What are audit procedures?

The audit procedures, are investigative techniques that can be applied in a set of circumstances and facts referring to the audited financial statements, from which the auditor compiles the information necessary to substantiate his opinion.

Mostly the auditor lacks the knowledge required to support her opinion on the first test, so Therefore, you must investigate each of the sets of facts, through the application of various strategies continuous.

The different organization, accounting and control systems, in addition to the operational details of businesses, make it difficult to apply rigid test systems for state investigation financial

In this sense, the auditor must provide, through a judgment, her decision regarding the selection of strategies or most common audit procedures that will apply in each of the cases and thus obtain the security that bases its opinion in an objective and professional way.

Characteristics of the audit procedures

The elaboration ofmanagement audit procedures, contains everything that is needed for the audit process. Due to this, it includes a wide field of action that requires a lot of mental discipline and great professional capacity.

The flexibility of these procedures is applied during the process through general programs that will be studied by those responsible for the procedure. In each of the programs, a schedule of work activities identified with the names of those responsible must be planned.

Among the characteristics that the applicable audit procedures, they find each other:

• It should be understood in a simple way.
• The program must seek to achieve the initial objective.
• The program must give the auditor the opportunity to investigate, examine and analyze in order to collect all the evidence he needs to make his judgment and recommendations.
• The program must be updated and developed with a broad critical sense.
• It must be designed taking into account the procedures that will be applied according to the company to be audited.

Scope of audit procedures

Because the operations or activities of companies are often repetitive and individual operations accumulate in large amounts, it is difficult to do a detailed investigation of each of the transactions that make up an item general.

Due to this, when the requirements of the quantities and similarities of the items are met, it is necessary to execute this type of procedure to investigate the sample of each of the individual operations to obtain from the result of said sample, the complete opinion on the departure.

This type of procedure is not only used for auditing, it is also applicable in other disciplines and it is known as selective tests within the audit field.

The relationship that exists between the investigated transactions is known as the scope of the applicable audit procedures and one of the relevant planning and execution tools This process.

Application of activities of the audit procedures

The management audit procedures, represent analytical methods of investigation and confirms that auditors should use it in their investigation, with the purpose of acquiring all the evidence they need to support their opinion, conclusions and recommendations.

The selection of the most appropriate procedures will be chosen by the person responsible for the activity and must take into account the objectives and fundamental scope of the activity and the risks that may arise present.

These procedures must include for the acquisition of evidence the activities shown below:

• Survey: These are the activities that document how the procedure is performed.
• Tracking: Used to progressively monitor the operations process and rebuild the flow of activities through documentation.
• Investigation: Consists of conducting interviews with employees and all those who are linked to operations.
• Revision: It is the analysis of the characteristics that an activity, document and report must comprise. It is also used to choose the operations to be verified during the audit process.
• Survey: It is done through the use of questionnaires related to the activities that will be analyzed.
• Observation: Refers to the visual verification of operations during the practice of company activities.
• Comparison: It is used to compare the information contained in the records against the document support of the verified transactions.
• Comparison: It is the establishment of the differences that are presented in the norms, executed operations, practices, criteria and processes that are used regularly.

In addition to collection procedures, other evidence collection methods should be used To capture information, based on various tests selected by the auditor, these evidences can to be:

• Documentaries: They are acquired from the information that includes contracts, records, reports, actions and files, among others.
• Analytics: They are obtained from comparisons, trends, calculations, studies, comparisons or by investigating transactions and variations.
• Physical: They come from the direct intervention of tangible assets, acts, employee or processes that must be documented by real samples.
• IT: They are obtained from the computer and electronic supports and from the programs and applications that the auditor uses.

Advantages of audit procedures

The financial audit procedures done correctly, they get the following benefits:

• Create efficient financial work routines.
• Ensures commitment to auditing standards and principles.
• Consolidate responsibility in all scheduled processes.
• Improves the labor review modality of supervisors.
• Prevents skipping of important processes.
• Facilitates tests that demonstrate work efficiency at necessary times.

To conclude, it can be said that audit procedures can be considered as the set of methods that the auditor must apply to a certain item or set of financial facts that are linked to the system that requires an investigation, to acquire the necessary information, from which it will issue its point of view on the results.