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The PCAOB has killed its reviled internal-control standard. Now it’s up to the SEC to pronounce it officially dead.

Perhaps the most hated rule to come out of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is dead. Well, almost. On Thursday, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board voted unanimously to replace its controversial internal-control auditing standard with Auditing Standard No. 5. Critics of the original standard shouldn’t celebrate just yet, however. AS5 requires the Securities and Exchange’s approval, which will likely not happen for at least another month.

The PCAOB’s Auditing Standard No. 2 is the rule largely blamed for creating excessively high audit fees for companies complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Indeed, since auditors began using AS2, companies have complained that common interpretations of the standard wrought burdensome audits by promoting work for work’s sake and encouraging a rigid checklist approach.

CFO.com: Ding-Dong, AS2 Is Dead

The PCAOB revised Auditing Standard No. 2 mainly for small companies’ benefit. But large companies tell the regulator the new AS5 will also reduce their audit costs.

The revised auditing standard for internal control over financial reporting could bring cheaper auditing bills for large companies. Some publicly traded companies are estimating that their audit fees could be reduced by 10 percent if the proposed rule is adopted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Laura Phillips, the regulator’s deputy chief auditor, said on Friday.

Much of the focus on the revisions to Auditing Standard No. 2 has been how it can be made scalable for the 6,000 so-called non-accelerated filers that have yet to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Those publicly traded companies with a public float of $75 million or less don’t have to have their auditor attestation reports completed until their 10-Ks are filed for fiscal years ending after December 15, 2008.

CFO.com: AS5 Could Trim Audit Bills by 10%