Eliot Rey, the owner of a publicly held technology company, asked Mary Messup, C
ID: 2331160 • Letter: E
Question
Eliot Rey, the owner of a publicly held technology company, asked Mary Messup, CPA, to conduct an audit of the company's records. The financial statements to be audited covered a two-year period. The statements needed to be ready to submit to the SEC by September 30, 2017. Rey also needed to provide the audited financial statements to their bank as part of a large loan application. Messup immediately accepted the engagement and agreed to provide an auditor's report within one month. Rey agreed to pay Messup her normal audit fee plus a percentage of the loan if it was approved Messup hired two Sac State accounting graduates (both graduated in May 2017) to conduct the audit. She spent several hours going over what they needed to do. She told the new hires not to spend any time reviewing the client's system of internal control but to concentrate on checking the mathematical accuracy of the general ledger and summarizing the data in the accounting records that supported Rey's financial statements. The new hires followed Messup' instructions. They competed the audit procedures in two days. They did notice that the company failed to include the terms of a large note payable in the footnotes, but they were nervous about talking to Mr. Rey about that. They did talk to Mr. Rey about the fact that although 25% of the accounts receivable were over 120 days old there was no allowance for doubtful accounts included. Mr. Rey said they shouldn't be concerned about that. They made a note of his response in the workpapers. They turned over the workpapers to Messup along with the financial statements prepared by the client. Messup gave an unmodified (clean) opinion on the financials. REQUIRED: For each of the auditing principles listed, identify the action(s) taken (or not taken) by Messup or her assistants that support(s) their compliance with the requirement.Explanation / Answer
2. The actions not taken by Mess up and her assistants with regards to compliance with professional ethics are mentioned below:
- Professional ethics for an auditor include honesty, objectivity and integrity.
- Mess up accepted the assignment in exchange for her normal audit fee and a percentage of loan. Such acceptance violates the upholding of integrity.
- The internal controls were not reviewed in order to finish the audit early. Thus, technical competence was not observed.
- No quallification was issued despite notes of long term payable not being mentioned and doubtful debt provision not created. This violates the principle of honesty and objectivity.
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