[jeff]

Post by Another71.

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Jeff Elliott, CPA (KS) | Another71 | NINJA CPA | NINJA CMA | NINJA CPE

[Troblin]

@ jackaroe, thanks, I'll focus attention on those SIMs.

Can someone help explain this MCQ? MY segregation of duties understanding is pretty sketchy.

An auditor most likely would not rely on controls if the payroll department supervisor is responsible for:

A.

examining authorization forms for new employees.

Incorrect B.

comparing payroll registers with original batch transmittal data.

C.

authorizing payroll rate changes for all employees.

D.

hiring all subordinate payroll department employees.

FAR: 85(11/22/2014) - Becker(full)/Ninja MCQ (5 day cram)
AUD: 79 (2/1/2015) -Becker/Ninja MCQ/Ninja Notes
REG: 84(4/19/2015) -Becker/Ninja MCQ/Ninja Notes
BEC: 83 (7/13/2015) -Becker/Ninja MCQ/Ninja Notes

Date I Got My Life Back!: 8/4/2015 🙂

[Anonymous]

Troblin,

it's probably C, because why would the payroll department supervisor be authorizing payroll rate changes for ALL employees?

[pengzars]

c is the answer, authorizing payroll rate changes is the HR department's responsibility

BEC--83
REG--83
FIN--77
AUD--68-74-Q1/2015
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH US!!!

[mtwst113]

Yep C, pengzars hit the nail on the head

BEC | √
AUD| √
FAR| Spring 2015

[Anonymous]

Anybody have any recommendations on remembering the audit reports? I am struggling with A1 & A2 and i've been on this for a week and a half. I can't move on. I do well on the MCQs but still no information sticks.

[Anonymous]

Could a department supervisor approve pay rates for it's employees? That's what usually happened where I ever worked

[mtwst113]

I don't think so, because there has to be a separation between Authorization and Record keeping

BEC | √
AUD| √
FAR| Spring 2015

[ruggercpa2b]

DSP4life what helped me with the audit reports was to retype the standard audit report at least once or twice a week and also wrote down the different modifications to the paragraphs based on the opinion given. And also keep working the questions. It takes time but if you keep practicing you will learn it.

@Anjanja studying for audit will make you realize that a lot of companies do things differently. I have been an auditor for 7 years and one of the things the Yaeger audit instructors told me was that you have to forget about how you do things at work and what you have seen and follow the rules according to the text. Which was a struggle in the beginning.

AUD - 73, 72 retake 7/2/2016
BEC - 8/20/2016
REG - TBD
FAR - TBD

I am so ready for this nightmare to be over. Been at this way too long.

[Anonymous]

I only wish the whole world was by the book! I told my CFO that he should be mailing checks to vendors since he is the one signing them, but for some reason he refused ha ha

But I actually meant that sales dept supervisor could probably approve rates, there would still be segregation of duties. I guess it wouldn't work for payroll supervisor though

[salring]

The issue with segregation of duties is not practical. They say that the accountant who does the checkrun should not also receive the bank statement. We audited a small non-profit with 2 accounting staff and there was no way they could separate the 2 functions since the accountant has to view the transactions online in realtime to be able to book the wires and ACH's. In this case they can also print out the bank statements before the CFO could get the mailed copy.

[ruggercpa2b]

It would be ideal for the companies to do everything by the book but to be honest the book way is not always very practical. Especially when you get to smaller businesses and also most people what are higher up are it going to be caught doing the grunt work. I learned that from being an auditor where we would sit down at the end of an audit and talk about the best way to get things done but because of either not having enough money or enough people there was just no way our clients would implement some of our suggestions.

AUD - 73, 72 retake 7/2/2016
BEC - 8/20/2016
REG - TBD
FAR - TBD

I am so ready for this nightmare to be over. Been at this way too long.

[mtwst113]

I'm a little confused about the hierarchy of audit evidence. Becker gives the mnemonic:

A-Auditors direct personal knowledge & observation

E-External evidence

I – Internal evidence

O – oral evidence

I've definitely had some MCQ asking which is the most reliable.. and given auditors observation/knowledge vs external evidence (bank confirms) as options, I think I remember external evidence always winning out.

Has anyone else run into this?

BEC | √
AUD| √
FAR| Spring 2015

[salring]

@mtwst, I have run into that too, it seems most of the MCQ's that I have done, independent external evidence is considered the correct answer.

[mtwst113]

Thanks @salring. Gotta be careful with those. Here is a good example of tricky wording from A4:

If the objective of a test of details is to detect overstatements of sales, the auditor should trace transactions from the:

a.

Cash receipts journal to the sales journal.

b.

Accounting records to the source documents.

c.

Sales journal to the cash receipts journal.

d.

Source documents to the accounting records.

The answer is B. I think this question is trying to trick you by using the word trace, when in reality you're actually vouching, right?

BEC | √
AUD| √
FAR| Spring 2015

[Anonymous]

yeah, Roger specifically mentioned this. He said they will be calling tracing – vouching and vouching – tracing. B obviously makes more sense here

[Author]

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