Audit Firms
An organisation becomes an external audit firm for the EC as soon as the audit service contract is signed, and the signatory is granted the role of Primary External Auditor.This section covers the different Audit firm specific roles and how to manage those in the Funding & Tenders Portal, as well as how to manage teams and assign audits to them.
For details on the rest of roles of the organisation needed for grants or procurement contracts with the EU see Roles and access rights.
For information about the Business Process steps to be followed by external auditors, please see Outsourced audit — steps for audit firms.
The overview of the existing roles for the organisation are listed in the Organisation Roles tab in the portal: access My organisations on the left and select View Roles within Actions button on the right, you arrive to the organisation Roles tab.
Each audit must be assigned to a Team. Audit firms may set up multiple Teams. The Team functionality gives the audit firm flexibility to organise and distribute audits within the firm to different groups of auditors. See Manage Teams.
Grant/revoke roles
To grant roles, go to My Organisation(s) / Actions / View Roles. Click on Edit Organisation Roles.
To allocate a role:
Click on Add Roles.
Select a role (the roles you are able to assign depend on the role assigned to you, see each one under Overview of Audit Firm Roles).
Enter the first name, last name and the registered email address, and click Ok to save.
For the external auditor and the audit team member roles, an additional field will display where you can select a team. If the team is not available in the list, click on +Add a new Team and provide the name of the team (this option is available only for the primary external auditor and the external auditor administrator roles).
If the first or last name are not correct, but the email address is correct, the portal will automatically use the data as registered in EU Login. If the email address is not known, then, the user will be saved in the list of roles, but that person will receive an email to create an EU Login. You will differentiate this non-registered user from the rest because the username will remain empty in the Roles tab until the person finishes the registration.
To revoke a role, access the Roles Tab (My Organisations/Actions/View Roles), click on Edit Organisation Roles.
Use the Bin icon to remove a role.
In the following screen, click Ok to confirm the revocation of the role.
External auditors and audit team members can also add roles
Granting/revoking external audit firm local auditor role
External auditors and audit team members can also grant the external audit firm local auditor role, which is granted at audit level, instead of at organisation level.
Access via My Audits/Actions/View External Auditor Roles.
Then, click Add Roles.
The only possibility at audit level is to grant the external audit firm local auditor role. There are no more roles listed in the roles drop-down field to select.
To remove the role, you also need to access via My Audits/Actions/View External Auditor Roles. You can delete the role using the bin icon (only this role can be removed when accessing via My Audits).
Then click Ok to confirm.
Manage Teams
Only the primary external auditor and the external auditor administrators can add/rename/remove the teams of an organisation.
Go to My Organisation(s), and then click on Actions/Team roles
In the Teams tab, expand the different teams to see current assignments to that team:
Rename the team if applicable
If you did not manage the Teams of your firm yet, you will see a "Default" team. You can rename it via Actions/Rename 
The Team field becomes editable now. Provide the new name and click on the tick icon to confirm, or the cross to cancel.
Create a new team
To create a new team, click on Add new team.
When creating a team, you will need to assign either an external auditor or an audit team member role to it. Select one of those roles, enter the name of the team and provide the details of the person. Click Ok to confirm the creation.
Manage team by assigning auditors to it.
To display the current members of the team, click on the arrow on the right.
You can remove assignees using the bin icon. Please note, the last external audit role of the team can be revoked if no audit is assigned to this team, otherwise, you are not able to remove it from the team members. When a team does not contain members, it disappears from the list of teams.
You can assign more team members via Actions/Add Roles.
Select the role, enter the details and click on Ok to confirm.
You can also assign additional team members directly when allocating an external auditor or an audit team member role. See Grant/revoke roles.
External auditors and audit team members roles can also access the teams tab, but they will have only the possibility to remove/add other external auditors and audit team members to their own team. They cannot add teams nor rename the existing ones.
Assign an audit to a team
This action is done by a primary external auditor or an external auditor administrator.
Go to My Audits.
The audits assigned to the external audit firm will be listed here.
When an audit has not been assigned to a team yet, you will see "unassigned" under the Team column. Click on the left of the audit and select the team from the drop-down list.
Click Assign a team to the selected audits. You can assign several audits to the same team at the same time.
If you want to create a new team, you need to do it either in the Teams tab of your organisation (see Manage Teams):
Or you can also create a new team when allocating an external auditor or an audit team member roles by selecting +Add a new Team in the team field (see Grant/revoke roles).
Access the Audit Management System
External auditors / audit team members access My Audits. You will see only the audits assign to the team they are members of, but not all the audits of the firm.
From there, you click on the Actions button next to the audit and select Access Audit. This will launch the Audit Management System (AMS) for the concerned organisation.
Overview of Audit Firm Roles
Role | Who is this? | Duties and system rights | Additional information |
Primary External Auditor | Signatory in the audit firm of the audit service contract with the EC, who automatically receives this role when the audit is launched. | Manages (grants/revokes) all the roles/teams/persons representing their organisation for Audit assignments in My Audits. | This role is automatically granted and it is also automatically nominated as an external auditor. |
External Auditor | Main contact person(s) appointed by the external audit firm to manage the audit assignments under the audit service contract in line with the provisions of the contract. | Has full viewing/editing/submission rights on audits assigned to their team.
| A team needs at least one external auditor.
There may be one or more external auditors in a team. |
External Auditor administrator | Person in the audit firm that is responsible for the administrative tasks such as managing accesses and roles within their audit firm. | Manages (grants/revokes) all the roles/teams/persons representing their organisation for Audit assignments in My Audits. | Administrators are granted/revoked by primary external auditors or other external auditor administrators. |
Audit Team Member | Support auditor that can assist the external auditor. | Has rights to access the audit process documents to assist in any auditor task, but can NOT submit or complete the auditor task. | Audit team members can be granted/revoked by all roles except external audit firm local auditors. |
External Audit Firm Local Auditor | Auditor tasked with individual assignments for the audit firm. | Has full viewing/editing/submission rights on specific tasks with the audited beneficiary. | External audit firm local auditors roles are granted/revoked by audit team members or by external auditors at audit level, and not at organisation level as the rest of roles (see Granting/revoking local auditor role) . |