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The purpose of audit planning is to fully understand the business of the company being audited and the operating environment. Audit planning will also establish and notate the major audit risks within the company—essentially to give a heads up to the auditor so they can properly assess the company.

Another job responsibility for Audit Planners is internal controls testing which is done before and after the year end audit. This looks at the processes, controls and protocols within the company’s infrastructure—by checking the security of the computer systems and accounting reconciliation. The auditor may not perform internal control testing while doing their audit as they do not expect the internal controls to be reliable systematic approaches. The audit in this case follows a ‘substantive approach’, when no internal control testing is done before or during the audit.

For audit risks, the planner will outline the major risks for the auditor in case the auditor issues the wrong opinion. One example of these major risks are sales representatives who overstate their sales figures which leads to overstated revenue. This will allow the auditor to know in advance that they have to increase their procedure for checking the absolute sales figures for the company to get an accurate and unbiased audit.

Audits help companies find out where they stand at the end of the fiscal year in terms of finances. Other audit jobs done within the company also outline for the executive where any problems or major risks are—such as in information technology. If there are problems found in the IT audit, then the company executive can bring in auditors to find out how to fix them properly and install new procedures and processes to deal with the risks more effectively. One of the company’s main risk areas is in security of the computer systems and the information stored on them. The audit planner would take an in-depth look at the systems and protocols that are already in place and make note of the obvious risk areas for the IT auditor to review and make changes or presentations for change in the system.

Audits are integral for companies all over the world and are in some cases required by the local government to be done annually by an external (independent and unbiased) auditor. Internal audits and audit planning do not waylay external audits but merely help the external auditor assess the company and the risks better. If there is a problem within the company’s financial statements or information technology, the external auditor will find those problems—however by planning for the audits ahead of the external auditor, you can prove and show that you are already aware of the problems within the protocols or infrastructure of the company.

Audit planning jobs are plentiful in the United Kingdom as many companies want to know what is coming from the external auditor ahead of time and can plan to make changes if necessary before the external audit is done.

Jonathon Hickstead writes for Careers in Audit, a jobs site specialising in audit jobs and recruitment. Visit the site for great auditor, internal audit and audit planning jobs

For more information visit Careers in Audit.

Source: www.a1articles.com