The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB), has recently published an Invitation to Comment titled, Improving the Auditor’s Report. Through this, IAASB is envisaging important amendments to the format and contents of the auditor’s report to make it more informative and a valuable document for the stakeholders. Among other things, it is exploring the possibility of the auditors providing greater information on:

• Matters that are, in the auditor’s judgment, likely to be most important to users understanding of the audited financial statements or the audit of public interest entities;
• Auditor’s conclusion on appropriateness of management’s use of going concern assumption;
• Auditor’s statement on existence of any material inconsistencies between audited financial statements and other information;

for which it is proposing new sections titled Going Concern, Auditor Commentary and Other Information in the audit report.

In addition it is also exploring the manner in which greater transparency about the audit process can be reflected in the audit report through suggestions such as in case of group audits, the extent of work done by the component auditors vis a vis principal auditor.

IAASB is also exploring if a change in the placement of the opinion paragraph vis a vis auditor’s / management’s responsibility paragraphs in the audit report could enhance the value of the audit report.

Based on the feedback received, IAASB would propose amendments to its reporting standards, particularly, ISA 700.

Full text
The text of the IAASB’s Invitation to Comment is downloadable free of charge from URL
http://www.ifac.org/publications-resources/improving-auditor-s-report.

To Submit Comments
Comments on this Consultation Paper can be submitted on the IAASB website http://www.ifac.org/auditing-assurance by using the link – “Submit a Comment”.

Comments can also be sent to James Gunn, IAASB Technical Director at jamesgunn@iaasb.org

Last Date
The last date for sending comments to IAASB is 7th October 2012.