17. Private Limited having its office at Bangalore and operations spread across Southern India, had a discussion with its statutory auditors regarding the audit plan and the timelines.

In the past years, there have been significant delays in completion of audit work and the management wanted that for the current year, audit should get completed on time. For doing this, the audit team suggested that the information for the purpose of audit should be ready on time and only then the timelines as agreed can be achieved.

On the basis of the discussions with the client & the auditors and internal discussions amongst the audit team members, a detailed audit programme was prepared by the audit team for the current year's audit.

But the audit team discussed that they will not document this audit programme till the completion of the audit work because at various stages, the work may require changes. If the audit team documents the audit programme then it would create problems later on at the time of assembling of the audit file wherein the audit team would have to show the changes made by them in the audit programme during the course of the audit.

You are required to share your views in respect of this understanding and approach of the auditor.

(a) The decision of audit team regarding not documenting the audit programme is very good as this would avoid unnecessary problems of documentation of changes made in the audit programme at the time of assembly of file.

(b) Instead of considering the audit programme, the audit team could have prepared a checklist. In case of a checklist, such problem will not arise. Because in case of a checklist if any changes are made then the final checklist can be kept in the file along with old working checklist used during the audit.

(c) The approach of the audit team not to document audit programme is not correct. The audit team needs to document it properly at the time of planning stage itself and any changes made after that should also be documented with explanations.

(d) The decision of audit team not to document the audit programme is not correct. Their Concern that the changes may arise in the audit programme is valid, however, to take care of that, the audit team can take approval from the ICAI later on when those changes will be made. The audit team will have to document the changes and the approval note of the ICAI.





















Ans : (c) The approach of the audit team not to document audit programme is not correct. The audit team needs to document it properly at the time of planning stage itself and any changes made after that should also be documented with explanations.

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