Joanne M. Flood - Wiley Practitioner's Guide to GAAS 2020

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A comprehensive guide to GAAS for 2020, covering critical auditing standards, practices, and procedures Over the last few years, the AICPA has clarified
its professional standards, raising challenges for the accounting professional to stay current and in compliance. This edition will give auditors and accountants the knowledge and understanding they will need to competently perform and successfully complete their engagements. With this valuable resource, readers will have a comprehensive guide to the latest professional standards, practices, and procedures. The
provides an analysis of all SASs, SSAEs, SSARSs, and Interpretations. This one book provides all the most recent revisions to the standards, explaining them in a clear way that’s designed for greater understanding.
Whenever standards are changed, professionals need guidance on conducting engagements efficiently and effectively. This guide to GAAS and other professional standards provides helpful, systematic direction that saves auditors and accountants time and supports them in their jobs. Readers will have a comprehensive view of moving through the process of auditing, reviewing, compiling, and preparing financial statements and performing attestation services. In addition to explanations, readers will get a detailed discussion of current issues and gain the benefits of practice notes, illustrations, checklists, and questionnaires to reference. Practitioners will find:
Organization based on the way auditors use the Statements on Auditing Standards, ensuring efficiency and ease of navigation Comprehensive guidance through the auditing process Explanations of all attestation standards Updates and interpretations of Statements on Standards for Accounting and Review Services The
is a fully updated resource for completing audit, attestation, review, compilation, and preparation engagements successfully.

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Whenever you test activity-level controls, you will have to determine the extent of your tests. If you are testing the reconciliation of significant general ledger accounts to the underlying detailed trial balance, how many reconciliations should you look at? If the control is something that is performed on every transaction—for example, the authorization of payments to vendors—how many should you test?

The extent of your tests should be sufficient to support your conclusion on whether the control is operating effectively at a given point in time. Determining the sufficiency of the extent of your tests is a matter of judgment that is affected by a number of factors. Exhibit 12.1lists these factors and indicates how they will affect the extent of your tests.

Exhibit 12.1 Determining the Extent of Tests

Effect on the Extent of Tests
Factor to consider Increase number of tests Decrease number of tests
How frequently the control procedure is performed Procedure performed often (e.g., daily) Procedure performed occasionally (e.g., once a month)
Importance of control Important control (e.g., control addresses multiple assertions or is a period-end detective control) Less important control
Degree of judgment required to perform the control High degree of judgment Low degree of judgment
Complexity of control procedure Relatively complex control procedure Relatively simple control procedure
Level of competence of the person performing the control procedure Highly competent Less competent

When determining the extent of tests, you also should consider whether the control is manual or automated. When a control is performed manually, the consistency with which that control is performed can vary greatly. In contrast, once a control becomes automated, it is performed the same way each and every time. For that reason, you should plan on performing more extensive tests of manual controls than you will for automated controls.

In some circumstances, testing a single operation of an automated control may be sufficient to obtain a high level of assurance that the control operated effectively, provided that IT general controls operated effectively throughout the period.

Sample Sizes for Tests of Transactions

You do not have to test every performance of a control to draw a valid conclusion about the operating effectiveness of the control. For example, suppose that one of the controls a manufacturing company performs in its revenue cycle is to match the shipping report to the customer’s invoice to make sure that the customer was billed for the right number of items and the revenue was recorded in the proper period. Over the course of a year, the company has thousands of shipments. How many of those should be tested to draw a conclusion?

Statistical Sampling Principles

You do not have to perform a statistical sample to determine your sample size, but it does help to apply the basic principles of statistical sampling theory. In a nutshell, the size of your sample is driven by three variables:

1 Confidence level. This variable has to do with how confident you are in your conclusion. If you want to be very confident that you reached the correct conclusion (say, 95% confident), then your sample size will be larger than if you want a lower confidence level (say, 60%).

2 Tolerable rate of error. This variable addresses the issue of how many deviations in the performance of the control would be acceptable for you to still conclude that the control is operating effectively. If you can accept a high rate of error (the procedure is performed incorrectly 20% of the time), then your sample size can be smaller than if you can accept only a slight rate of error (the procedure is performed incorrectly only 2% of the time).

3 Expected error rate of the population. This variable has to do with your expectation of the true error rate in the population. Do you think that the control procedure was performed correctly every single time it was performed (0% deviation rate), or do you think that a few errors might have been made? The lower the expected error rate, the lower the sample size.

Note that the size of the population does not affect the sample size unless it is very small (e.g., when a control procedure is performed only once a month, in which case the population consists of only 12 items).

In practice, most companies have chosen sample sizes for tests of transactions that range from 20 items to 60 items. It is common for independent auditors to offer some guidance on sample sizes.

Be careful about simply accepting sample sizes without questioning the underlying assumptions for the three variables just listed. In reviewing these assumptions, you should ask:

Am I comfortable with the assumed confidence level? Given the importance of the control and other considerations, do I need a higher level of confidence (which would result in testing more items), or is the assumed level sufficient?

Is the tolerable rate of error acceptable? Can I accept that percentage of errors in the application of the control procedure and still conclude that the control is operating effectively?

Is the expected population deviation rate greater than 0%? Some sample sizes are determined using the assumption that the expected population deviation rate is 0%. Although this assumption reduces the initial sample size, if a deviation is discovered, the sample size must be increased to reach the same conclusion about control effectiveness. Unless you have a strong basis for assuming a population deviation rate of 0%, you should assume that the population contains some errors. That assumption will increase your initial sample size, but it is usually more efficient to start with a slightly higher sample size rather than increasing sample sizes subsequently as deviations are discovered.

Sample Sizes for Tests of Other Controls

You also will need to determine sample sizes for controls that are performed less frequently than every transaction or every day. Because the population sizes for these types of controls are so small, traditional sampling methodologies need to be adjusted. Exhibit 12.2lists the sample sizes that have evolved in practice for tests of smaller populations.

Exhibit 12.2 Sample Sizes for Small Populations

Frequency of control performance Typical sample sizes
Annually 1
Quarterly 2 or 3
Monthly 2 to 6
Weekly 5 to 15

Types of Tests

Inquiry and Focus Groups

Formal inquiries of entity personnel—either individually or as part of a focus group—can be a reliable source of evidence about the operating effectiveness of application-level controls. Inquiries can serve two main purposes:

1 To confirm your understanding of the design of the control (what should happen).

2 To identify exceptions to the entity’s stated control procedures (what really happens).

Confirming control design.Typically, this process consists primarily of a review of documentation (such as policies and procedures manuals) and limited inquiries of high-level individuals or those in the accounting department. To confirm this understanding of the processing stream and control procedures, you should expand your inquiries to include operating personnel and those responsible for performing the control.

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