The Big Four[edit]

Greenwood et al. (1990)[6] defined the audit firm as professional partnership which has a
decentralized organization relationship between the national head office and local offices. Local
offices can make most decision except for the drawing up professional standard and maintaining it.
The Big Four are the four largest international professional services networks, offering audit,
assurance, tax, consulting, advisory, actuarial, corporate finance, and legal services. They handle
the vast majority of audits for publicly traded companies as well as many private companies, creating
an oligopoly in auditing large companies. It is reported that the Big Four audit 99% of the companies
in the FTSE 100, and 96% of the companies in the FTSE 250 Index, an index of the leading mid-
cap listing companies.[7] The Big Four firms are shown below, with their latest publicly available data.
None of the Big Four firms is a single firm; rather, they are professional services networks. Each is a
network of firms, owned and managed independently, which have entered into agreements with
other member firms in the network to share a common name, brand and quality standards. Each
network has established an entity to co-ordinate the activities of the network. In one case (KPMG),
the co-ordinating entity is Swiss, and in three cases (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu,
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young) the co-ordinating entity is a UK limited company.
Those entities do not themselves perform external professional services, and do not own or control
the member firms. They are similar to law firm networks found in the legal profession. In many cases
each member firm practises in a single country, and is structured to comply with the regulatory
environment in that country. In 2007 KPMG announced a merger of four member firms (in the United
Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) to form a single firm. Ernst & Young also
includes separate legal entities which manage three of its four areas: Americas, EMEIA (Europe,
The Middle East, India and Africa), and Asia-Pacific. (Note: the Japan area does not have a
separate area management entity). These firms coordinate services performed by local firms within
their respective areas but do not perform services or hold ownership in the local entities.[8] This group
was once known as the "Big Eight", and was reduced to the "Big Six" and then "Big Five" by a series
of mergers. The Big Five became the Big Four after the demise of Arthur Andersenin 2002, following
its involvement in the Enron scandal.

Costs[edit]
Costs of audit services can vary greatly dependent upon the nature of the entity, its transactions,
industry, the condition of the financial records and financial statements, and the fee rates of the CPA
firm.[9][10] A commercial decision such as the setting of audit fees is handled by companies and their
auditors. Directors are responsible for setting the overall fee as well as the audit committee. The
fees are set at a level that could not lead to audit quality being compromised.[11]

History[edit]
Audit of government expenditure[edit]

National Audit Office Logo (United Kingdom)[12]

The earliest surviving mention of a public official charged with auditing government expenditure is a
reference to the Auditor of the Exchequer in England in 1314. The Auditors of the Imprest were
established under Queen Elizabeth I in 1559 with formal responsibility for auditing Exchequer
payments. This system gradually lapsed and in 1780, Commissioners for Auditing the Public
Accounts were appointed by statute. From 1834, the Commissioners worked in tandem with
the Comptroller of the Exchequer, who was charged with controlling the issuance of funds to the
government.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Ewart Gladstone initiated major reforms of public finance
and Parliamentary accountability. His 1866 Exchequer and Audit Departments Act required all
departments, for the first time, to produce annual accounts, known as appropriation accounts. The
Act also established the position of Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) and an Exchequer and
Audit Department (E&AD) to provide supporting staff from within the civil service. The C&AG was
given two main functions – to authorise the issue of public money to government from the Bank of
England, having satisfied himself that this was within the limits Parliament had voted – and to audit
the accounts of all Government departments and report to Parliament accordingly.
Auditing of UK government expenditure is now carried out by the National Audit Office.
The Australian National Audit Office conducts all financial statement audits for entities controlled by
the Australian Government.[13]

Governance and oversight[edit]

Seal of the United StatesGovernment Accountability Office[14]

In the United States, the SEC has generally deferred to the accounting industry (acting through
various organisations throughout the years) as to the accounting standards for financial reporting,
and the U.S. Congress has deferred to the SEC.
This is also typically the case in other developed economies. In the UK, auditing guidelines are set
by the institutes (including ACCA, ICAEW, ICAS and ICAI) of which auditing firms and individual
auditors are members. While in Australia, the rules and professional code of ethics are set by
The Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia (ICAA), CPA Australia (CPA) and The National
Institute of Accountants (NIA).[15]
Accordingly, financial auditing standards and methods have tended to change significantly only after
auditing failures. The most recent and familiar case is that of Enron. The company succeeded in
hiding some important facts, such as off-book liabilities, from banks and shareholders.[16] Eventually,
Enron filed for bankruptcy, and (as of 2006) is in the process of being dissolved. One result of this
scandal was that Arthur Andersen, then one of the five largest accountancy firms worldwide, lost
their ability to audit public companies, essentially killing off the firm.
A recent trend in audits (spurred on by such accounting scandals as Enron and Worldcom) has been
an increased focus on internal control procedures, which aim to ensure the completeness, accuracy
and validity of items in the accounts, and restricted access to financial systems. This emphasis on
the internal control environment is now a mandatory part of the audit of SEC-listed companies, under
the auditing standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) set up by
the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Many countries have government sponsored or mandated organizations who develop and maintain
auditing standards, commonly referred to generally accepted auditing standards or GAAS. These
standards prescribe different aspects of auditing such as the opinion, stages of an audit, and
controls over work product (i.e., working papers).
Some oversight organisations require auditors and audit firms to undergo a third-party quality review
periodically to ensure the applicable GAAS is followed.

