling and evaluating audit quality is a necessary condition for units to apply.

Because the management agencies will be the leading units and manage the accounting and auditing professions, which are professions that require high expertise and practical knowledge, the personnel use and recruitment policies of agencies such as the Ministry of Finance need to have appropriate mechanisms to attract experts with experience in the field and the ability to perform the tasks of managing, supervising the practice of accounting, auditing, and issuing standards.

Ministries, sectors and localities need to be responsible for coordinating with the Organizing Committee to organize the implementation of the strategy, and participating in implementation instructions appropriate to the characteristics of their sectors, fields and localities.

5.3.2 For Vietnam Association of Certified Public Accountants VACPA

As analyzed above, in reality, there are still many problems with the operation of KTDL in Vietnam. The following are some related recommendations.

Professional Association activities of the Thesis from empirical analysis and current status of professional activities:

5.3.2.1 Enhance the role and position of the VACPA Professional Association

Auditing and other assurance services are professional professions, requiring practitioners to have full professional knowledge, skills and professional ethics. The products of this profession have a great influence on users, so they need professional associations to act as managers, or to manage and supervise professional activities on behalf of the government. In developed countries such as the US, UK, Japan, Singapore, Australia, etc., the role of professional associations is very large and their network of members is very large and has a strong voice. However, although VACPA has developed a lot and its voice has increased, it still has not fully ensured the inherent role of the Association. Therefore, in order to help the auditing activities in Vietnam develop and further affirm its position, the State and the Government, specifically the Ministry of Finance, should give more roles, responsibilities and voices to VACPA. In addition, Vietnam's professional associations of accountants and auditors should further promote the expansion of international relations and cooperation and enhance the position and role of the accounting and auditing industry in Vietnam. Specifically, VACPA can participate as an official member of forums on accounting and auditing management in the world and the region such as the International Forum of Accounting and Auditing Regulatory Agencies (IFIAR) and study more models of developed countries to apply in Vietnam in terms of building accounting and auditing techniques; developing accounting and auditing services; training - examination - certification models.

In particular, the Vietnamese CPA certification exam needs to be further improved in terms of content and testing methods to be updated with the development trends of international professional associations, and to organize more exams during the year to facilitate flexible and proactive participation in the exam for candidates, thereby building a larger number of auditing resources for the market. Regarding the training program for the Vietnamese CPA certification, it needs to be modernized and include more practical situations. With the strategy of applying IFRS standards in Vietnam, the exam content of the Vietnamese CPA program needs to include content related to international accounting standards, etc. With the certification exam programs of professional associations around the world, professional ethics is highly appreciated and occupies the content of many subjects and exams (such as accounting, auditing levels, etc.) and is also a separate exam. Accountants who want to obtain a certified public accountant certificate are required to have a firm grasp of professional ethics, situations that can cause accountants to violate ethical standards and preventive measures, etc. Thereby improving the quality and value of Vietnam's CPA certificate compared to other countries.

with countries in the region and the world.

In the current conditions, there are many long-standing and prestigious professional organizations in the world that have representative offices in Vietnam such as ICAEW, ACCA, CPA Australia, CIMA,... with commitments and strategies to support the development of the accounting and auditing profession in Vietnam as at present, Vietnamese professional associations need to have more strategies and action plans to enlist the help of international professional organizations in accounting, auditing and non-governmental organizations in supporting projects to deploy research and implement innovation in professional management models as well as more professional accounting and auditing techniques.

5.3.2.2 Necessary need to develop the Audit Quality Index

As analyzed in the previous chapters, the development of a set of audit quality indicators in Vietnam is necessary. Because audit quality must be the top priority for auditing activities and providing assurance services. Although audit quality has been mentioned a lot, it is still a difficult scale for businesses as well as the Association. Therefore, if the set of audit quality indicators is built, it will help many interested parties have a clearer quantitative scale for evaluation. In this set of indicators, the audit time index is also an important factor that needs to be included to evaluate the audit efforts of the company and auditors. This number of hours also needs to be detailed for each audit stage and each level of expertise in the audit team.

