The case of the Kleenmaid Group’s collapse
Commencement of the Kleenmaid business was started out in 1980 by Andrew Young, who had extensive knowledge in the appliance repair industry. At first, the business commenced as an appliance parts distributor and traded through Orchard KM. Afterwards the Kleenmaid Group expanded their operation ranges by providing refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and cooking appliance and so on, finally consisting of 2 separate groups known as the Orchard Group and the Kleenmaid Corporate Group (“Corporate Group”), respectively. In 2007, Kleenmaid’s operations began to transition from the Orchard Group to the Kleenmaid Corporate Group under an informal restructure of the business. Before its collapse, the
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Professional scepticism is an attitude which is adopted by an auditor to conduct the audit. The auditor needs to maintain a questioning mind and seek independent evidence to corroborate information provided by client. In the aspect of professional judgement, an auditor uses the level of expertise, knowledge and training to conduct an audit. The auditor should judge the information source’s reliability and the evidence’s sufficiency. Due care means that auditor needs to apply standards and document each stage of the audit process when conducting an audit. In the case of Kleenmaid, the auditor needs to adopt an attitude of professional scepticism to recognize the possibility that a material misstatement could exist because of fraud. They must remain independent of their client and search for evidence thoroughly to validate information provided by Kleenmaid’s board of directors. Furthermore, the auditor has the responsibility to assess the risk of fraud by considering the incentives and pressures, and opportunities to perpetrate a fraud, and attitudes and rationalisation to justify a fraud. In the case, Kleenmaid had debts of nearly $100 million in 2009, which is the significant incentive or pressure considered by the auditor to commit a fraud. In addition, Kleenmaid operated as an importer and distributor of whitegoods, with 22 outlets, 15 franchises, and 22 staffs. This means the company will have a high volume of
The media article indicated that Coles was facing more than $4 million fines, as ACCC argued its behaviour of lying about bread freshness could constitute breach of consumer law (SMH 2015). As the total amount of fines could be considerable, along with a negative impact on reputation, Coles could have entered into financial distress. The reason I chose this article was that most Australian people shop in Coles every week, thus the case is closely related to our life which is worth talking about. Besides, the article covered issue of sales and non-compliance of law which often attract auditors’ attention. The event mentioned in the article posed a risk to auditors in terms of inherent risk. Inherent risk means an auditor fails to identify or correctly understand the business risks that could result in material misstatement (Clubb 2015b). It is apparent that Coles’ behaviour is a non-compliance of law, which is included in business risk (Clubb 2015b). Therefore, auditors need to better understand the event highlighted in the article to increase the possibility of uncovering material misstatement. Auditors are held accountable for the problem because the problem may relate to potential misstatement in financial statements. If an auditor fails to uncover the misstatement, it is likely that he or she will issue a false opinion. However, auditor should express a true and fair view to increase the confidence of the external
PCAOB describes professional skepticism as a general duty of care that needs to be applied by the auditor throughout the duration of the audit engagement. Professional skepticism involves the auditor having a clear and questioning mind regarding the assertions that are presented by management or other client personnel. The auditor is instructed to not take the words or data presented by management as sufficient and appropriate audit evidence but rather the auditor needs to thoroughly audit the evidence with a questioning mind to achieve reasonable assurance about the persuasiveness of the evidence. Skepticism is composed of three elements; auditor attributes, mindset and actions. The PCAOB
This paper analyzes a fictional privately held company, Smackey Dog Foods, Inc. as well as its fictional auditor, Keller CPAs. The analysis is based on a Keller Graduate School of Management scenario and a series of questions developed to address concepts learned throughout the External Auditing course. Concepts include: SEC influence, audit planning, audit stages, internal controls, confirmations, sample size, obtaining evidence, inventory, warehousing cycles, Professional Rules of Conduct, and auditor’s legal liability. Each of these auditing concepts are explained and then applied to the scenario between Smackey Dog Foods, Inc. and Keller CPAs.
The audit team focused on preforming groundwork analytical procedures. A comparison of the performance of Smackey’s Dog Foods Inc to other similar industries was used to validate the original assessment of the risks. Performing the procedures helped detect areas that pose a high risk of the material misstatements. Another important part of the planning of the audit was to set a balance of materiality that is appropriate. The situations that
Its first product was an American washing machine sold through appliance service agents. These agents recommended the Kleenmaid product while attending other calls of washing machines through customers. Kleenmaid later expanded into making other products such as cooking appliances, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners sourced through a variety of different suppliers. After seven years of operation Kleenmaid decided to start selling through its own network of cooperation owned and franchised stores. By 2009 Kleenmaid had 20 outlet operating across five states, and 2008 the company was reported to have over 400 employers and was listed in Business Review Weekly’s listing of the top 500 Australian companies.
