SC Department of Health and Human Services’ Post

Request for information by Auditors should be passed down to Administrative staff on time. Why this is important: 1. It allows officers to do a proper review before handing over information to Auditors. 2. Limits issues of “ lack of information “ where information is not available or provided and issues of limitation of scope. 3. This allows the internal body to have it own seating and analyse what good and what are potential findings and start crafting possible answers as methods to mitigate the risk and at least give answers salvaging the situation and this may even help with deciding on what to admit or disclose to the Auditor and abide by the possible recommendations given by Auditors to avoid the risk happening again in future.

Why is NFRA missing to make a positive impact? NFRA was constituted to mirror the PCAOB in the US. Since its inception, it has intervened in many ways to set things right for India Inc. Yet whenever any Financial Reporting Quality Review (FRQR) Report, Audit Quality Review (AQR) Report, or Circular ( like the recent one about Statutory Auditors’ Responsibilities in relation to Fraud in a Company) is released the media is flooded with all kinds of opinions about the virtues and vices of Auditing. As a regulator, NFRA is doing its job but the moot question is whether it is missing something. If we look at the Annual Performance Report of NFRA (2021 -22) the contents are very crisp but only reflect the ratio of the reports/order passed by it. On the other hand, the July 2023, PCOAB, SPOTLIGHT Staff Update and Preview of 2022 Inspection Observations, ( which comes with a disclaimer that the same is not the opinion of the Board ) has a totally different and somewhat constructive approach. Worth mentioning are the topics on COMMON DEFICIENCIES FOUND BY 2022 INSPECTIONS, OBSERVATIONS RELATED TO QUALITY CONTROL SYSTEMS, and GOOD PRACTICES. I leave it to the learned audit fraternity ( not being limited to CAs only as Law imposes equal responsibility to Cost and Secretarial Auditors ) to realize what could be done better just by comparing the NFRA Report and PCOAB Report mentioned above. Personally, I would like to see the 1. deficiencies being listed on the basis of the cases handed by NFRA in a financial year, 2. Observations/guidance which will be non-binding but be of the nature of Informal guidance 3. Positive reinforcement by highlighting some good industry practices. Vinod Kashyap, Vijay Kapur, Board Stewardship Inc.Sucheta Dalal, National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA)

But, the main point is that can they work together as mentioned in the article? My experiences have showed that mostly they try to patronize internal Auditors. I think there should be clearer and narrower scope of authority over Internal Auditors. Otherwise External Auditors can be and maybe -is- another threat to the independence of internal Auditors. There should be some consensus mechanisms and procedures for conflicts between them.

The Financial Reporting Council made recommendations i.c.w. sampling methods, one of the pain points in the audit profession. The take-away points are: ·      #Judgements are poorly documented; reasons for differing from sampling tool suggestions must be documented. ·      Auditors lack #clarity on the basis for using alternative audit procedures to limit sample sizes for tests of detail. ·      Care is needed in selecting ‘key items’ in #stratified samples; reasons for selection must be documented and explained. ·      Selecting items over say 50% of performance materiality without justification is unacceptable. ·      Auditors should carefully #identifyriskyitems; the remaining population will be lower risk, resulting in a smaller residual sample size. ·      #Randomsampling is preferred over haphazard sampling; audit files must show that each item had an equal chance of selection. ·      Firms should understand the #statisticalconcepts behind their sample size methodologies.

Feeling of Accepting Audit report is different level:) for auditor

𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗴𝘂𝗲 #𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆! For e.g., 1️⃣ Poor risk assessment, 2️⃣ Improper journal entry testing, 3️⃣ Below par revenue recognition audit procedures, 4️⃣ Bad management accounting estimate assessments, or maybe... 5️⃣ Poor understanding of IT environment and controls! Despite #RootCauseAnalysis (RCA), these problems persist. Why? ❌ Wrong root causes identified, or ❌ Identified root causes not addressed effectively. The solution? Better and deeper #RootCauseAnalysis! ️ ✅ 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗲: Don't settle for surface-level root causes or explanations, ✅ 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Fix the real root cause, not just the symptom. Otherwise, it's like playing detective with blinders on. How can you do it? Do what Noddy the Toyland detective says: 𝗔 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻! 🔥🔥🔥 Agree? Share your thoughts on how you can identify and address the real underlying issues plaguing audit quality! 🙂 #TheAuditAlchemist

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The FRC issued its latest inspection report for major local audits on Friday. Due to the audit backlog only 10 inspections were carried out in the FRC’s 2022/23 cycle - 6 health and 4 local government audits. Local government work had to be restricted to audits completed during the 2022 calendar year, so reviews were restricted to 2020/21 accounts. All 10 audits were assessed as good or only requiring limited improvements. The following areas were identified for minor improvements: •             audit procedures over expenditure •             work on the valuation of operational property and •             Value for Money arrangements The report sets out how it will ensure that future audit quality inspections support the government’s proposed measures for the audit backlog. The report also sets out the current position from the cross system statement which we await including the statutory deadline for completion of delayed local government audits and a reset of the local audit system. The FRC proposes performing no routine audit quality inspections of major local audits for financial years up to and including the year ended 31 March 2023,  unless there is a clear case in the public interest to do so. The FRC report includes key areas of audit risk which interestingly does not include property, plant and equipment and indicates that these usefully for local government are fraud risks, expenditure on services, exposure to commercial risk the application of the revised Auditing Standard on risk identification and assessment (ISA (UK) 315).  It does comment that the complexity in accounting for and auditing property, plant and equipment could be significantly reduced if local government bodies were allowed to account for operational property on a different basis, for example at cost (or deemed cost).  We are not clear that historical cost is an improvement in the usefulness of such information for the users of the accounts as it will not transparently reflect the resources being used to support services.   See links below: https://lnkd.in/ehN4bW9d

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As a Statutory Auditor or a third party auditor representing (let’s say) a Bank have you leveraged a SOC report for a third party service provider ? If yes, what were the things you generally looked at, may be any of the below: 1] Scope of the report  2] Audit period  3] Service Auditor’s Opinion  4] Subject matter of the SOC report (if it’s a SOC 1 report) 5] Trust Service criteria applicable (if it’s a SOC 2 report) 6] Mapping of the controls that are required to be covered in the SOC report from a Stat audit perspective And many other aspects (you can mention in the comments any other checkpoints) However, have you ever verified whether the CPA or the CPA firm who has signed the report has an active CPA license ? Here is a tool CPAverify.org (which is free and open to the public) is a CPA lookup tool populated by official state regulatory data sent from Boards of Accountancy to a central database. It is a single-source database of licensed CPAs and CPA firms. So, would you add this check in your audit or questionnaire next time when you will leverage a SOC report from a third party ? #soc2 #assurance   #advisory #tprm #vendorrisk #riskmanagement #riskassessment