A review by independent examiners has shown that the auditing service of the Seventh-day Adventist Church continues to maintain high professional standards.

The General Conference Auditing Service (GCAS) is responsible for the annual audits of more than 2,400 Adventist organizations around the world, which together hold assets worth some US$11 billion. The independent examination, known as a “peer review,” found that GCAS has a high level of compliance to both internal quality control procedures and to the professional standards of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

“GCAS does high quality work,” says Debbie Lambert, managing partner of Johnson, Lambert & Co., the firm that conducted the peer review. She pointed out that her company uses “a very rigorous set of peer review manuals” and that “GCAS has not been measured against minimum standards.”

The review allows GCAS to see “how we measure up as far as the auditing profession at large is concerned,” says Eric Korff, director of GCAS. “While firms in public practice must have such a review every three years, we voluntarily subject ourselves to it.”

This is the second time GCAS has undergone a voluntary peer review and the second time it has received an “unqualified report”—or clean bill of professional health.

“I commend GCAS on this accomplishment,” says Lowell Cooper, a vice president of the Adventist world church and vice chair of the GCAS board. “It demonstrates the determination of GCAS to provide the highest level of professional service to the church.” He also notes that the report “gives added assurance to church leadership at all levels concerning the reliability of GCAS services to the denomination.”

“The auditors in North America, individually and collectively, deserve the credit for this achievement,” adds Korff. “Without their careful attention to accounting principles and auditing standards GCAS would not have received this singular recognition.”

GCAS exists because church leaders have long realized the importance of providing church members with an objective, independent evaluation of the financial reporting of church funds, says Korff. He describes an audit as “a judgment on the stewardship aspect of an administration’s function.”

Although organized as an independent body in 1976, GCAS traces its beginnings to the appointment of the first full-time church auditor in 1913.

The results of the peer review were released during a meeting of North American GCAS employees, held July 6 to 12 in Ogden, Utah.