Audit activities are essential for businesses to know their performances and know their amounts and earnings. But businesses fail to get accurate results and outcomes even after conducting audit activities, and it is because of the deficiencies in auditors’ skills and not following the procedures.
To get better audit outcomes, you have to follow all the phases and procedures. Following and implementing all the audit processes will enable you to get accurate results which will ultimately positively impact your decision-making. There are four main audit phases that we will discuss briefly in this article.
Keep reading this article till the very last point to get familiar with some of the audit phases you must not miss while conducting audit activities for your business organization.
Top 4 audit phases you must be familiar with
Before initiating and implementing the audit processes, you need to define certain guidelines and procedures for conducting them. You define the audit’s scope and objectives in these phases and present them to the management for further suggestions and improvements. Organizations and businesses must go through all the phases for better outcomes.
Below are the four most important phases you must conduct in your organization or business for acquiring quality results and audit reports.
1. Audit preparation
It is the initial phase of the audit procedure and plays a key role in its success. It is because, in this stage, you get to know the objective of conducting the audit and know the methods and areas of the audit.
Following are some of the necessary steps you must perform in the audit preparation phase to make your audit results more accurate.
a. Reasons of audit
In the preparation phase, you must define your objectives and the reason for conducting the audit. You can easily define your objectives of conducting the audit when you know the area of the audit. There are various areas in an organization, and you either audit a single area or several areas within your organization.
b. Describing the team and auditor
The next step is to identify the team that will conduct the audit. The team you select will impact your audit results. Depending upon the audit area, you can either choose the team internally or hire an external auditor. Audit being one of the important operations for a business, make people hire the experts from the top audit firms in Dubai to ensure the audit outcomes are fair and turn out to be beneficial for them.
c. Developing checklists
In the last step of the audit preparation phase, you must develop a checklist. Development of the checklist will help you analyze whether the tools necessary for audit are available or not. Not having the resources to conduct the audit will lead to failure. In the development of the checklist, you also mention the possible risks you will face while conducting the audit.
2. Audit implementation
Once you know your objectives well and have the necessary tools for conducting the audit, the ]next phase you step in is the implementation phase. This phase is one of the phases in which the actual audit processes begin.
The audit implementation phase consists of two important activities necessary to run the audit processes in an organization successfully.
a. Arrange and organize meetings
You must arrange meetings with the team you have selected in the preparation phase. These meetings will enable the team to discuss the problems openly and find solutions to these problems through joint efforts.
b. Introduce the team
Arranging the meetings with the team serves other purposes than finding solutions to the problems and discussing the risks. In these meetings, you can introduce the audit teams to one another and the people they will be auditing. It is crucial because the audit teams have to conduct interviews and surveys, and without proper introduction, audit procedures are difficult to execute.
3. Audit reporting
One of the ways to show the audit outcomes is through reports. These reports are a source for the business management to understand the findings and results of the audit. With these audit reports, the business management can make future decisions and take necessary steps to prosper their business. These reports must be simple yet precise and accurate for the management to understand and take action.
4. Audit follow-up
Once the audit team completes the processes, they need to conduct follow-ups. In the follow-up phase, you have to ensure that the audit team’s solutions are implemented well in the organization to ensure improvement. The team conducts the follow-up to suggest corrective actions and improvements in this phase. Hire experts from the top audit firms in Dubai to provide you with better solutions to your business problems. They also ensure that the solutions you are implementing are beneficial and effective.
Audits within your organization maintain a fair environment!
Audits are one of the ways to have control over the activities in your organization and business processes. Most businesses hire expert audit firms to develop reports, helping them make better decisions for their organization. It is imperative to conduct audit activities once a year to control and keep a check and balance over the business activities and operations.
