The firm
About Houston & Co
An Australian chartered accounting practice organised around audit and assurance.
Houston & Co is a chartered accounting practice in Crows Nest on Sydney’s lower north shore, providing audit, assurance, accounting and tax services to businesses, trustees, licensees and professional practices. Where most general accounting firms treat audit as a service line they occasionally staff, it is the organising discipline of this practice.
The principal
Owen Houston CA
Owen has been an ASIC Registered Company Auditor since 1990 — over three decades signing audit opinions — and an ASIC Approved SMSF Auditor since 2013. He is a Chartered Accountant and a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.
- Registered Company Auditor: 000004548
- SMSF Auditor Number: 100098262
That focus matters commercially. Statutory audits, SMSF audits, solicitors’ trust account external examinations and real estate trust account audits each answer to a different regulator, apply a different standard and land on a different date in the calendar. Running them as one undifferentiated “audit” offering is how deadlines get missed and reports get qualified for avoidable reasons.
We act directly for clients, and we act for other accounting firms who need an independent auditor without handing over the client relationship. Independence is not a formality we acknowledge in an engagement letter — we do not audit financial statements we have prepared, and we say so plainly when a request would put us on the wrong side of APES 110.
How we work
Say the difficult thing early
A qualification raised three weeks before lodgement is a problem. The same issue raised in week one is a task. We tell you what we are seeing as we see it.
Scope it, price it, stick to it
Engagement letters set out what is in scope and what it costs. Variations happen only when the facts change, and we tell you before, not after.
Documentation you could hand to a regulator
Our files are prepared on the assumption that someone independent will one day read them. That standard protects the client as much as the firm.
What clients get
The practical difference
Audit is the practice, not a sideline
Statutory, SMSF, legal trust and real estate trust audits are core work here. That specialisation is why turnaround is measured in days rather than months.
Independence taken seriously
We do not audit financial statements we have prepared. Where we act as auditor, we say so and stay in that lane — which is exactly what a regulator looks for.
Fixed fees, agreed up front
You get a scope and a price before work starts. No hourly surprises and no variation for questions you were always going to ask.
Deadlines that are actually met
31 May for legal trust examinations, 30 September for real estate trust audits, and SMSF reports back well inside the 28-day limit. The calendar is the job.
Need a quote or a second opinion?
Tell us the entity, the deadline and the type of audit. You will have a fixed-fee proposal back quickly — usually the same day.