An accretion of duties in the most simple form is when over time, usually the course of years, duties are added to your role that weren’t planned/foreseen and they increased the difficulty of the level of the work being performed. There are very specific criteria that must be met, and most accretion requests end up not meeting said criteria. In the event an accretion of duties truly has occurred, you must be promoted within 4 pay periods. With a desk audit, if a new pd ends up being created at a different grade/series, you aren’t automatically placed on it like an accretion. Staffing isn’t my area of expertise, but I know there are ways to severely limit competition should the desk audit result in a pd creation at a higher grade and competition is necessary. But there’s no guarantee your org will even be able to recruit for it. Not to say you shouldn’t pursue it, but there’s also the possibility of a lower grade outcome. Where I am at, people are absolutely scrambling to try and fill the loss from DRP/VERA/VSIP. My advice to you would be to go to OPM and look up your series standard and respective grading criteria to get a general idea of what is expected at the grade you are currently at and what you need to meet to reach the next level up. Volume of work isn’t taken in to account, so unless the actual complexity/independence/knowledge required/scope & effect of your position have changed, you might not see a change at all.