Reasonable costs in the public practice of audit

摘要

Achieving the objective of the audit mission - the identification of the extensively denatured financial information in financial situations - needs to consider reasonable costs, and that is why in collecting the audit samples, the exhaustive technique for verifying the information of the financial situations (of the whole examination, 100% of all financial information) was replaced by the sampling technique. The International Audit Standards [1] defines the sampling technique as the method of applying the audit procedures to less than 100% of the elements that compose the balance of account, transaction classes, providing equal possibilities for all the elements to be selected for audit samples. Collecting audit samples in order to find financial errors means applying tests of validating the details of the financial information which together with the conformity tests applied upon the internal control procedures used by the audited entity constitute the essence of the audit mission. Based on the accomplished tests, the errors discovered in the financial declarations are considered significant if these had been familiar they would affect the decisions of a rational user of the financial declarations. The objectives of the study aim an evaluation of the methodology and of the problems encountered by the auditors in accomplishing certain audit missions with reasonable costs. The successfully achieved cost/benefit test cannot be accomplished without the auditors to proceed to the selection of the most adequate sample policies when planning the activities of collecting the audit samples. The results obtained in such a professional deliverance can be carried out in a systematic and detailed approach of the audit risk. The main objective is to emphasize the multiple possibilities of developing a certain specific analysis on the studied issue, and that of sketching its pronounced applicative nature.