Audit working papers are the documents which record all audit evidence obtained during financial statements auditing, internal management auditing, information systems auditing, and investigations. Audit working papers are used to support the audit work done in order to provide assurance that the audit was performed in accordance with the relevant auditing standards. They show the audit was:
The Institute of Internal Auditors, a global professional audit standards body, has issued practice advisory 2330-1 stating the goals of audit working papers are to:
Audit working papers are the property of the auditor. In order to keep professional ethic, it cannot discover to third party without consent of the client unless limited specified situations mentioned in ISA 230 Documentation and required by law, the examples are court order, for public interest and so on.
The forms of documentation may be flowchart, manual, narrative note, checklist or questionnaire.
Proper features or purpose of working papers
There are a number of companies who offer electronic working paper tools for accountants. The leading providers include: ACL, Wolters Kluwer, CaseWare, Thomson, Data Prime Solutions, WorkPapers.Pro and Saltlake Infosolutions. Their products are ACL GRC, TeamMate, CaseWare Working Papers, Engagement CS, Draftworx, WorkPapers and APEX Audit System respectively.
Audit Working Paper Format 1. The diversity of audit assignment prevents the establishment of a single system or design of working papers to be used. Therefore, a uniform working paper format may not be used but work papers for functional areas such as cash receipts should display conformity in various types of audits. 2. Work papers may be in the form of paper, tapes, disks, diskettes, films, etc. There should be backup copies of electronically generated working papers. The backup copies should not be stored with the original copies.