Planning Audit Strategy, Procedures, and Use of Others

This chapter translates assessed risk into the actual audit approach. Once risks are identified, the auditor must decide what work to perform, when to perform it, who can help perform it, and how technology affects the plan.

In This Chapter

• Building the Overall Audit Strategy from Assessed Risk connects high-level risk assessment to the engagement approach.
• Selecting Audit Procedures by Nature, Timing, and Extent explains how risks shape procedure choice.
• Planning Group Audits, Component Auditors, and Consolidations covers multi-entity planning issues.
• Deciding When to Rely on Internal Audit, Specialists, and Others explains when outside work can support the audit.
• Using Data Analytics and Emerging Technologies in Audit Planning shows how planning changes in more digital environments.

How to Use This Chapter

• Read this chapter as the bridge between risk assessment and fieldwork.
• Focus on why a specific risk leads to a specific planning response.
• Return here whenever an AUD miss involves the wrong procedure mix or misuse of component auditors, specialists, or internal audit.

In this section

• Building the Overall Audit Strategy from Assessed Risk
  How overall audit strategy reflects financial-statement and assertion-level risk.
• Selecting Audit Procedures by Nature, Timing, and Extent
  How risk drives the nature, timing, and extent of audit procedures.
• Planning Group Audits, Component Auditors, and Consolidations
  How group audits are planned and supervised across components and consolidations.
• Deciding When to Rely on Internal Audit, Specialists, and Others
  How external auditors evaluate reliance on internal audit, specialists, and service organizations.
• Using Data Analytics and Emerging Technologies in Audit Planning
  How analytics, automation, AI, and emerging tools influence audit planning.