What is the difference between Generally Accepted Auditing Standards and auditing procedures?

Answer 1

In the US, Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (US GAAS) are 10 principles developed by the American Society of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

These standards provide the criteria (ground rules) for conducting every audit in such a way that the CPA conducting the audit is able to properly express an opinion on a client's financial statements and give reasonable assurance to users of those statements about whether (or not) the statements fairly present the company's financial condition in all material respects.

Among other things, GAAS requires that an auditor must: have adequate technical training and proficiency, exercise due professional care, and maintain independence, in order to properly perform any audit. There are additional US GAAS standards that apply to Fieldwork (the actual planning and performance of the audit) and Reporting (statements that the auditor must include in any report the auditor issues about the audited financial statements). A more detailed statement of US GAAS principles is readily available online.

Think of GAAS as the "competence/thoroughness/quality" standards that apply to every financial statement audit. For publicly-owned companies, US GAAS also includes any auditing standards issued by the SEC.

Audit procedures, however, are the individual steps, the nuts-and-bolts procedures and tests used to verify account balances and other management assertions during a given audit. These procedures are planned by the auditor and outlined in an audit program, which gives the audit team a "roadmap" to follow for this particular audit.

Although GAAS requires very few specific audit procedures (or else documented justification by the CPA of why any required procedure was omitted, and of what procedure was done instead to make up for it), in general, GAAS doesn't concern itself with testing what is on a given client's financial statements.

That is where auditing procedures (aka audit testing procedures) come into play. Auditing procedures are those tests and procedures used to test this client's actual account balances, and/or to gain knowledge of and test the design and effectiveness of this client's internal control.

In any given audit engagement, it is generally up to the auditor's professional judgment to select the most appropriate auditing procedures in order to reasonable satisfy himself that the client's financial statements fairly present the client's true financial condition. The auditor must always follow GAAS, but he has a good deal of latitude in choosing which auditing procedures he will perform.

One example of an auditing procedure is a confirmationrequested from an outside party; this is used to see whether the client's records match those of an outside third party. For example, the auditor might send a confirmation form to the client's customers, asking them to verify the amounts the client says they owe. This tests the accuracy of the client's reported Accounts Receivable, and is also a way to test for possible fictitious sales reported by the client on its financial statements.

A second (and very important) audit procedure is to observe the client's inventory count at the financial statement year-end date. This procedure is used to test for the existence of the inventory, and the reasonableness of the value at which the client has reported it.

Some audit procedures are designed to determine those areas in which the client has a well-designed and effective internal control system over the recording of financial information in its accounting records (and therefore in its financial statements). Other audit procedures are designed to directly test the amounts on the financial statements (account balances). Still other procedures involve ratio analysis and other analytical procedures to identify unusual relationships between related account balances and reasonableness of estimated amounts. Some procedures can accomplish more than objective.