A tale of two deadlines: What the QC 1000 delay really means for accounting firms

Major changes are coming to auditing standards - but not when you originally expected.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is still launching its new quality management and risk assessment standards as planned on December 15, 2025. However, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) - which initially planned to launch its own quality control standards on the same day - just announced a one-year delay for its standards.

What's driving this delay? More importantly, what does this delay mean for your accounting firm? We'll explore the ways in which these new PCAOB standards will affect your firm and how you can best prepare to meet them before the updated deadline.

What is QC 1000?

The PCAOB standards apply to all accounting firms that audit public companies. This latest quality control standard - QC 1000 - is considered one of the most significant standards ever adopted by the PCAOB, and will go into effect December 15, 2026.

QC 1000 was designed to address potential areas of exposure in existing independence processes. It requires accounting firms to revisit their legacy processes and "one-size-fits-all" approach to auditing, and move towards a risk-aware, rules-based assessment systems.

Risk-aware systems can significantly improve an accounting firm's profitability: According to the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC), average financial losses resulting from risk events were 1.9% of revenue in 2024. However, a recent EY article revealed that although six in 10 firms agree risk management must transform to adapt to the new risk climate, only 14% have completely changed their approach.

To address this transformation gap, QC 1000 outlines the specific actions that PCAOB-registered firms must take to strengthen their risk and independence processes:

• Implement a proactive, risk-based quality control system tailored to the firm.
• Annually evaluate the effectiveness of the firm's system.
• Establish new governance structures and leadership accountability for quality.
• Identify and assess quality risks and design appropriate responses.

Why did the deadline change?

Overhauling outdated systems and processes is crucial to ensuring high quality control - but it's proving to be more complex and time-consuming than initially anticipated.

Many small and midsize accounting firms voiced concern around the potential financial and resource burden that QC 1000 presented. Purchasing a new, automated quality control system could be costly, and building a system from scratch would similarly require a significant amount of time, money, and resources. Training teams on the new platform and processes would also take time.

Many in the industry, including the Center for Audit Quality, argued that the original 15-month implementation period was too short for such a comprehensive change. Rather than have firms rush an implementation - and potentially run into costly mistakes - the PCAOB postponed the effective date of QC 1000.

What action should your firm take?

Now with a full additional year, your accounting firm has time to strategically plan your next steps and implement changes in a more deliberate, effective manner.

One critical component of this planning process is selecting the right technology infrastructure to support the new PCAOB and/or AICPA standards. The best course of action is to invest in flexible solutions that can keep up with your firm's and industry's evolving needs.

Built for accounting and powered by Applied AI, Intapp solutions are fully configurable and designed to integrate with your firm's systems to help maintain quality control. Intapp comprises a complete risk strategy solution for streamlining risk assessments, identifying potential conflicts of interest, and operating personal independence processes.

• Intapp Intake : Automate due diligence and risk evaluations to create a consistent, risk-based client and engagement acceptance and continuance process - a core requirement of both new standards.
• Intapp Conflicts: Search, surface, and clear conflicts and potential impairments to independence and ethics requirements.
• Intapp Employee Compliance: Identify personal relationships and arrangements with restricted entities - including processes for identifying financial interests that might impair the firm's independence - within a single, centralized system.

Our experts partner closely with your teams to help them quickly and successfully deploy and adopt our solutions. Teams can also access a user community and library of on-demand resources to help them maximize the value of your firm's Intapp investment and meet your business-critical needs.

Schedule a demo to learn more about how your accounting firm can maintain compliance and successfully meet the new PCAOB and AICPA standards with Intapp.