How to do a good job in auditing

I just recently finished reading a best-selling book "Deliberate Practice", which reflects on the role of "10,000 hours of theory" in reality. The author believes that many industries and realities reflect that no matter how many 10,000 hours we accumulate on certain matters, we cannot become experts in this matter. For example, if you practice violin or learn tennis skills by yourself, whether you are watching videos or practicing with a teacher, after reaching a certain stage, without "deliberate practice", all the training you have accumulated will be in vain. There are many reasons why this happens, such as the teacher's guidance being unable to meet your continued growth, the inability to receive professional and timely feedback on your studies, low learning status, etc.

This situation is also obvious in any professional job. How can a new audit employee who has completed four years of professional study or just passed induction training adapt to audit work? The ideas in this book give a good guide. If you want to become an outstanding talent in the industry, you not only need years of work and study (this is still needed, and this book does not believe that geniuses in a certain industry really exist), but you also need to find a truly outstanding role in actual work. model (professional benchmark!), identify the differences between him and ordinary practitioners, and continue to learn and practice based on these differences. It would be more effective if this role model could communicate with you from time to time and give you full feedback on your own shortcomings in growth and learning.

Looking back at the working systems of the Big Four, we actually have established a very good deliberate learning scenario. There will never be a shortage of better role models, and there will never be a shortage of opportunities to practice professional skills.

1. Start thinking from the manuscript and look for the best manuscript pattern

As a new auditor, when you get the manuscripts from previous years, you should start to study these manuscripts. After half a year of training, , you start to find some subtle differences between different clients or AIC manuscript formats, expressions, and procedures. You need to think about whether each difference is caused by different clients, differences in project audit objectives, or is it the audit of different people. Caused by habit. Each manuscript is actually the work record and thinking of other seniors, and it is the accumulation of professional knowledge.

Through thinking, you may start to sort out a unified pattern for your own draft based on purely following up last year's draft (of course you must first meet the clear requirements of AIC and the project). For example, how to state and express data, how to color charts, how to adjust the manuscript format effectively and quickly, etc. Even, in the face of certain determinations, you need to perform procedures and some special points.

2. Starting from clearing Q, understand the key points that Senior, Manager and even Par are concerned about

Is clearing Q the most painful thing in the long review process? I think it is the most interesting thing. Basically, the manuscript that is submitted will be reviewed by the seniors a day or a few hours later and come back with a lot of Q's. These quick and in-depth questionings may be the most important element of your deliberate practice - feedback (and one that is lacking in other industries). Behind each review note are the audit ideas of AIC, MIC, PIC (perhaps even Par). From the simplest format and date, why this program was done, why not that program was done, to the reference and logical relationships between other manuscripts, etc. What they ask or question should be something you should pay attention to in the future.

Even after you have done several projects with different teams, you can find that different MICs have issued completely different types of Q in the same draft and focused on different risks. At this time, you may need to think beyond the audit of a single subject and think about the risk points of the entire company or even the industry.

3. Learn accounting knowledge from customers, and also learn workplace skills from customers

Many new auditors are very unfamiliar with accounting knowledge, but the financial personnel they work with may have More accounting experience than you. At this time, you need to think and ask customers (and look at accounting documents) to quickly learn accounting knowledge. But not everything the customer says is right, so you still need to check accounting standards, previous annual drafts, and consult with seniors on the team to confirm the relevant information.

In addition, because the interpersonal relationships in the office are usually relatively simple, and most of the people are young people, they do not care about competition in the workplace. Customers are generally large and medium-sized enterprises, and there are bound to be internal factional conflicts. Even within the accounting department, there will be various complex interpersonal relationships and competitive relationships. Therefore, if you want the audit project to proceed smoothly, you need to start with the small accountants at the bottom, understand the internal relationships as early as possible, and find the core figures of the department. This kind of experience will also give you more understanding and thinking about the dangers in the workplace.

4. Maintain a good physical and mental state and deliver more positive energy

Most people who are successful in their careers are also successful in life. They can balance their career, life and self-state. Keep a good balance. If you want to do a good job in auditing, you must first maintain your physical and mental state, such as ensuring a certain amount of sleep and a good diet, and maintaining a good mood and mentality.

After all, auditing is not a job that pursues 99.999% accuracy. Completing the audit work in accordance with the requirements of the auditing standards is its most important work standard. Therefore, we must not pursue perfection excessively, but just follow all the audit procedures that have been arranged in the audit plan. On this basis, you must ensure your sleep and diet to keep yourself in a healthy but exciting working state.

In addition, auditing is usually a team work, so it is necessary to convey more positive energy to team members. In your spare time, you can create more joy that everyone can accept, such as arranging weekend breaks during business trips. Go out to eat in restaurants, bring some delicious snacks to the team every day, and be cute and tell jokes to everyone during overtime. While you help others be happy, you also develop an optimistic mental state for yourself, which can better help you cope with your busy work.

