Introduction
CSL Limited is an Australian based public limited company specializing in the biotechnology industry. As a corporate institution, the company specializes in researching, developing, manufacturing as well as marketing products designed for treating and preventing serious human medical conditions. CSL’s deals in different product areas including blood plasma derivatives, anti-venom, vaccines, as well as cell culture reagents usually used in a wide range of medical research, manufacturing applications, and genetic research (Aren’s et al., 2003). The global headquarters of the biotechnology multinational founded in 1916 as a federal government department and privatized in 1994 is at Parkville, Melbourne, Victoria. The following paper undertakes an audit and assurance analysis on the company in relation to the collection and confirmation of audit evidence.
Challenges in Gathering Evidence
Conducting an audit for any company is instrumental in the sense that it enables the management and other major company stakeholders in determining whether or not the finance statements of the company that have been prepared are a true and fair. Therefore, there is need to collect all the necessary evidence from all the concerned departments in order to prepare a conclusive audit report. However, auditors usually face a wide range of challenges in compiling the accounting and financial information that they require in preparing an audit for the company (O’Donnell, Arnold & Sutton, 2000). These challenges range from difficulties in securing the needed financial material for the audit to resistance or lack of cooperation from the concerned stakeholders in the company. In this particular case regarding CSL Limited, the primary challenge faced by the auditors in conducting a conclusive audit report is the management of multiple compliance audits.
As a biotechnology company, there are many rules by which the company is expected to conform with. In addition, new regulations continue coming up, each with a significant impact on the business operations, both financially as well as non-financially. Conversely, when conducting an audit, the auditors have to adhere to the multiple compliance standards that affect the company (Gay & Simnett, 2005). As such, considering the wide range of product portfolios that the company has, in addition to the various departments that its products affect, then there are a significant number of compliance rules and regulations that the company has to adhere to or comply with in order to produce a top quality audit report.
Audit Evidence
In auditing, there are a number of evidences that the auditor needs to collect and compile for use in undertaking an extensive and thorough audit of the company. The entire process of audit involves four key types of audit evidence that the auditors use in undertaking the audit. These include physical evidence, confirmations, documentation, as well as observation.
- Physical evidence refers to the inspection or counting by the auditors of the tangible assets of the company (Arens et al., 2003).
- Confirmation evidence entails the receipt of a written or an oral response of the company’s reports obtained from an independent third party.
- Documentation has three divisions, including the type of documents such as internal and external documents, document vouching and finally document tracing.
- Observation evidence entails the auditor witnessing the physical activities of the client.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I can state that conducting the audit process at CSL Limited was not a challenging as otherwise expected considering the high degree of cooperation that we received as auditors from the management of the company and other key stakeholders in the company. Even though the company had multiple compliances to adhere to, each stakeholder played his or her role in facilitating the swift retrieval and presentation of the evidence for the purposes of review and analysis.
References
Arens, A. A., Elder, R. J., Beasley, M. S., & Jenkins, G. J. (2003). Essentials of Auditing and Assurance Services: An Integrated Approach. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Gay, G. E., & Simnett, R. (2005). Auditing and assurance services in Australia. Mcgraw-hill.
O’Donnell, E., Arnold, V., & Sutton, S. G. (2000). An analysis of the group dynamics surrounding internal control assessment in information systems audit and assurance domains. Journal of Information Systems, 14(s-1), 97-116.
