Senyo Bissabah

Senyo founded Elixir Audits in 2019 to put technical quality and a partner's attention on the same engagement.

Both sides of the work

His career began in audit, moved into industry, and then returned to practice. That order matters: he has prepared the accounts that get audited and signed the opinions on accounts prepared by somebody else, so he knows what each side of the table is actually worried about. Most of the firm's advice is shaped by having sat in both chairs.

He served as Financial Controller for a UK business and was part of an accountancy practice in Manchester, advising clients across several industries on advisory and compliance work. The international experience is not decoration: it is where the firm's expectations about reporting discipline and turnaround came from.

How he works

He leads engagements personally from planning through to signing, which is the firm's principal commitment to clients and the reason most of them move. He is in the planning meeting, in the fieldwork review, and at the clearance meeting where anything affecting the opinion is raised.

What he writes about

Governance, internal controls and audit quality, generally from the position that most control failures are not sophisticated and most management letters are not read. His view is that a finding without an owner, a date and a testable remedy is a comment rather than an action, and he has built the firm's reporting around that.

From Category D to Category A

He founded Elixir Audits to bring world-class service, ethical leadership and strategic financial guidance to Ghanaian businesses, and has led the firm from a Category D start-up to a top-tier ICAG-licensed Category A practice. The licence category is the part clients can verify; the rest is what it took to get there.

Beyond the engagements

Senyo chairs the firm's Executive Management Team and is responsible for its quality management systems, which is what stands behind every opinion the firm signs.

He argues for business-driven development: that well governed, sustainable enterprises are what make an economy resilient, and that the work of getting a company's numbers and controls right is national as well as commercial. It is the reason the firm publishes its tools and its framework rather than keeping them for paying clients.