5. Communicate with AIC, MIC and your own mentor in a timely manner

Although it has entered the busy season, all members of the audit department are in an extremely busy state. However, if you encounter professional problems or psychological problems of your own, I recommend that you communicate with team members and mentors in a timely manner. Don't bottle up problems or ignore them. Timely communication and feedback will help you find solutions more clearly.

Of course, I highly recommend that you consult with seniors who you think are excellent. Their guidance will be more acceptable to you (you have trust and goodwill towards them). At the same time, the best seniors can often give the best advice.

6. Turn every conversation, every draft, and every sampling into an exercise

Through the experience and communication of the above items, you will gradually find out clearly what you are doing now In your position, the status you need to achieve and the issues you need to pay attention to. Record these thoughts and ideas and ask yourself to achieve this state of excellence. Then use every subsequent job as an exercise to make excellent work habits, good working status, and work content with insight and thinking become a part of yourself.

In the continuous practice, each time you can do better than the previous work, and at the same time, you will not do it too harshly (although you rarely pay attention to it when you are a child, over-auditing is also a mistake) ).

Some of my auditing habits

I have talked about a lot of learning methods that should be paid attention to during the audit process. Next, I will briefly talk about some of my own good working habits.

Document archiving and organization

After the information age, a large amount of our audit materials appear on our hard drives in PDF, JPG, DOC, XLS and other formats, so it is recommended that everyone Use the "customer-project-audit account" approach to create three-level folders. In Outlook, you can also create a two-level local email backup folder of "customer-project".

Except for files that are directly placed in the manuscript, the received electronic files should be renamed to the format of "Client Name-Project Name-File Name-Date-Provider" (you can also follow everyone's Working habits, change to customer number and project number to avoid leaking confidentiality). Then store all the files in an "Inbox" folder first, and then store the above files in the above-mentioned third-level folder after use or before leaving get off work every day.

Work backup

At present, the computers used by auditors often crash or have files damaged, although DTT already has a system for backing up manuscripts in the cloud.

However, we usually do not store some scanned documents, call recordings, etc. in the manuscript system. Therefore, I recommend everyone:

(1) Before leaving get off work every day, copy the latest manuscript to other team members for cross-backup. The office provides cloud backup. After returning to the hotel or home (generally the network is relatively good), all manuscripts will be backed up while sleeping or taking a bath.

(2) Before leaving get off work every day, back up all Inbox and client-project-audit account third-level folders to a mobile hard drive (preferably encrypted), and it is not recommended to overwrite previous backups;

(3) Every month, back up Outlook local and server mailboxes to mobile hard drives;

(4) For files that need to be stored in paper manuscripts, it is recommended to print and mark them as soon as possible , to avoid file damage or loss.

Telephone calls and interviews

During the audit process, a large amount of work requires telephone communication or face-to-face communication. Even at the child stage, there is still a lot of work that needs to be discussed, such as understanding the company's internal control process, subject change analysis, sampling difference analysis, etc. Without extensive practice and preparation, interviews often fail to produce the desired results. My suggestions are:

(1) Prepare the interview outline in advance and prepare all the questions that an interviewer needs to cover;

(2) Confirm the list of questions, and if appropriate, It can be sent to the other party for preparation in advance. If there are supporting documents, the other party can be asked to prepare it in advance;

(3) For certain matters that may have audit risks or overlap with the work of other audit team members, invite Audit team members participate together and communicate internally in advance;

(4) Ask more open questions (i.e. WHAT, WHEN, HOW, WHY, etc., such as why the company’s travel expenses increased significantly this year?) and let the other party answer Explain, rather than Close question (eg, yes, no, etc., has the company increased a lot of business trips this year?)

(5) For important interviews, you can record the interviews and ask the other party to sign; but it is more important The thing is, supporting is required for key matters!

Audit sampling

One of the most common tasks in the childhood stage is audit sampling. In fact, there are many techniques for audit sampling:

(1) When selecting samples, if you need to select samples manually, you must read the sample selection standards in the manuscript in advance, such as selecting N items with the largest balance at the end of the period, occurrences in the current period The N transactions with the largest amount, the last N transactions at the end of the year, etc., and then strictly implemented to avoid sample selection errors. If the sample selection method for this period changes (increasing audit uncertainty), remember to modify the sample selection criteria and communicate with AIC the rationale for the modification.

(2) When sampling, put all the sampling content in a large empty excel sheet, one sheet for each subject, and archive it externally. Then when sampling, you can collect all the samples at once.

(3) When looking for vouchers, first fully understand the methods of classifying customers and archiving vouchers, and then start looking. If you really need the customer to help you find the voucher, I suggest that you only give the range of the voucher number, rather than the specific voucher number (to avoid fraud by the other party).

(4) (Knock on the blackboard, here comes the important point) Never let customers draw vouchers! You can ask your customers to send you complete versions of electronic documents such as invoice lists, delivery details, expense lists, etc., so that you can directly copy the internal contents. However, you must also check the voucher to see if the content is consistent with the content of the electronic documents. . Once an error is found, all the credentials must be manually checked