Survey to the accounting auditors HELP!?

Question

if i were to give out a survey to the auditors, what questionaires should i ask in order to know how efficient and effective they are in the matter of confirmation procedures

Answer 1

Questions to ask regarding confirmation procedures:
1. Do you use the same standard confirmation request or do you tailor your requests?
The auditor should tailor external confirmation requests to the specific audit objective.

2. Do you use positive or negative external confirmation requests?
The use of negative confirmation requests ordinarily provides less reliable audit evidence than the use of positive confirmation requests.

3. When you seek to confirm certain balances or other information, and management requests you not to do so, do you do what mgt wants?
When the auditor seeks to confirm certain balances or other information, and management requests the auditor not to do so, the auditor should consider whether there are valid grounds for such a request and obtain audit evidence to support the validity of management’s requests. If the auditor agrees to management’s request not to seek external confirmation regarding a particular matter, the auditor should apply alternative audit procedures to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence regarding that matter. If the auditor does not accept the validity of management’s request and is prevented from carrying out the confirmations, there has been a limitation on the scope of the auditor’s work and the auditor should consider the possible impact on the auditor’s report.

4a. Do you send out all confirmation requests yourself or do you pass them all to your client to send out since your client has all the addresses?
4b. Do you state in your request that respondents are to reply to your address only or do you allow respondents to reply to the client's address?
When performing confirmation procedures, the auditor should maintain control over the process of selecting those to whom a request will be sent, the preparation and sending of confirmation requests, and the responses to those requests. Control is maintained over communications between the intended recipients and the auditor to minimise the possibility that the results of the confirmation process will be biased because of the interception and alteration of confirmation requests or responses. The auditor ensures that it is the auditor who sends out the confirmation requests, that the requests are properly addressed, and that it is requested that all replies are sent directly to the auditor. The auditor considers whether replies have come from the purported senders.

5. What do you do when no replies are received?
The auditor should perform alternative audit procedures where no response is received to a positive external confirmation request. The alternative audit procedures should be such as to provide audit evidence about the assertions that the confirmation request was intended to provide.

6. Do you assess whether replies received are reliable?
The auditor considers whether there is any indication that external confirmations received may not be reliable. The auditor considers the response’s authenticity and performs audit procedures to dispel any concern. The auditor may choose to verify the source and contents of a response in a telephone call to the purported sender. In addition, the auditor requests the purported sender to mail the original confirmation directly to the auditor. With ever-increasing use of technology, the auditor considers validating the source of replies received in electronic format (for example, fax or electronic mail). Oral confirmations are documented in the work papers. If the confirmation in the oral confirmation is significant, the auditor requests the parties involved to submit written confirmation of the specific information directly to the auditor.

7. What do you do if you receive a reply which disagrees with the client's balance?
When the auditor forms a conclusion that the confirmation process and alternative audit procedures have not provided sufficient appropriate audit evidence regarding an assertion, the auditor should perform additional audit procedures to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence.

In forming the conclusion, the auditor considers the:
(a) reliability of the confirmations and alternative audit procedures;
(b) nature of any exceptions, including the implications, both quantitative and qualitative of those exceptions; and
(c) audit evidence provided by other audit procedures.
Based on this evaluation, the auditor determines whether additional audit procedures are needed to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence.