 In this presentation we're going to take a look at a standard type of audit team. In other words we're going to go through a standard type of audit team. Look at what would be considered the different types of positions of the team. What are going to support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as excel practice problems PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it with the different duties of the people in those positions of the team. As we do so recall that this is just the general type of team that we would put together for an audit and it would vary in some degree or to some degree depending on the size of a CPA firm. Clearly if we're a sole proprietor or a very small CPA firm then we may have some variation or deviation from the types of team that we're going to put together but this would be basically the standard type of team and the standard kind of terminology you would expect in a CPA firm when discussing the types of the team and the types of duties that would be involved with those people within the team. Also note that these things could change a bit in terms of the size of engagements how large of the audits we're talking about usually would we're considering audit in terms of audit as a whole as we are here. We're usually thinking about publicly traded companies because we want to take the biggest type of audit engagement because it's going to be the most complex and then well if you're talking about smaller types of engagements then of course it would have less detail. It's usually easier to then peel back the detail necessary for smaller engagement but you always want to keep that in mind otherwise you start to think that something is always complex. You may you may start to go into large smaller engagements and overly complexicate things or think things that always should be having more complication than they need to have because everything that we have studied has been at the more complicated level and note that most of the time oftentimes when we're not auditing publicly traded companies we may not have that level of complication and even when we have the level of complication we're usually working on specific things rather than working on the entire audit as a whole and as we do so we break those specific things down to specialization of duty and to more simplified tasks. So here's going to be the general overview of the audit team so when we put together the audit we're going to audit say a publicly traded type of company who's going to be involved well we have the partner we have the manager we have the senior or in charge and we have the staff and or associates so we're going to go into now uh who will be involved in these things so of course this would be the top down of the audit we have an audit engagement we have the go-to kind of hierarchy of it the person ultimately in charge is going to be the partner and if you think about a type of organization that is a CPA firm a public accounting firm it's going to be organized in the format of partners so the partners then are going to be the top tier they're going to be like the management of an organization so if you're thinking about if you're comparing this to a publicly traded company you're talking about the top management of the organization like the CEO or something if you're talking about a partnership as is the structure for typical type of CPA firm public accounting firm then the partners are going to be the top level they're going to be the people that are in charge when you're considering audit which is going to be the highest resource that a CPA firm typically does that generates most money from the partners then are usually going to be the people that that are ultimately going to be in charge now that means that they're usually going to design the engagement and they're going to be working with the client in order to set up the audit engagement plan the audit will discuss a little bit more about what the partner will be involved in but just like a CEO just like the top management they're not typically involved when the grunt work the day-to-day type grunt work they're going to be involved more in the review work and in the case of a partnership of course with setting up or picking up the clients they want to work with the clients discuss what the process will be like pick up the engagements it's going to often be a large part of what the partners do and then they have the manager manager of course reports to the partnership under the managers we have the senior in charge and then under the seniors in the in charge we're going to have the staff and the associates so if you're thinking about the audit engagement of course then of course most of the grunt work is going to be done by the staff and associates actually doing all of the counting and the 10 key and all that kind of stuff the reviewed by the senior and the in charge that reviewed by the manager and finally signed off by the partner who was in charge of initially engaging the engagement with the client with the company so if we go into this in more detail then top level partnership basically kind of again equivalent to the manager the top level the top people in the CPA firm what are they going to do agree on the scope and the service to be provided so note a lot of times the partnership is going to be working a lot with the client they're they're guaranteeing the client they're working with them and saying hey this is what we're going to do this is what we're in charge of this is what what you're in charge of this is how the agreement will go so they're going to be dealing a lot with the client setting up the engagements and making sure that they have the communication with the clients with regards to the engagement oversee the planning process and that the audit is conducted in accordance with auditing standards so the partner is often going to be involved in the planning process because they're the ones that are discussing of course and getting the engagement rolling they then want to be involved in the planning process and then delegate that information to other people within the organization in a way that's going to be as most efficient as possible they're looking at everything else of course as resources of theirs to help to make this audit go as smoothly as possible be as efficient as possible earn as most money as possible assemble an audit team appropriate to the task so you can also think of a partnership as as just that if you think of a partnership you can think of them almost at you know different type of owners we have the partners here they're going to then take the resources of the organization including the staff to and delegate those