Stages of an audit[edit]
The following are the stages of a typical audit:[1]

Phase I Plan and Design an Audit Approach[edit]

 Accept Client and Perform Initial Planning.
 Understand the Client’s Business and Industry.
 What should auditors understand?[17]
 The relevant industry, regulatory, and other external factors including the applicable
financial reporting framework
 The nature of the entity
 The entity's selection and application of accounting policies
 The entity's objectives and strategies, and the related business risks that may result in
material misstatement of the financial statements
 The measurement and review of the entity's financial performance
 Internal control relevant to the audit
 Assess Client’s Business Risk
 Set Materiality and Assess Accepted Audit Risk (AAR) and Inherent Risk (IR).
 Understand Internal Control and Assess Control Risk (CR).
 Develop Overall Audit Plan and Audit Program
Phase II Perform Test of Controls and Substantive Test of
Transactions[edit]
 Test of Control: if the auditor plans to reduce the determined control risk, then the auditor should
perform the test of control, to assess the operating effectiveness of internal controls (e.g.
authorisation of transactions, account reconciliations, segregation of duties) including IT General
Controls. If internal controls are assessed as effective, this will reduce (but not entirely eliminate)
the amount of 'substantive' work the auditor needs to do (see below).
 Substantive test of transactions: evaluate the client’s recording of transactions by verifying the
monetary amounts of transactions, a process called substantive tests of transactions. For
example, the auditor might use computer software to compare the unit selling price on duplicate
sales invoices with an electronic file of approved prices as a test of the accuracy objective for
sales transactions. Like the test of control in the preceding paragraph, this test satisfies the
accuracy transaction-related audit objective for sales. For the sake of efficiency, auditors often
perform tests of controls and substantive tests of transactions at the same time.
 Assess Likelihood of Misstatement in Financial Statement.
Notes:
 At this stage, if the auditor accept the CR that has been set at the phase I and does not want to
reduce the controls risk, then the auditor may not perform test of control. If so, then the auditor
perform substantive test of transactions.
 This test determines the amount of work to be performed i.e. substantive testing or test of
details.[18]
Phase III Perform Analytical Procedures and Tests of Details of
Balances[edit]
 where internal controls are strong, auditors typically rely more on Substantive Analytical
Procedures (the comparison of sets of financial information, and financial with non-financial
information, to see if the numbers 'make sense' and that unexpected movements can be
explained)
 where internal controls are weak, auditors typically rely more on Substantive Tests of Detail of
Balance (selecting a sample of items from the major account balances, and finding hard
evidence (e.g. invoices, bank statements) for those items)
Notes:

 Some audits involve a 'hard close' or 'fast close' whereby certain substantive procedures can be
performed before year-end. For example, if the year-end is 31 December, the hard close may
provide the auditors with figures as at 30 November. The auditors would audit income/expense
movements between 1 January and 30 November, so that after year end, it is only necessary for
them to audit the December income/expense movements and 31 December balance sheet. In
some countries and accountancy firms these are known as 'rollforward' procedures.
Phase IV Complete the Audit and Issue an Audit Report[edit]
After the auditor has completed all procedures for each audit objective and for each financial
statement account and related disclosures, it is necessary to combine the information obtained to
reach an overall conclusion as to whether the financial statements are fairly presented. This highly
subjective process relies heavily on the auditor’s professional judgment. When the audit is
completed, the CPA must issue an audit report to accompany the client’s published financial
statements.

Responsibilities of an Auditor[edit]
Corporations Act 2001 requires the auditor to:

 Gives a true and fair view about whether the financial report complies with the accounting
standards
 Conduct their audit in accordance with auditing standards
 Give the directors and auditor's independence declaration and meet independence requirements
 Report certain suspected contraventions to ASIC[11]

Commercial relationships versus objectivity[edit]

One of the major issues faced by private auditing firms is the need to provide independent auditing
services while maintaining a business relationship with the audited company.
The auditing firm's responsibility to check and confirm the reliability of financial statements may be
limited by pressure from the audited company, who pays the auditing firm for the service. The
auditing firm's need to maintain a viable business through auditing revenue may be weighed against
its duty to examine and verify the accuracy, relevancy, and completeness of the company's financial
statements. This is done by auditor.
Numerous proposals are made to revise the current system to provide better economic incentives to
auditors to perform the auditing function without having their commercial interests compromised by
client relationships. Examples are more direct incentive compensation awards and financial
statement insurance approaches. See, respectively, Incentive Systems to Promote Capital Market
Gatekeeper Effectiveness[19] and Financial Statement Insurance.[20]

Related qualifications[edit]

 There are several related professional qualifications in the field of financial audit including
Certified Internal Auditor, Certified General Accountant, Chartered Certified
Accountant, Chartered Accountant and Certified Public Accountant.

See also[edit]

 Auditor's report
 Center for Audit Quality (CAQ)
 Comfort letter
 Comparison of accounting software