As the nature and structure of companies has changed over the years, so has the portfolio of services that auditors provide. Today, while companies still rely on an auditing firm’s classic audit services, they use the same firms for attestation services and increasingly for financial and non-financial assurance services as well. The changing scope dovetails with a rise in the outsourcing of non-core activities and a heightened need for management to understand and drive continuous improvement through their business processes. These services are sought from a variety of sources and are primarily used to aid in the decision-making ability of both management and those outside the company, who might be considering putting their money at risk by associating it with the company in question. As you will see, each of these services plays a different, yet important, role in helping manage a company’s financial health.
Example of Service
The purpose of auditing services is to provide reasonable assurance that a company’s financial information is free of material misstatement (Boynton & Johnson, 2006). This is accomplished through obtaining and evaluating historical financial statements and reviewing internal controls. An example of an audit is a CPA testing transactions and account balances through random sampling to ensure the information that is compiled into various financial statements is correct. Attestation services are written communications issued by CPA firms. It is an overall conclusion in regards to financial statements and a company’s compliance with laws and regulations (Boynton & Johnson, 2006). An example of an attest service is a CPA writing a review after giving a negative assurance. Assurances services are independe...
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...e 1). Attest Engagements. Retrieved March 13, 2014, from http://www.aicpa.org/Research/Standards/AuditAttest/DownloadableDocuments/AT-00101.pdf
Boynton, W. C., & Johnson, R. N. (2006). Modern auditing: Assurance services and the integrity of financial reporting. (8th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Bushman, M. (2007, December 18). Accounting and Auditing: An Overview of Attestation Services - Yahoo Voices - voices.yahoo.com. Retrieved from http://voices.yahoo.com/accounting-auditing-overview-attestation-727395.html
Statement on Auditing Standards. (2013, June). AU-C Section 200 *: Overall Objectives of the Independent Auditor and the Conduct of an Audit in Accordance With Generally Accepted Auditing Standards. n.d., n.d., United States. Retrieved March 13, 2014, from http://www.aicpa.org/Research/Standards/AuditAttest/DownloadableDocuments/AU-C-00200.pdf
Arens, Alvin A., Elder, Randall J., and Beasley, Mark S. (2012). Auditing and Assurance Services:
These methods include the structure of the CPA firm and the procedures established by the firm. The CPA firm follows its specific quality control procedures to help the firm meet auditing standards consistently on every audit engagement. Quality control policies and procedures should be documented by each CPA firm, and the procedures should focus on the size of the firm, the number of offices, and the nature of the practice. The quality control procedures that firms use should address six elements such as leadership responsibilities for quality within the firm, relevant ethical requirements, acceptance and continuation of clients, human resources, engagement performance, and monitoring. CPA firms must also be enrolled in an AICPA approved practice-monitoring program or peer review in order for other CPA firms to determine and report if its quality control system is in effect and
The audit committee must certify that the company’s auditors are independent. The audit committee must approve all professional services provided to the company by its independent auditors and ensure that auditors do not provide to the company any of the specifically prohibited services identified by SOX, such as bookkeeping services. The audit committee must receive and analyze key items of information from the independent auditors. These items of information include auditors’ analysis of critical accounting policies adopted by the
In order to ensure an organization’s financial order, auditors with international standards are a vital part. However, very few auditing companies exist in Afghanistan that can provide auditing services in compliance with international accounting standards. Fortunately, ACC is one of those few auditing firms that can confidently say that its auditing services are in the highe...
10) Kieso, Donald E., Weygandt, Jerry J., Warfield, Terry D. Intermediate Accounting. Hoboken, NJ: Current Developments for Audit Committees 2002. Pricewaterhouse Coopers analysis on recognizing revenue. External
Rittenberg, Larry, Bradley Schwieger, and Karla Johnstone. Auditing. 6th ed. Mason: Thomas South-Western, 2005. 10-40.
American Express Tax & Business Services, a subsidiary of the American Express Corporation acquired CPA practices all over the United States. This practice by a non-CPA firm can encourage its employees not to serve the public interest as the firm is not subjected to as many regulations as a CPA firm would be. A financial firm providing accounting services poses a conflict of interest for its CPA employees. For example, the CPA provides accounting services along with financial services like insurance sales. The CPA would be endorsing the insurance products of the company which can affect the CPA’s objectivity with respect to the product being offered to third-parties (Ponemon, 1996). The scope and nature of the services performed influence the accountant to great lengths.
List and briefly describe the elements of the 7 Component Framework Industry Standards for Auditing and Monitoring
Clients want accountants with integrity. Thus, integrity is critical to the public trust. As a matter of fact, one of the general definitions of integrity provided by the AICPA Code is that it is a quality from which the public trust derives. Also, it is an element of character fundamental to professional recognition, and it requires members to be (among other things) honest and candid within the constraints of confidentiality (Duska, Duska & Ragatz, 2011).
Introduction Within the current crisis of confidence in the public accounting profession after the Enron debacle and series of high profile failures of financial services firms, the issue of ‘audit expectation gap’ has never been more important. Though it would take an enormous amount of effort to address these issues, I will argue that tremendous amounts could be done in order to close the gap. In this essay, I will discuss some of these issues and in particular the strategies to reduce the gap. Definitions Various definitions have been proposed for the audit expectation gap.
This shows how a lack of transparency in reporting of financial statements leads to the destruction of a company. This all happened under the watchful eye of an auditor, Arthur Andersen. After this scandal, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was changed to keep into account the role of the auditors and how they can help in preventing such
...e financial reports and statements are correct. This auditing will be conducted by auditing department of the organization, even may be done by an independent auditor who is not part of the organization, and sometimes public officials are elected. In case of unmatched consequences the organization need to give explanation on the misrepresentation of wrong statements. Auditors purpose is then to ensure that the misrepresentations are corrected, then maintain accurate, reliable financial documents and statements.
The fundamental duty of an external financial auditor is to form and express an opinion on whether the reporting entity’s financial statements are prepared in accordance with the relevant financial reporting framework. In discharging this duty, the auditor must exercise “reasonable skill, care and caution” (Lopes, J. in Kingston Cotton Mill Co 1896) as reflected in current legal and professional requirements.
The evolution of auditing is a complicated history that has always been changing through historical events. Auditing always changed to meet the needs of the business environment of that day. Auditing has been around since the beginning of human civilization, focusing mainly, at first, on finding efraud. As the United States grew, the business world grew, and auditing began to play more important roles. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, people began to invest money into large corporations. The Stock Market crash of 1929 and various scandals made auditors realize that their roles in society were very important. Scandals and stock market crashes made auditors aware of deficiencies in auditing, and the auditing community was always quick to fix those deficiencies. The auditors’ job became more difficult as the accounting principles changed, and became easier with the use of internal controls. These controls introduced the need for testing; not an in-depth detailed audit. Auditing jobs would have to change to meet the changing business world. The invention of computers impacted the auditors’ world by making their job at times easier and at times making their job more difficult. Finally, the auditors’ job of certifying and testing companies’ financial statements is the backbone of the business world.
Audit is a process to evaluate and review the accounts and financial statement objectively. We can divide it into internal auditors and external auditors. Internal auditors have a inner knowledge of business process. Auditor has access to the much confidential information and all levels of management. But they may lose their judgement and they are not acceptable by the shareholder. “The overall objective of the external auditors is to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to report on the financial statements in acco...