Information technology (IT) has become increasingly sophisticated and complex, escalating the ongoing change within Kudler Fine Foods. As IT information is adopted within the organization, automation controls many processes within the Kudler’s environment. As Kudler has become more virtualized, a need for increased trust and assurance in the relationships with consumers, partners and suppliers. The swell of e-commerce business has created new ways of conducting an audit. Statement on Auditing Standard 94 (SAS 94) requires that the auditor understands the technological aspect of the organization in order to grasp the internal controls and the assessment of control risks for a proper audit
The Kleenmaid Group was a retail whitegoods business which operated a chain of Group owned and franchised stores across Australia. Each of the 14 companies within the Kleenmaid Group went into voluntary administration and were placed into liquidation on 25 May 2009. Mr Andrew Young (the Defendant) was a director of numerous Kleenmaid companies at the time of the collapse. The Defendant pleaded not guilty to the following charges:
With its first location opening in 1888 and its incorporation as The Kroger Grocery and Baking Company, today, The Kroger Company is one of the world’s largest grocery retailers, with 2014 fiscal sales totaling $108.5 billion. The company operates 2,620 stores under nearly two dozen banners in 34 states across the country and employs nearly 400,000 associates. The company has various store varieties like supermarkets, price-impact warehouse stores, and multi-department stores, with 94 percent of total company sales derived from food stores. Kroger operates three-tier distribution system, the only major supermarket company in the United States to do so. The company also operates 37 food processing and manufacturing facilities where they produce private-label products. The Kroger Company also operates drugstore, convenient stores, fuel stations and fine jewelry stores (“Operations”). To fulfill their commitment as a company, they live by six core values: honesty, integrity, respect, diversity, safety, and inclusion (“The Kroger Co.”).
This paper explores the ZZZZ Best Company which was begun by a 16 year old individual who was able to pull the wool over the eyes of many customers, investors and auditors. This paper will define the difference between review and audit when it comes to financial reports, comments on the procedures provided with regard to the management assertion of occurrence, verification of payments for jobs and how they can lead auditors to improper conclusion, the purpose of predecessor-successor auditor communications, as well as whom needs to initiate the communication and information that needs to be obtained. The paper also addresses the limitations of the confidentiality agreement and how and when
The chief executive of the company was closely working with the vendors whose confirmations were vital in the auditing work and hence they could have submitted false confirmations. The auditing firm established a national risk management program for its clients and so national reviews were done to identify the high risk items in the financial statement. The vendor allowances were particularly high but they were not documented. As such, the auditors were supposed to demand for the documentations and compare them with the real figures. It is however noted that most of the documentations received were non-standard and this could have led to a different audit report given that vendor allowances were earlier identified as a high risk area. Inventory management was found to be poor especially in the allowances for inventory reserves. The audit firm was therefore obliged to carry out a thorough evaluation of the inventory reserves and determine whether it was reasonable. The valuation was also supposed to include all classes of inventory but for the case of the company, the evaluation excluded instances where no sales had been made. Hence, this evaluation could not accurately represent the position of the inventory reserve in the company. (Waters,2003)
In addition to the audit plan for the analyzed processes, of Kudler Fine Foods, encouragement of ways to improve audit documentation and process, by using computer technology was addressed to Kudler’s management team. As a result, Kudler Fine Foods management team is considering incorporating proposed computer assisted auditing techniques (CAATs) within its systems. CAATs will increase efficiency levels of an auditor’s personal productivity during analysis and data extraction of the audit which is beneficial to the performance of Kudler. CAAT will also service as a validation agent providing assurance of data integrity and reliability to the operations of Kudler Fine Foods for its users. CAAT surfaces inconsistencies that can
Integrity might cause problems in this case as the main persons in this organization are family members and there are also family members with high functions in the bank and JRW Realty with which Prefab has close business relations. Moreover, the members of the audit and compensation committee are not all independent of the firm and therefore, the likelihood of fraud or material misstatements in the financial statements is quite high. The profitability of the engagement to the auditor should be considered as well. Due to the extensive investigation the auditor has to do, especially due to the relationships between the people at the top management and the independence of the audit and compensation committee, the profitability might be a concern. Furthermore, from the analysis of the business risks of accepting the audit it can be concluded that there are several severe problem areas in which fraud or material misstatements in the financial statements can take place. At the Prefab Sprout Company the risk of fraud or material misstatements is considered to be very high and therefore, the engagement should not be accepted.
Professional skepticism practices as neutral but discipline approach to detection and investigation. Per SAS No. 1 it suggests that an auditor neither assumers that management is dishonest or assumes unquestionable honesty. Professional skepticism requires fraud examiners to “pull on thread” in which means Red flags are warning signal or something that demands attention or provokes an irate reaction. Red Flag symptoms of fraud may be divided into at least six categories: unexplained accounting anomalies, exploited internal control weaknesses, identified analytical anomalies where non
The aim of this essay is to study the function of external auditors in order to analyze why it is important to be independent. The primary mission of external auditors is to review and evaluate all the financial records of a company or corporation. They provide an objective opinion on the organization’s financial statement and effectiveness of the accounting polices in order to help management to make decisions. If the independence of the external auditors is impaired, the public will doubt the quality of professional auditing services, and the consequence would be very serious, just like the bankruptcy of Enron led to the disorganization of Arthur Andersen, once a giant accounting company in the world. In order to maintain and increase
This article initiates with the introduction on what is audit planning. It basically addresses the audit plan strategy of K & S Corporation limited’s Financial Statements. Being an external auditor of the company, key factors to be considered in auditing the financials of the subject company have been discussed in the article. The most significant accounts at risk being materially misstated have been critically examined citing the possible risks associated with such accounts. Last but not the least, the article concludes with recommendations with respect to audit assessment plan of the company. Hence, this article seeks to act as a ready reckoner guide for an audit manager in audit planning of K & S Corporation Limited.