Changes to General Practice Procedures Manual
By David Menzies, Director of Practice
5 February 2020
As part of our continuous review of services which ICAS offers to members in practice, we have recently undertaken a review of the usage of the General Practice Procedures Manual. This is an online service which is available free of charge to ICAS Firms providing a one-stop shop for guidance, advice and support on a wide range of practice issues.
Analysis of the usage demonstrated occasional use by firms with a heavy focus on Engagement letter specimen documents and Anti Money Laundering Checklists.
It was also felt that the current GPPM service provided a poor user experience, for instance with access being provided through a separate micro-website and no ability for firms to readily share access within the firm.
We are today launching a revised General Practice Manual (GPM) service which seeks to address the user experience issues identified and provide a more focussed, relevant and accessible set of resources for general practice.
The GPM is available directly through icas.com and linked with members logins. The GPM is also accessible to anyone within an ICAS firm – all they have to do is create an icas.com login if they do not already have one. GPM will remain a free resource to ICAS Firms.
We will be working on updating and adding additional resources to GPM over the coming months but initially we have focussed on the two areas where there is most demand by providing updated Engagement Letters and AML resources.
The engagement letter specimen documents have been updated to follow a style of cover letter, schedules for each of the relevant services and terms of business. In addition, specimen documents dealing with client disengagement have also been added.
AML checklists have been updated to comply with the amended Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 following legislative changes to implement the 5th Money Laundering Directive which became effective on 10 January 2020.
Access to GPPM will remain available through icasgppm.co.uk until Friday 13 February 2020 after which this service will be discontinued.
Additional resources will be added on an ongoing basis, but in the meantime, should you have a request for a specimen document or helpsheet which isn’t currently available, please contact the ICAS Technical Helpdesk.
