Audit Assurance and Compliances Services - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Audit Assurance and Compliances Services. Answer: Introduction: At the time of carrying on the audit operation of the organizations, it is the duty of the auditors to follow the generally accepted standards of auditing. As per the guidelines of auditors independence, the independent internal along with the external auditors of the companies should be independent from any kinds of financial interest from the financial properties of the audit clients. In the process of auditors independence, there most important aspects are honesty, objectivity and integrity of the auditors (Reding et al. 2013). As per different kinds of auditing standards and principles, it is expected that any kinds of relationship between the auditors and the audited organization should not influence the audit opinion of the companies. It is required that based on the analysis of the financial statements of the companies, the auditors will deliver an unbiased as well as honest professional audit opinion. In the first situation: Two types of services are there in the audit profession. They are Audit services and the Non-Audit services. The auditors provide non-audit services by going out of scope. Some of the major non-audit services in the audit profession are to help the audit clients I the promotion of the businesses, to provide tax consolation, to provide various kinds of management services and many others (Svanstrm 2013). The basic objective behind the providence of these kinds of non-audit services is to earn some additional incomes or to get some non-monetary advantages. The impairment of audit services is a major result of rendering various kinds of non-audit services to the audit clients. Thus, it can be understood that the auditors must taken into consideration the effects of non-audit services. The major stakeholders of the businesses and the accounting regulators often find to criticize the auditors regarding the quality of the audit opinions. In this regard, advocacy thr eat is another major threat in the audit profession that also needs to be taken into consideration. The advocacy threat arises when people raise questions about the quality of audit opinion as they feel that the quality of audit operation is being compromised. One of the major damages of advocacy threat is the compromise of honesty and integrity in the process of auditing and the auditors independence is damaged. In the Second situation: In the provided situation, it is essential to mention that the auditors independence gets threatened when an individual auditors takes any kinds of financial or non-financial benefits from the audit clients as these kinds of benefit are not considered as audit fees. When an auditor receives any kinds of financial or non-financial benefits from the audit clients that is not mentioned in the audit agreement, at that time the auditors independence gets affected badly (Christensen, Glover and Wood 2012). As per the provided case study, the auditor was offered a voucher of holiday package from the clients end. The auditors independence will be highly affected if the auditor accepts the particular offer. The reason is that the auditor will receive non-monetary benefits from the client. Furthermore, the threat to auditors independence will be increasing if the auditor keeps receiving these kinds of non-monetary or monetary benefits from the clients. In the Third Situation: Spouse, children, parents, siblings and other family members can be considered as the family members of the auditors. According to one of the guidelines of auditors independence, the auditor must not have any relatives in the audit firm in which the auditors are working (Arens, Elder and Mark 2012). On the other hand, there are various kinds of financial interests; they are debt guarantee, short-term securities, long-term securities, shares, dividends and many others. As per the information of the provided case study, the father of the accountants is in the post of financial controller in the mentioned organization. As per the principles of auditors independence, Michael should not accept the offer as it is against the standards and principles of auditors independence. In the Fourth Situation: As per the current situation, a close relationship can be seen among the employees, clients, officers and directors of the organization. They all are influenced by the risk factor of the organization and these risk factors align them with the business environment. One of the major blames on the auditors is that they become associated and sympathetic with the clients (William Jr, Glover and Prawitt 2016). The close relationship with the clients creates a bonding of trust with the clients and this process helps to represent the data in the accurate way. In addition, there are instances where the auditors have already acquired the necessary information as the auditor in the case study has been a part of LTH. The auditor was responsible for the continuation of the tax calculation for the year ended 30 June 2015. Hence, the auditors cannot audit their own work, as it is not feasible. Some major safeguards are there in relation to auditors independence. They are discussed as below: One of the major ways to reduce the threat of auditors independence is the rotation of the audit partners of the organizations. The rotation of audit partners for the organizations eradicates the threat of knowledge of information and the process of self-centeredness. No cost is associated in this process. Apart from this, institutional as well as historical knowledge will be available to the audit team members so that they can maintain efficiency and high quality of the audit programs (Council 2012). The presence of an efficient audit committee cannot be ignored in the process of maintaining the transparency in the process of auditing. The presence of transparency ensures that the independence of the auditors can be maintained in the most appropriate manner. In this regard, audit team must be well qualified and they must have all the required audit resources to complete the audit operation in the proper way (Dart and Chandler 2013). The main aim of an independent auditor is to contribute towards the maintenance of audit quality and independence of the auditors at the same time. In this regard, one of the major characteristics of efficient auditors is efficient oversight that