important& limitations of assurance engagement Related: International...
Merits are:
- primarily it increases user’s confidence over financial statements especially if independent person has audited them and expressed his opinion
- the procedures applied during the engagement help discover such issues that management might not aware of before
auditor when working in conjunction with management may improve different aspects of operations
- it helps those charged with governance carrying out their duties
Demerits of audit engagement as mentioned earlier are mostly connected with the limitations of audit engagement which are:
- it cannot provide absolute assurance whether subject matter is absolutely accurate
- it does not help in determining the effectiveness of the management
- most of the time it helps in discovering the discrepancies in the system that has resulted in the misstatement and the ones with no connected misstatement go unnoticed
- even if auditor conduct the engagement with reasonable care, some misstatements may go undetected
- use of judgment and existence of persuasive evidence also limits the accuracy of engagement and conclusions reached by the auditor
- audit is usually conducted on the basis of general purpose framework that might not be helpful in specific situations and might not provide assurance of specific nature