staff to their engagements in order to basically complete the project so they're going to try to find you know assemble the team of staff you're talking about a large cpa firm you got the partner they're going to assemble the team of the staff involved in order to complete the audit process which they will you know regulate and and be in charge of in terms of supervisation they're going to supervise and review the audit team and their working papers so they will be ultimately in charge the partners going to be ultimately be signing this so although they're not going to be doing that the grunt work that day to day work they do need to review it of course because they're the ones that are ultimately on the line in terms of signing off on it they're going to sign the audit concluding on adequacy of audit evidence so they're going to look at the audit evidence they're the ones that actually are going to of course sign off on the audit typically the partners will and therefore they got to make sure that the audit has been done in accordance with the rules and regulations of the audit that enough evidence has been gathered in order to support whatever opinion is being given within it manager now we're talking we had partner second you know level here is the manager we have the plan audit including the team members schedule so you can think of them doing a little bit more of kind of the day to day we've got the audit planning the partnership the partner was involved also with the planning and talking to the client then delegating the more day to day type of planning to the manager so the manager actually looking at the schedule saying hey you know these are the team members this is when you're here this is when you're here this is when we're going to go out to the engagement this is when we're going to do this and you're with me you're with me there you know they're going to actually be delegating what's going to happen in terms of the actual procedures within the audit process oversee preparation and approval of the audit program so they're going to be more in line with the designing and implementation of the groundwork the on-the-ground audit program review the financial statement working papers and audit report so they're going to be reviewing the financial statements and audit report oftentimes of course the partner expects the manager to have the audit report pretty much done and the and then the partner's going to basically sign off on it and and you know review it and that there might be a depending on the size of the cpa firm the manager is often expected to basically have this thing tied down and then give it to the partner who should be able to review it and not have too many adjustments possibly so it depends on the size of the firm but they'll review the papers make recommendations to partners and oversee work of the senior staff so they're going to oversee of course the work of the people below them the senior staff invoice and collect on payment for services so notice they will be in charge here of invoicing for services we are a cpa firm we charge the client for the services the service in this case we're talking typically about audits we want to make sure that they we have the invoices out collections on them not only because we need the payment of it but because it also can hinder our independence if we have outstanding invoices or payments that have not been paid to us then our independence is is compromised to some degree as well so we want to make sure that we're on top of that track inform about auditing or accounting problems found so we'll report any problems that we find to of course the partner above us then we have the senior in charge that's going to be under the managers now so the managers now we have the seniors and in charge help develop the audit plan so they're going to be involved in the planning process as well and then we have the make the budget so we'll they'll be putting the budgets together again they're going to be more involved in like the grunt work now we're getting closer to closer to the to the ground level of putting the actual audit together delegate tax to associates and direct the day-to-day procedures of the audit so now they're now they're not just scheduling you know possibly when the audit's going to happen but they're directing the day-to-day procedures so we're saying hey this is you know throughout the day you know you need to do this this and the other thing to get past this if we're going to a particular location then we're going to go to that location as we're on site then we're going to be delegating who's going to be doing what in that particular location so that the in charge is going to be doing that day-to-day type of operations managing the day-to-day type of activities review work of the associates which are going to be under the senior level or in charge report to the manager which is of course the direct above them uh the senior in charge being the manager then we go to the staff and the associates so this is going to be the the lowest level and of course we would expect them to be doing most of kind of the grunt work perform audit procedures they are assigned so whatever audit procedure is determined that can be assigned to the the staff or associate will be assigned there and often that's going to be stuff like at you know footing things adding up columns we're going to have to be counting things in terms of the staff and the associate might have to count the inventory anything that we think can be assigned of course to the staff and associate and notice that audit has a lot of checking involved because we're going to be doing a lot of basically testing and then checking and that means that we're going to have to do some checking in terms of a many things that we expect to to be a certain way and we expect them to be that way we just need to check them as the auditor so oftentimes the staff and associate are the ones that are going to be involved with a lot of that checking counting footing gathering data pulling invoices all this kind of stuff and they'll be directed to do so by the senior in charge directing go pull this invoice foot this this thing you know make put together this type of worksheet check these transactions count that inventory those types of things can all be done by the staff make documentation of of work completed so of course as they go through this stuff they need to document it they're going to be put the working papers together so that we can have some record of the procedures that have been done and then we have to report any problems to the senior if they encounter any problems they report it to the person in charge of them the senior