Best Practices: Preparing for an Audit

Goals
  • Ensure departments have a clear understanding of the audit process.
  • Ensure all relevant information is available for the Audit team.
  • Dedicating time and resources to prepare for the audit.
  • Designate an individual within your organization to take responsibility for the audit process.
  • Clearly documented systems within the organization.
Why are these best practices?
  • Ensures a successful audit process.
  • Assurance of added value and improved operations.
  • Improve the effectiveness of governance, risk management, compliance, and internal control processes.
Best Practices
  • An entrance conference will be scheduled with the auditable unit’s management to communicate the preliminary audit process and seek management’s input regarding risk and audit scope. 
  • The Department will be tasked with the completion of Internal Control Questionnaire (ICQ)
  • IAD will conduct a series of interviews focusing on the various audit areas. The purpose of the interviews is to document what procedures are done and why.
  • We will perform a preliminary analysis of the auditable unit’s financial transactions, cash receipts, sponsored research activity, petty cash accounts, and P-Card holders.
  • Based on the entrance conference, preliminary interviews, and preliminary analysis, we will design our audit procedures to address each identified audit risk.

Fieldwork

  • When adequate internal controls are identified we will perform walk-through tests to confirm that the tasks are performed as described.
  • When weaknesses in internal controls are identified we will work in collaboration with management to design effective and efficient control recommendations.
  • Detailed audit procedures will be performed in areas of higher risk. The primary focus of these procedures is on testing for compliance with University, Board of Regents, State, and Federal policies, procedures, laws, and regulations.
  • We hope that our entire audit will be viewed as a collaborative project. We will strive to be prompt in notifying management of any audit concerns in order to give management an opportunity to provide insight regarding the respective issue.
  • All of our audit findings and recommendations will be discussed with the staff members and management responsible for implementing the recommendations.

Reporting

  • Upon completion of fieldwork, we will prepare a draft of the audit report.
  • After writing our audit report we will provide management with a draft of the report.
  • Shortly thereafter we will schedule an exit conference with management to discuss the audit and the report. Management’s input regarding the background, tone, findings, and recommendations will be incorporated into the audit report draft.
  • After the exit conference management will be asked to formally respond in writing to any findings and recommendations.
  • Management’s response will be incorporated into our report and a final audit report will be issued to all required parties.
Policy and Other Requirements
Resources

Compliance, Ethics and Reporting Hotline

Document Retention Policy

Board of Regents Policies

​​​​​​​State of Georgia Policies

​​​​​​​Professional Links

Professional Guidance

Contributed by Internal Audit Division

Last updated 05/14/2021

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