The body that regulates accounting and auditing in Oman has changed, and so has what you should verify before appointing a firm to audit your accounts.
What changed
Under Royal Decree 20/2024, regulation of the accounting and audit profession moved from the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion to the Financial Services Authority. In a June 2026 circular the FSA gave applicants still in the ministry's process thirty days from 2 June 2026 to complete registration and licensing with it.
Some published guides still refer to ministry approval. That is no longer the reference point; the FSA's own register is.
Deregistration is not theoretical
In July 2026 the FSA struck two firms from the register of licensed auditors. One by Decision 2/2026, for allowing unlicensed individuals to perform audit work and other breaches of the profession's law; the other for similar violations including audit reports lacking the owner's signature.
There was an immediate knock-on: the Tax Authority removed both firms from its list of approved accounting firms. Tax work that relied on them needed a different firm.
Why the move of regulator matters to you
A transfer of oversight from a ministry to an authority may look like an administrative matter of no concern to someone buying an audit. It is not, for two practical reasons.
First, the FSA is a regulator of the financial sector, not a commercial registrar. Its core function is supervision and professional discipline, and a body supervising in that capacity acts with different instruments: eligibility checks, monitoring, and removal on breach. That is precisely what played out during 2026.
Second, the window given — thirty days from 2 June 2026 — meant firms operating under an older process had a short period to regularise. Any that did not are not in the same regulatory position today as they were a year ago.
Two lists, not one
A point that is frequently conflated: the FSA's register of licensed auditors is one thing, and the Tax Authority's list of approved accounting firms is another. A firm may appear on one and not the other, and the work each is needed for differs.
July 2026 showed how the two relate: removal from the FSA register was followed by removal from the Tax Authority's list. A defect in professional licensing carried through to tax work. The converse is not necessarily guaranteed, which is why you check both lists rather than one.
And if your auditor is struck off mid-engagement?
This is the scenario that makes checking in advance matter, because dealing with it afterwards is not simple. A report issued before the removal does not automatically become void, but whoever is asking you for it — a bank, a regulator, an investor in a transaction — may view it differently and may ask for a replacement audit.
The cost here is rarely the new auditor's fee. The cost is time: a replacement audit takes weeks, and the problem tends to surface while applying for finance or closing a transaction — precisely when weeks are not available.
What to verify
- That the firm appears on the FSA's register of licensed auditors — not that it holds an older ministry licence
- That it appears on the Tax Authority's approved list, if the work is tax-related
- That whoever signs the report is licensed to sign it
- That the licence is current at the time of appointment, not merely at the time of the proposal
These are not formalities. What happened in July 2026 shows the register changes, and that checking before you appoint is cheaper than discovering the gap afterwards.
The signature is not a detail
Among the breaches cited in the removal decisions: audit reports issued without the owner's signature. It reads like a small procedural item and is in fact the thing that makes a report a report.
A signature is who carries professional responsibility for what the document says. A report without a licensed signature is not a professional opinion, it is a sheet of numbers. Anyone accepting such a report believes they obtained an assurance they did not.
The other breach cited — allowing unlicensed individuals to perform audit work — points the same way: the problem is not that an unlicensed person does not know accounting, it is that the chain of responsibility is broken.
Questions to ask before you appoint
Checking the register establishes that a firm is licensed. That is a floor, not a basis for choosing. The following questions surface what no register shows:
- Who will actually do the work, and what is their experience in your sector?
- Have they audited a business of your size and operational complexity?
- What is the timetable, and when do they need what from you?
- How do they handle findings: a report at the end, or a flag when one appears?
- Do they provide other services that could conflict with their independence as auditors?
That last question is worth a pause. Independence is not an abstract ethical detail: anyone auditing a financial system they implemented themselves is reviewing their own work. That is a situation to be managed through disclosure and separation of teams, not ignored.
And where does internal audit sit in this?
What is discussed here is external audit: an independent opinion on your financial statements, given to parties outside the business. Internal audit is a different thing — a function serving your own management, reviewing controls, operations and risk, and issuing no opinion to the outside world.
Confusing them is expensive in both directions. Anyone expecting their external auditor to expose weak internal controls is working from a false premise: an external auditor examines controls to the extent it serves the opinion on the statements, not in order to improve them. And anyone treating internal audit as a substitute finds they have no report a bank or regulator will accept.
This is why many businesses arrange both: an internal function working through the year, and a licensed external auditor issuing the annual opinion. A good arrangement makes the second faster and cheaper, because what it looks for has already been put in order.
What this means for the market
When a profession moves to a stricter supervisor, the gap between practising it rigorously and practising it minimally narrows — because the minimum rises. That favours the buyer of the service over time, however inconvenient it is for anyone who has to regularise their position today.
The practical effect is that "who audits our accounts?" has moved from a routine administrative decision to one carrying measurable risk. And like any measurable risk, it is managed by checking in advance rather than by assuming the best.
And smaller businesses?
There is an impression that all this concerns large companies. It is understandable and misleading: a small business may not necessarily need an annual audit, but it needs correct books for the same reasons a large one does — finance, partnership, sale, and tax compliance.
The practical difference is that a small business pays for neglect late and all at once. Years of untidy entries surface the moment a bank asks for audited statements or a new partner comes in, and putting the past in order becomes a project of its own at a moment that cannot absorb a delay.
How to prepare for an audit
Good preparation shortens an audit and lowers its fee, because most of the time goes on waiting for documents or explaining differences. The following is put in order before the team arrives, not after:
- Bank reconciliations complete to the closing date
- A physical stock count, documented with its differences and how they were treated
- Receivables and payables ageing, with the old items explained
- A fixed asset register that agrees to the ledger
- Contracts and supporting documents for major transactions in one place
- VAT reconciliations between the returns and the ledger
Perhaps most important: one person inside the business who knows where everything is and has time to respond. The absence of that person extends an audit more than any accounting defect does.
What changes with e-invoicing
This regulatory change intersects with another happening at the same time. As invoices move onto an electronic path validated by the tax administration, the nature of the evidence an auditor works with changes: structured, sequenced data instead of scattered files.
That favours both sides. A business issuing invoices in a structured form hands its auditor cleaner material, shortening fieldwork. And the auditor can test a whole population of transactions rather than a sample, raising the level of assurance given.
The other face of it is that gaps become clearer. What passed in a small sample surfaces when every transaction is examined. That is a good outcome over time, but it means anyone postponing the tidying of their books is postponing it into an environment less tolerant of mess, not more.