System Reviews Performed at a Location Other Than the Reviewed Firm’s Office

If the review can reasonably be performed at the reviewed firm's office, it should be. However, under rare circumstances, it is recognized that doing so may be cost-prohibitive, extremely difficult to arrange or both. In such situations, the reviewer and reviewed firm should mutually agree on the appropriateness of an off-site system review and whether or not such an approach would be effective. The reviewer should submit a written request to the VSCPA to perform the review at another location prior to the commencement of the review. The request should include the reason(s) the review cannot reasonably be performed at the reviewed firm's location and the alternate location proposed. Requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Requests based solely on the following reasons will ordinarily be denied:

• The firm performs a small number of audits.
• The review will take less than a day.
• The firm chooses a reviewer that would incur significant travel costs when there are qualified reviewers available within a reasonable travel distance.

For more information, review Interpretation 8-1 of the AICPA Standards for Performing and Reporting on Peer Reviews.

Note: The VSCPA Peer Review Committee reserves the right to refuse to accept system reviews performed off-site if approval to perform the review off-site was not requested and granted prior to the commencement of the review.