Chapter One

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• Chapter One
• An Introduction to Assurance
• and Financial Statement Auditing

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The Demand for Auditing and Assurance
The development of the corporate form of business
and the expanding world economy over the last 200
years have given rise to an explosion in the
demand for assurance provided by auditors.
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Principals and Agents
A public company is a company that sells its
stocks or bonds to the public, giving the public
a valid interest in the proper use, or
stewardship, over the companys resources.
Managers
Stockholders
Agents
Principals
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The Role of Auditing
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Auditing and Assurance Defined
Assurance Services
Auditing
A systematic process of objectively obtaining and
evaluating evidence regarding assertions about
economic actions and events to ascertain the
degree of correspondence between those assertions
and established criteria and communicating the
results to interested users.
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Auditing and Assurance Defined
Assurance Services
Auditing
An engagement in which practitioner expresses a
conclusion designed to enhance the degree of
confidence of the intended users other than the
responsible party about the outcome of the
evaluation or measurement of a subject matter
against criteria.
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Fundamental Concepts in Conducting a Financial
Statement Audit
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Audit Risk
Audit risk is the risk that the auditor express
an inappropriate audit opinion when the financial
statements are materially misstated.
The auditors standard report states that the
audit provides only reasonable assurance that the
financial statements do not contain material
misstatements.
Reasonable assurance implies some risk that a
material misstatement could be present in the
financial statements and the auditor will fail to
detect it.
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Materiality (IASB)
Omissions or misstatements of items are material
if they could, individually or collectively,
influence the economic decisions of users taken
on the basis of the financial statements.
Materiality depends on the size and nature of the
omission or misstatement judged in the
surrounding circumstances. The size or nature of
the item, or a combination of both, could be the
determining factor.
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Evidence Regarding Management Assertions
Evidence that assists the auditor in evaluating
managements financial statement assertions
consists of the underlying accounting data and
any corroborating information available to the
auditor.
Relevance
Reliability
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Sampling Inferences Based on Limited
Observations
Auditors use (1) their knowledge about the
transactions and/or (2) a sampling approach to
examine the transactions.
It would be too costly for the auditor to examine
every transaction.
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Major Phases of the Audit
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End of Chapter 1