AUDIT PLANNING

Audit Planning With Analytical Procedures,
Risk, and Materiality

Audit Planning

The Audit Risk Model

Audit risk is the probability that an auditor will give an inappropriate opinion on financial statements. The auditing profession has no official standard for an acceptable level of overall audit risk, except that it should be “acceptably low.”

The Audit Risk Model (Client)

The Audit Risk Model (Auditor)

The Audit Risk Model

The Audit Risk Model

Preliminary Assessment of Planning Materiality

• Materiality is considered to be the largest amount of uncorrected dollar misstatement that could exist in published financial statements, yet still be fairly presented in conformity with GAAP (i.e., not misleading).

Planning Materiality

Assignment of Materiality

1. Bottoms-up approach—judging materiality amounts in each account separately, then combining them to determine the overall effect.
2. Top-down approach—judging an overall material amount for the financial statements and then allocating it to particular accounts.

Planning Materiality

1. The concept of materiality is used by auditors as a guide

Preliminary Analytical Procedures

1. Analytical procedures must be applied in the beginning stages of each audit.
2. Preliminary analytical procedures are primarily attention directing.

Preliminary Analytical Procedures

1. Five general types of procedures for analysis of current year account balance are as follows:
1. Compare to balances for one or more comparable periods.
2. Compare to anticipated results (budget and forecasts).
3. Evaluate relationships to other current-year balances for conformity with predictable patterns.
4. Compare with similar industry information.
5. Study relationships with relevant non–financial information.

Planning Memorandum

1. It provides a summary of the preliminary analytical procedures and the materiality assessment with specific directions about the effect on the audit.
2. It is used to prepare an audit program.
3. An audit program is a specification of procedures that auditors use to guide the work of inherent and control risk assessment and to obtain sufficient competent evidence that serves as a basis for the audit report.

Audit Programs

1. An internal control program contains procedures to obtain an understanding of the client's business and management's control structure, and for assessing the inherent and control risk.
2. A balance-audit program contains substantive procedures for gathering direct evidence about the five assertions about dollar amounts in the account balances

Internal Control Evaluation: Assessing Control Risk

1. The Second Standard of Field Work
1. A sufficient understanding of the internal control structure is to be obtained to plan the audit and to determine the nature, timing, and extent of tests to be performed.
2. How will the auditor's understanding of the internal control structure influence the nature, timing, and extent of audit tests?

The COSO Report

Fundamental Concepts.

1. The COSO report identifies four fundamental concepts.
1. Internal control is a process to achieve objectives.
2. People establish objectives, implement controls, and operate controls.
3. Internal control provides reasonable assurance, not absolute assurance, that control objectives will be achieved.

Internal Control Components.

1. Control environment
2. Risk assessment
3. Control activities
4. Control monitoring
5. Control information and communication

Management versus Auditor Responsibility

1. Management is responsible for establishing and maintaining components of the entity's internal control.
2. External and internal auditors are responsible for evaluating existing internal controls and assessing the related control risk.

General Categories of Internal Control Errors, Irregularities, and Misstatements

1. Invalid transactions are recorded (validity).
2. Valid transactions are omitted from the accounts (completeness).
3. Unauthorized transactions are executed and recorded (authorization).
4. Transaction amounts are inaccurate (accuracy).
5. Transactions are classified in the wrong accounts (classification).

Transaction accounting and posting is incorrect (accounting/posting).
Transactions are recorded in the wrong period (proper period).

Internal Control Deficiencies

Reportable Conditions

1. Reportable conditions represent significant deficiencies in the design or operation of the internal controls that could adversely affect the organization's ability to record, process, summarize, and report financial data in the financial statements. (AU32)

Material Weaknesses.

