An audit of a company rarely touches on the full range of financial transactions carried out by it, and, as a rule, is aimed only at one specific type of operations. That is why such types of checks are distinguished as capital audit, audit of settlements with suppliers and many others. Each of these types of audits has its own specifics and requires a specific approach. In this article we will talk about this type of audit, as the audit of settlements with accountable persons.
First of all, we need to understand who are accountable persons. An accountable person can be any employee of the enterprise. He becomes accountable at the moment when he receives money in order to acquire something for the company. Also accountable is the person to whom the power of attorney is issued to receive goods already paid. Another accountable person includes business travelers, who are paid for accommodation and food during the trip. At the end of the trip or completing the assignment, the accountable person draws up a report in which he describes in detail all the expenses incurred during the trip, so that then the company will reimburse him for the money spent.
An audit of settlements with accountable persons consists of an analysis of the presence of stamped travel certificates, verification of all travel reports, as well as receipts for goods purchased. At the same time, the auditor must not only make sure that all the facts of the purchases actually took place and are documented, but also check the conformity of the prices of purchased goods to market prices. To do this, the inspector can send letters to independent experts (which in this case may even be simple representatives of other trading companies) who will give a conclusion on whether the price of the purchased goods corresponds to the market.
As a rule, employees of an enterprise buy low-value items (stationery, consumables, cartridges, etc.) for accountable money, which by mistake can be classified as accounting objects that belong to other categories. There are cases when negligent accountants attributed calculators to fixed assets, therefore, an audit of settlements with accountable persons also includes verification of the subsequent determination of purchased items in a particular category of objects. And, of course, you need to check the correctness of all financial calculations. Clarification of the way in which the employee received the funds, the amount of funds returned by him and covering the difference in one direction or another. It is necessary that the audit of settlements with accountable persons should include a check of all documents, namely, the statement of issuing accountable money, which the employee must sign, the receipts and the employee’s report, which he must provide to the accounting department, the statement of receipt of the remaining money, and the document, confirming the issuance of additional funds to the employee in the event that he had to add his own money to purchase the goods.
This type of audit, in principle, is not very complicated, and can not be compared in complexity with such types of verification as, say, audit of settlements with founders, especially if their shares in the authorized capital change over time. Therefore, this type of check takes a relatively short time, and also does not require viewing a large number of documents. Most often, this type of audit is included in a comprehensive audit as one of its parts in order not to arrange a separate audit and, as a result, save both time and financial resources, because the services of audit firms are quite expensive, unless, of course, the company uses the services of a well-established audit office.