Calculate your Public Interest Score
While a number of us still refer to it as the “new” Companies Act, the Companies Act 2008 (“the Act”) has been in force now for over eight years. One of the requirements it introduced has become more of a talking point in the last year however with the CIPC now requiring all audited financial statements to be submitted via XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language). The requirement of the Act to which I am referring is described in Regulation 26(2) and states that every company must calculate its Public Interest Score (“PI Score”) at the end of each financial year.
The PI Score approach brings South Africa in line with similar practices in other countries and takes into account various matters, such as employees, shareholders, liability and turnover. When calculating a company’s PI Score, this needs to be done for the company individually and not at a consolidated level.
Public Interest Score Categories
A company’s PI Score will determine if its annual financial statements must be audited or independently reviewed, what financial reporting standards need to be adopted and whether the company must appoint a social and ethics committee. The table below sets out the various implications of different score categories:
| PI SCORE CATEGORY | AFS COMPILED | AUDIT / INDEPENDENT REVIEW (IR) | FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARD |
| All Companies – not owner managed:
PI Score < 100 |
Internally Independently |
IR IR |
No prescribed framework IFRS or IFRS for SMEs |
| All Companies – owner managed (including CCs):
PI Score < 100 |
Internally Independently |
No Audit No Audit |
No prescribed framework IFRS or IFRS for SMEs |
| All Companies – not owner managed:
PI Score 100 – 349 |
Internally Independently |
Audit IR |
IFRS or IFRS for SMEs IFRS or IFRS for SMEs |
| All Companies – owner managed (including CCs):
PI Score 100 – 349 |
Internally Independently |
Audit No Audit |
IFRS or IFRS for SMEs IFRS or IFRS for SMEs |
| All Companies (including CCs):
PI Score > 350 |
N/A |
Audit |
IFRS or IFRS for SMEs |
| Company holding fiduciary assets > R5million
Company with MOI requiring an audit Public Company – Listed Public Company – Not Listed State-Owned Company Non-Profit Company (state-owned / statutory / regulatory function) |
N/A
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A |
Audit
Audit Audit Audit Audit Audit |
IFRS
IFRS or IFRS for SMEs IFRS IFRS or IFRS for SMEs IFRS IFRS |
| All Companies (including CCs):
PI Score > 500 |
Social and Ethics Committee |
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This means that Small and Medium Enterprises (“SMEs”) could potentially benefit from great cost savings as a result of not being required to have their annual financial statements audited. They could simply submit a Financial Accountability Supplement to the CIPC.
GreatSoft has a quick and easy-to-use Public Interest Score Calculator to help you calculate and report your Public Interest Scores. This calculator is linked to the statutory registers stored on GreatSoft Secretarial as well as our Annual Return tracking system, making it easier to see which annual financial statements have been audited and therefore need to be submitted to the CIPC via XBRL.
To find out more or to try out our calculator just simply make contact