2. A material weakness in internal control, which is a more serious reportable condition, is a condition in which internal controls do not adequately lower the risk level of material errors in the financial statements and may not be found on a timely basis by employees of the entity. (AU325)

The Auditor’s Evaluation Process

Control Objectives

1. Validity. Ensure that recorded transactions are the ones that should have been recorded.
2. Completeness. Ensure that valid transactions are not omitted entirely from the accounting records.
3. Authorization. Ensure that transactions are approved before they are recorded.
4. Accuracy. Ensure that dollar amounts are figured correctly.
5. Classification. Ensure that transactions are recorded in the right accounts.
6. Accounting and Posting. Ensure that the accounting process for a transaction is completely performed and in conformity with GAAP.
7. Proper period. Ensure that transactions are accounted for in the period in which they occur.

General Control Activities

1. Capable personnel.
2. Segregation of responsibilities.
3. Authorization to execute transactions,
4. Recording transactions,
5. Custody of assets involved in the transactions, and
6. Periodic reconciliation of existing assets to recorded amounts.
7. Controlled access.
8. Periodic comparison.

Phases of a Control Evaluation

Control Evaluation and Cost/Benefit

Revenue and  Collection Cycle

Revenue and Collection Cycle: Typical Activities

1. Receiving and processing service requests.
2. Delivering services to agencies and the public.
3. Billing entities or agencies and accounting for accounts receivable.
4. Collecting and depositing cash received from all sources.
5. Reconciling bank statements.

Cash Receipts and Cash Balances

1. Authorization:
   Approving adjustments or cancellation of indebtedness.
2. Custody:
   Control and custody of the physical cash.
3. Recording:
   Accountants who record cash receipts and credit individual accounts should not handle the cash.

Audit Evidence in Management Reports and Data Files

1. Receipts received but not posted to Master File.
   Contains payment transactions started but not completed.
2. Fine and Fee structure.
   File of fees mandated by the State, County or Judicial Order.
3. Receipt Detail File.
   Contains detailed receipt entries.

Audit Evidence in Management Reports and Data Files

Receipts Analysis Reports.

1. Various receipt analyses, for example, by fee type or by section, division or department.
1. Accounts Receivable Aged Trial Balance (each office should have one if they are due funds).
   List of balances owed by individual or agency including aging information.

Control Risk Assessment

1. General Control Considerations.
   Proper segregation of responsibilities for authorization, custody, recording and reconciliation.
2. Persons who handle cash should be insured under a fidelity bond.
3. Provide for detail error-checking activities.

Information about the control system can be gathered by an internal control questionnaire, a “walk-through” or a “sample of one.”

Detail Test of Controls Audit Procedures

Detail Test of Controls Audit Procedures

1. Detail tests of control procedures include
1. identification of the data population from which a sample will be selected for audit, and
2. the action to be taken to produce relevant evidence (the action involves vouching, tracing, observing, scanning, and recalculation).
2. Test of controls audit procedures can be used to audit the accounting transactions in two directions:
1. Completeness
2. Validity.

Control Risk Assessment (completed)

1. Summary: Control Risk Assessment and the Audit Risk Model
   AR = IR x CR x DR

3. Existence/Occurrence
4. Completeness
5. Valuation
6. Rights/Obligations
7. Presentation and Disclosure
8. Confirmations

Confirmation of Cash and Receivable Balances

1. Auditors use a standard bank confirmation form approved by AICPA, ABA, and BAI.

3. Positive confirmation
4. Negative confirmation

Confirmation Evidence Issues

1. Assertions
2. Negative v. Positive
3. Respondent
4. Facsimile responses (faxes)
5. Alternative Procedures

Bank Reconciliations

1. Accounts Receivable Lapping
1. Lapping is the process whereby an employee takes receipts and attempts to cover up by using later receipts to credit accounts of customers from which receipts were taken.
2. Check Kiting
1. Check kiting is the practice of building up apparent balances in one bank account based on uncollected checks drawn against similar accounts in other banks.

Bank Reconciliations

1. Proof of Cash
   The “proof of cash” is a reconciliation in which the bank balance, the bank report of cash deposited, and the bank report of cash paid are all reconciled to the client's general ledger.