Use Of Internal Audit By Australian Companies

Among the outgrowths in the United States is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and similar legislation has been enacted or is being considered in other countries. This law extends the long-standing requirement for public companies to maintain systems of internal control, requiring management to certify and the independent auditor to attest to the effectiveness of those systems. Internal Control – Integrated Framework, which continues to stand the test of time, serves as the broadly accepted standard for satisfying those reporting requirements. This Enterprise Risk Management – Integrated Framework expands on internal control, providing a more robust and extensive focus on the broader subject of enterprise risk management. While it is not intended to and does not replace the internal control framework, but rather incorporates the internal control framework within it, companies may decide to look to this enterprise risk management framework both to satisfy their internal control needs and to move toward a fuller risk management process. Among the most critical challenges for managements is determining how much risk the entity is prepared to and does accept as it strives to create value. This report will better enable them to meet this challenge.

Collier (2009) claims that the fundamental role of the Board of the directors in a company is to apply risk management and to review the performance of the organisations’ internal control procedures; these two principal processes will support the Board in the setting of the strategic targets, the transformation of the targets into real products and services, the effective business overseeing, and the realistic reporting to the external stakeholders. Apart from the Board, the author suggests that an effective risk management framework must be facilitated by a risk management group, a chief risk officer, external and internal audits, and a mature organisational culture disseminated to the line managers and employees. Under the same concept, Hampton (2009) presented a flow gram that suggests the path towards the establishment of enterprise risk management, starting from the risk recognition and ending to the standardization of a risk evaluation process, having prior involved the Board, the risk owners and the accountable staff.

In BP’s case, while the CEO called for increased risk management, he never delivered. The company operated for cheaper and easier solutions in order to save the time and less the cost. Senior BP only focus on infractions that were highly likely with lower impacts with hardly any consideration of less likely, high impact risks. Working as a global corporation, internal communication is the most critical point to monitor and ensure the proper functions and efficiency on different aspects in operations. Unfortunately, the internal checking and auditing processes were found ineffective by the employers who feared of losing their jobs for raising safety concerns.

The audit risk model has provided a conceptual framework for auditing practice for more than 40 years. Despite practical difficulties in implementation and criticisms of its theoretical foundation, the model has been fairly effective in helping auditors analyze risks and use that analysis to determine the nature, timing, and extent of audit procedures (especially substantive procedures) in audits of financial statements. The audit risk model provides a conceptual framework for the risk assessment standards.

Even though The Schwan Food Company is a private company, since the company’s goal was to double its size in five years, establishing an internal audit function could provide assurance and consulting services to help the company achieve its objectives and expand globally. The four factors that may have caused The Schwan Food Company to change its internal control practices and corporate governance structure are,

Deborah S. Archambeault, F. T. (2008). The Need for an Internal Auditor Report to External Stakeholders to Improve Governance Transparency . American Accounting Association .

Most of these laws are used within an organization as well to help aid in the accurate reporting of the financial reports and help them organize internal and audit controls within the organization to prevent potential fraud and misappropriation of funds. Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 mandates that all preparers, auditors, analysts, and users operate and know the importance of governance and internal controls. (Huefner, 2011) The Treadway Commission’s (COSO) The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations lists the objectives of internal controls and its importance. (Huefner, 2011) Internal Controls have to be monitored often. These are controls that change overtime based on the needs and the functionality of the organization. Random audits are one way to identify problems that may arise with internal controls. If this is not done often, it suggests that there could be a weakness in internal controls. Weakness in controls leads to fraud to occur within a company. If there is no monitoring of the internal controls than there is a risk of fraudulent behavior among employees and potential misappropriation of funds when reporting financial reports to the federal government. There is no validity to financial reports created and the auditor or professional accountant completing the financial reports

An assessment of inherent risk is important for determining the possibility of material misstatement before considering internal control effectiveness (259). Obtaining an understanding of internal control is the basis for determining control risk (410). This understanding helps the auditor determine areas of weakness, which may require more attention. Analytical procedures indicate possible misstatements and unusual fluctuations requiring substantive tests of transactions or tests of details of balances for proof of misstatement occurrence. Substantive analytical procedures can also help reduce the sample sizes needed or certain tests of details of balances (406). Assessment of planned detection risk is the risk that material misstatements will not be discovered by the audit as planned and involves either disregarding internal control in the substantive approach resulting in more evidence being gathered or considering internal control in the reducing risk approach resulting in less evidence being gathered. Performing tests of controls is only necessary if one is following a reducing control risk approach. If following a substantive approach, the auditor can ignore testing controls

Professional trends, particularly the demand for faster reporting of financial information as suggested by Securities Exchange Commission’s (SEC) recent reporting period change[2], put pressure on auditors to rely on internal rather than more persuasive external evidence items (CICA, 1999; Bierstaker et al., 2001; Helms, 2002; Hunton et al., 2003; LeGrand, 2002; SEC, 2002, 2005).

Rittenburg, Larry. Johnstone, Karla. Gramling, Audrey. (2012) Auditing: A Business Risk Approach 8e. Mason: South-Western, Cengage Learning.

An overarching process to mitigate risk would be to institute an internal audit process. This role would report to senior management within the company or to the board of directors. The responsibilities would be to evaluate and improve the overall processes, policies and procedures for internal controls and risk management. The auditor(s) would move through each department, request the current policies and procedures, and then review the them for potential vulnerabilities or loop-holes. The audit would continue with reviewing how the policies and procedures are followed by the staff performing those functions. A report would be generated providing objective advice and guidance on risks and issues identified from the review of the policies, procedures, processes, and systems. Internal audit will provide assurance that current operations and management are performing as

“Risk oversight” describes the role of the board of directors in the risk management process in enterprise-wide. In risk oversight

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of external auditing in promoting good corporate governance. The role of auditors has been emphasized after the pass of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as a response to the accounting scandal of Enron. Even though auditors are hired and paid by the company, their role is not to represent or act in favor of the company, but to watch and investigate the company’s financials to protect the public from any material misstatements that can affect their decisions. As part of this role, the auditors assess the level of the company’s adherence to its own code of ethics.

Through the study carried out by Ge and McVay, the relationship between firm size and material weaknesses is revealed. For purposes of this study, the term ‘large audit firm’ refers to the Big 6 accounting firms of: BDO Seidman, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, Grant Thornton, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Ge and McVay reasoned that larger audit firms are expected to have more expertise and higher exposure to legal liability than smaller firms (Ge et al., 151). The research findings validated this hypothesis, proving large accounting firms to be positively correlated with internal control deficiencies. This asserts to the fact that larger firms have a greater depth of resources and are subjected to greater oversight, as exemplified by the PCAOB’s annual reviews (Ge et al., 153).

The role of internal audit is to provide independent declaration that an organization’s threatadministration, governance and internal control processes are functioning effectively. Internal auditors deal with concerns that are essentially important to the existence and success of any organization. Unlike external auditors, they aspect beyond financial possibilities and statements to reflect wider problems such as the organization’s reputation, development, its power on the location and the approach it treats its organizations.In summary, internal accountantssupport organizations to thrive.