5.3.2.3 Design and deploy support toolkits for Vietnamese auditing firms

The application of information technology and many other technologies that are being talked about a lot today such as Big Data, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) ... in the operations of enterprises. Therefore, auditing methods are also changing and developing. Many large auditing firms in the world have solutions to be able to apply technology from Big Data to data analysis to help the process of analyzing and predicting trends, finding differences and the process of selecting samples of auditors to reduce time, while significantly increasing the number of selected samples to be tested. Many international auditing firms with strong resources have invested in advanced technologies to help the auditing process to be carried out faster and branches or members in Vietnam will "benefit" from the elaborate and costly investment from global firms. However, this is almost impossible for Vietnamese auditing firms with small capital and resources. Because of the characteristics and strict regulations in the establishment and requirements for capital contributing members in accounting enterprises,

To ensure independence and objectivity, it is very difficult to obtain strong investment and financial resources for Vietnamese auditing firms. Therefore, Vietnamese small and medium-sized auditing firms need support from professional associations and management agencies to help the auditing process be carried out as effectively as possible.

Currently, VACPA has built a set of sample audit documents and an Ebook system as a reference library for auditors and practitioners. These tools are really useful and help Vietnamese enterprises to be more convenient in the working process. With such achievements, the thesis also boldly recommends that VACPA should have mobilization activities or further development projects to build technology support packages,... for Vietnamese auditing enterprises to perform auditing services more effectively.

5.3.3 For auditing firms and auditors

Auditing is a special profession, requiring enterprises to build trust with society and especially with customers and users of their products. Pursuing the goal of audit quality is always a requirement but also a right of auditing companies to build their trust and reputation in the market. Therefore, auditing companies need to make constant efforts to enhance their reputation and trust in the profession. Building a brand and reputation is very difficult, but maintaining and preserving it is even more difficult, so at each level of staff, auditors in auditing companies need to always adhere to the highest standards of professional ethics, always have behaviors appropriate to the profession and always update knowledge, expertise, skills and technology to keep up with the development trends of the times.

Auditing companies and their leaders need to build a vision, mission, development strategy and goals for the firm to develop long-term and sustainably in the market. With a long-term development strategy, leaders will reduce the pressure on the immediate profits of the unit to maintain the purity of the profession, build trust and reputation of the firm in the market and in the eyes of users of audit reports. On that basis, auditing companies will build for themselves core values to carry out their mission and strategy.

Regarding the results of the Thesis, many experts agree and support that audit time is a content that plays an important role in audit management. To enhance the reputation of the profession, there is no better way than to increasingly ensure and improve audit quality at the best level. To do this, determining the number of audit hours for each audit must be

strictly implemented right before signing the contract. In particular, KTV needs to pay attention to the following issues:

First, the auditor needs to pay attention to the purpose of the audit, find out the characteristics of the client's operating structure and scope of operations, whether it is complex or simple. If it is too complicated and contains many risks, in many cases the auditor calculates the time that can be performed with a specific audit fee, then whether the implementation is economically effective while still ensuring quality or not. This research is very important, because it helps the auditor to anticipate unusual events in the future so that he can calculate optimal options for the audit. Paying attention to the purpose and scope of the audit contract is also a content that needs to be done when learning about the client. This affects what the auditor's product is. And if the characteristics of the above content of the client are too complicated, the auditor needs to consider and calculate the appropriate number of audit hours or decide whether to agree to sign the audit contract or not.

Second, the auditor needs to consider the characteristics of the client's financial statement preparation process, the items that make up the client's financial statement, etc., and the standards for preparing financial statements (Vietnamese accounting standards or international financial statement preparation standards, etc.). The simpler the process, the shorter the audit time.

Third, in the audit planning process, auditors need to pay close attention to the assessment of the client's internal control system to determine whether the control risk is high or low, thereby estimating and implementing the appropriate audit procedures. As analyzed above, through in-depth surveys and interviews with many senior auditors, many Vietnamese auditing firms have not really paid attention to these procedures, leading to low work efficiency.

Next, right before agreeing to audit, the auditor needs to carefully assess the risks that may lead to the unit being sued in relation to the client. In fact, there are auditing firms that have been banned from auditing listed companies and auditors that have had their licenses suspended for auditing a company that is preparing to list, but the client is a company that intentionally commits many fraudulent acts to list and push up the stock price, causing serious damage to investors. When this risk is assessed as high, the auditor needs to consider whether to accept the client or refuse to maintain the professional reputation of the company.

In addition to the factors that increase audit time, auditing firms also need to consider many factors that can shorten audit time to ensure the economic efficiency of the audit while maintaining audit quality such as recruiting qualified personnel.

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