Now before you get all worked up about these, the Board is inviting everyone to throw out comments before September 30th, make other suggestions and participate in a roundtable during the third quarter in case you are inclined to heckle them for making your life more difficult. Anyway, here’s what they’ve got:
• An auditor’s discussion and analysis;
• Required and expanded use of emphasis paragraphs;
• Auditor assurance on other information outside the financial statements; and,
• Clarification of language in the standard auditor’s report.
These are just suggestions mind you, so if you’ve got something better in mind, feel free to share below.
The CAQ’s continuing dialogue with individual investors indicates that many in the marketplace do not fully understand the scope of the audit process and the responsibilities placed on public company auditors. The In-Depth Guide to Public Company Auditing will help to bridge that information gap. The new Guide describes how a public company audit firm decides to accept a new audit engagement, how it assesses the risk that the financial statements contain material misstatements as part of determining the audit’s scope, and then how the auditors perform and report their findings – all in plain English. [