For CA practices doing ROC work.

Audit clients: a seat on the registers

Section 144 of the Companies Act, 2013 lists services an auditor may not provide to the company it audits, among them accounting and book-keeping and management services. Whether your firm also keeps the registers of a company it audits is the engagement partner's judgement under section 144 and the ICAI Code of Ethics. Where you decide not to, a seat lets you read them without keeping them: a logged, time-bound view with corrections and fingerprints visible, granted from the company's plan. Your firm pays nothing and receives nothing.

In your working papers

Download the inspection pack before the seat ends. It lists each entry with its fingerprint, the head fingerprint and the extract reference, so the copy in your file can be checked again later, by you or a reviewer, without Keel (SA 230). Treat the registers as information produced by the company and test them as you would any other (SA 500); the seat does not replace your own procedures or the written representations you obtain (SA 580).

Registers are not books of account

Keel's software holds statutory registers. The audit-trail requirement for accounting software under rule 3(1) of the Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014, and your reporting on it, concern the books of account and are a separate matter.

ROC clients you don't audit

For companies where your firm does the secretarial and ROC work and someone else audits, Seal five works exactly as it does for a company secretary's firm: five books imported, sealed from the day you choose, with seats and inspection packs.