helps him/her to consider auditors independence from political as well as professional point of view. The maintained transparency in the audit process will ensure the true and fair representation of confidential business data and information (Willoughby, Carmona and Momparler 2012). At the time of conducting the audit operations, the auditors must follow the ethical standards and guidelines of Code of Ethics and Auditing Standards. In this regard, the international set of ethical standards and high quality independence are important aspects in the process of accounting (Hossain 2013). Involved Risks with Spare Parts Industry: In this part of the provided case study, risk management is explained in such a way that it is a major element in order to manage the spare parts of the organizations. However, in most of the cases, it has been seen that the execution process of stock management is very poor. As per the business point of view, there are two elements of risk management; they are analysis of the risk and making strategies to reduce those risks as far as possible. Some of the major risks in the business organizations include commercial risk, reputation risk, health and safety risks and many others. Downtime loss takes the business organizations to financial losses as the organizations fails to math with the recent technological changes and fails to implement risk management strategies for the spare parts. Two types of business risks can be seen that are associated with the purchase of spare parts and the process of auditing; they are Strategic Risk and Operation al Risks (Sodhi and Tang 2012). Strategic risk does not have connection to the trade approaches of the organization; it also does not have any link with the selection of wrong or right products for the business of the organization. Strategic risks have connection with the process of inventory management as it helps to manage the spare parts of the organization in the most appropriate and efficient way. In the process of selecting the wrong and right products, the business organizations use to adopt the strategy of ad-hoc. In this process, the organizations use to appoint experienced managers who will provide their valuable judgment on the issues of daily procedures (Knechel and Salterio 2016). In order to bring standardization in the financial management activities, it is necessary for the companies to select certain aspects. In this regard, the business organizations need to focus on investment financing in order to avoid the various kinds of financial losses in the management of spare parts. In this process of ri sk management, the organizational managers need to apply their downtime experiences. Apart from this, they also need to apply the experience of losses in order to management of risks in relation to spare parts. After this process, it is needed for the business organizations to adopt the ad-hoc strategy that will be appropriate in nature in the provided situation. In case the business organizations fail to implement the strategies of ad-hoc, it is needed for those business organizations to find other alternative strategies for the management of spare parts. After that, the alternative ways need to be evaluated to mitigate or avoid the various kinds of losses (Chen, Sohal and Prajogo 2013). The main association of the operational risk is the operational downtown of the business organizations. In addition, the operational risk has also link with the selection of various approaches and their level of execution. Business organizations that fail to execute in the effective ways need to develop the strategies of strategic management. At the time of making the decision about business standardization, the business organizations need to take the policy of stocking and they need to take the steps to implement them. It is the responsibility of the business organizations to manage the various aspects of operational risk in the businesses. This process assists in the proper management of the inventory stocks of the organization (DeFond and Zhang 2014). The Impact of Audit Risks on Account Balances: In this particular section of the provided case study, the associated is considered as the inherent risks. In addition, the major reason of the occurrence of inherent risks is the errors or omission of data and information in the annual statements of the business organizations due to the failure in the internal control of the organizations. There are various instances when the inherent risks take place such as when the nature of financial transactions is complex and when the managers fail to deliver correct judgment on the financial projections. Various kinds of risks affect the different account balances of the organizations. In this regard, some transactions are highly associated with inherent risks like the management of stocks. Hence, it largely affects the balances of various accounts (Zadek, Evans and Pruzan 2013). Various kinds of associated risks can be seen in the business organizations; two of them are Operational Risks and Detection Risks. In addition, it is not always possible for the auditors to detect the misstated financial figures that are associated with the annual statements of the organization. In case the auditors fail to detect the misstated figures in the financial statements, the business organizations use to organize substantive test procedures for various kinds of future practices. In this time, the process of inherent tests helps the auditors to conclude that there are not any significant errors found at the time of the development of financial reports of the business organizations. Moreover, in this process, the auditors of the organization assess the accountants of the organization. Hence, one aspect comes to the front from the above analysis that most of the accounts of the business organizations are susceptible in the nature. On the other hand, it has connection with the purchase account, revenue account and sales account and inventory account of the organization (Wang et al. 2013). References Arens, A.A., Elder, R.J. and Mark, B., 2012.Auditing and assurance services: an integrated approach. Boston: Prentice Hall. Chen, J., Sohal, A.S. and Prajogo, D.I., 2013. Supply chain operational risk mitigation: a collaborative approach.International Journal of Production Research,51(7), pp.2186-2199. Christensen, B.E., Glover, S.M. and Wood, D.A., 2012. 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