What is Inherent risk?
Inherent risk has been defined in the standards as follows: The susceptibility of an assertion about a class of transaction, account balance or disclosure to a misstatement that could be material, either individually or when aggregated with other misstatements, before consideration of any related controls. Simply put, management make assertions in financial statements which might […]
What are the FIVE Elements of an assurance engagement?
According to International Framework on Assurance Engagements, there are five elements of any assurance engagement which are as follows: A three party relationship involving practitioner (auditor), a responsible part (client) and intended users (users of financial statements) Subject matter; against which assurance is required by the intended users Criteria; which will be used by the […]
What is the difference between Internal Audit Function and Internal Control System?
Let’s refresh some important areas before we get to the answer to this question so that no room is left for confusions. I will be having a quick go through each topic that is relevant. Users require financial statements to fulfill their information needs and in order to reach good decisions they must have accurate […]
What is Audit Evidence?
IAASB auditing standards use professional code of ethics issued by International Ethical Standards Board of Accountants (IESBA) to describe the ethical requirements for conducting an audit. However, accountancy bodies all over the world have their own ethical standards for their members working as accounting and auditors. One common requirement in every ethical standard is that […]
How sequentially numbered vouchers help auditors?
First of all let’s clear our confusions about the term Voucher itself. Voucher is any document on which an information about the business activity is recorded and the same is approved/authenticated/authorized by the relevant person in the management. Thus voucher is any document that proves that a particular transaction did happened and the person responsible […]
What is Sampling risk in auditing?
In order to express an opinion, auditor needs sufficient appropriate audit evidence. To obtain audit evidence, auditor applies range of audit procedures. But due to limited time and resources and also to conduct audit efficiently, auditor does not apply audit procedures to the whole population in consideration. Instead, he carefully selects reasonably small proportion, which […]
What is Non-sampling Risk?
Before we look at the definition of non-sampling risk, let’s understand the background why we are even discussing this question i.e. why we even have something with the name “non-sampling risk” In order to express an opinion, auditor needs sufficient appropriate audit evidence. To obtain audit evidence, auditor applies range of audit procedures. But due […]
What is the difference between negative assurance and positive assurance?
Positive assurance is a positive assertion or in other words when opinion is stated in “positive form”. On the other hand, negative assurance is simply an opinion expressed in negative wordings. We call negative assurances negative because of the sentence structure. Sentences that contain NOT in them are called negative sentences or negation But such […]

