Staff Training — Level II

Description

Table of Contents

Excerpts

Subscription Info

Other Options

On Demand

Staff Training — Level II On-Demand Series (159491)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 19
Regular/AICPA Member: $361.25/$289.00

Understanding the Entity and Assessing Risk – Part 1 (150161)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 3
Regular/AICPA Member: $111.25/$89.00

This course provides guidance on planning the audit and gaining an understanding of the client, its industry, and its internal control. The course is based on the risk assessment suite of auditing standards, numbers 104 through 111.

Following up on what you learned on risk assessment in Level I, you now focus on how to obtain an understanding of the client and assessing the effectiveness of internal control design. Through a comprehensive case study, you practice applying the requirements in practice. After each major course segment, the course author and risk assessment expert, Michael Ramos, gives you video tips and highlights major pitfalls.

Objectives

• Design an audit strategy.
• Determine planning materiality.
• Perform risk assessment procedures to obtain an understanding of your client.
• Evaluate the design of the client’s entity- and activity-level controls.

Prerequisite: Ten to 22 months of public accounting experience and completion of the AICPA course Staff Training – Level I or equivalent.

Understanding the Entity and Assessing Risk – Part 2 (150171)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 2
Regular/AICPA Member: $73.75/$59.00

The assessment of the risk of material misstatements requires auditors to do more than just assign a value to risk (e.g., “high”). When performing your risk assessment procedures, you should identify risks and be able to describe these risks in terms of what can go wrong in preparing the financial statements. This course on risk assessment shows you how to use your understanding of the client and its internal control design to assess risk and design an appropriate audit response. You’ll also learn how to evaluate audit results.

This course will allow you to answer yes to these questions: Do I know enough about my client to effectively assess the risk of material misstatement? Are my audit procedures clearly linked to my assessment of risk, and is that linkage documented? When I design my audit programs, do I give proper consideration to designing the proper type of test? Do I properly consider uncorrected misstatements from prior periods when evaluating audit results in the current audit?

Objectives

• Use your understanding of the client and its internal control to assess the risk of material misstatement.
• Design an overall audit response and further audit procedures, based on your risk assessments.
• Evaluate audit results.

Prerequisite: Ten to 22 months of public accounting experience

Audit Tools: Confirmations and Sampling (150101)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 2
Regular/AICPA Member: $73.75/$59.00

Auditors use confirmations on nearly every audit and tend to rely a great deal on the audit evidence they provide. After all, they are signed written representations received directly from third parties confirming important information.

Through a series of interactive exercises, you will learn the pitfalls of confirmation design and how to design confirmations to get the most reliable and useful results. You'll also learn the techniques for selecting an efficient and effective sample and what to avoid. Finally, you'll evaluate sample results and how to extrapolate (or not to extrapolate) those results to the total population.

Objectives

• Recognize the limitations of confirmation procedures.
• Design confirmations to be more effective.
• Evaluate confirmation replies.
• Design an effective sampling plan.
• Determine sample sizes and select a sample.
• Evaluate sample results.

Prerequisite: Ten to 22 months of public accounting experience

Auditing Accounts Receivable (150111)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 2
Regular/AICPA Member: $73.75/$59.00

The two riskiest elements of accounts receivable are the allowance for doubtful accounts and obtaining a proper cut-off. Because the balance is an estimate and highly subjective, the allowance for doubtful accounts usually is the area of accounts receivable, most susceptible to material misstatement. Some clients, especially small businesses, have difficulty achieving a good cut-off at year-end, and any cut-off errors directly impact revenues.

Through an interactive, comprehensive case study, you will learn how to effectively and efficiently audit accounts receivable and the allowance for doubtful accounts. You'll explore the importance of testing the accounts receivable aging and how to use subsequent cash collections to increase efficiency.

Objectives

• Use analytical procedures to identify unusual financial statement relationships.
• Review prior year's workpapers to identify potential high-risk audit areas.
• Identify high-risk audit areas based on your understanding of your client's business and industry, and the results of analytical procedures.
• Perform other required tasks necessary to complete the audit planning process.

Prerequisite: Ten to 22 months of public accounting experience and completion of the AICPA course Staff Training – Level I or equivalent.

Auditing Inventory – Part 1 (150121)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 2.5
Regular/AICPA Member: $73.75/$59.00

In this course, you will participate in a typical small business inventory observation. Through a series of video clips, you'll see how an observation should be designed and implemented. And, you'll be given the chance to apply your knowledge to a real-life case study. The knowledge you acquire will enable you to: evaluate whether your client's inventory count is well-planned, determine what steps they should take to ensure an accurate count, and figure out what, if anything, is missing from their plan. You'll also learn how to maintain an attitude of professional skepticism during your test counts and identify and resolve all potential audit issues during the actual physical count.

Objectives

• Apply generally accepted accounting principles for inventory.
• Recognize the risks involved with auditing inventory.
• Describe the purpose of performing an inventory observation.
• Describe physical inventory counting procedures that ensure an accurate count.
• Perform a physical inventory observation.

Prerequisite: Ten to 22 months of public accounting experience and completion of the AICPA course Staff Training – Level I or equivalent.

Auditing Inventory – Part 2 (150131)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 2
Regular/AICPA Member: $73.75/$59.00

In this course, you'll learn what you need to do to audit inventory, other than the inventory observation. You'll get the chance to apply the techniques you learn and benefit from tips for performing an efficient and effective audit. After completing the course, you will assess your own audit engagements and know how to test the labor and overhead components of inventory costs, be able to identify which of your client's inventory items are the most significant and which items are most susceptible to obsolescence, damage, or other conditions that would require a writedown.

Objectives

• Test the mathematical accuracy of your client's inventory listing.
• Identify the client's inventory costing system.
• Test unit costs.
• Review inventory for possible net realizable value losses.

Prerequisite: Ten to 22 months of public accounting experience and completion of the AICPA course Staff Training – Level 1 or equivalent.

Workpaper Review (150141)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 3
Regular/AICPA Member: $111.25/$89.00

When reviewing workpapers you need to see the big picture. As a reviewer, you bring a different perspective to a set of workpapers. The staff person who prepared the workpapers focused on the details. Part of your job as a supervisor is to check the audit work at that same detailed level to make sure it was done right. But an equally important part of your job is to take a step back from the details and look at the “big picture.”

This course will give you practical tips for reviewing the work of others and seeing that big picture. Through an interactive case study, you will have the opportunity to review an actual workpaper and discover what to look for.

Objectives

• Effectively review audit workpapers prepared by others
• Write and discuss review note comments

Prerequisite: Ten to 22 months of public accounting experience and completion of the AICPA course Staff Training – Level 1 or equivalent.

Styles of Supervision (150151)
Preliminary CPE Credit: 2.5
Regular/AICPA Member: $73.75/$59.00

You will be a better supervisor if you can understand where others are "coming from" and how their priorities and pace may differ from your own. In this course, you'll learn about your own personality and how that affects your supervisor style. Through dramatic video clips, you'll observe the dominant personality types and learn how you are similar and in what ways you are different. You'll practice identifying personality types in the videos that you may encounter on an audit and know which provide you with the potential for the greatest conflict and what steps can you take to establish a more productive working relationship with those individuals.

Supervision is a combination of technical and people skills, and you need both to run an audit successfully.

Objectives

• Describe the elements of effective supervision.
• Identify different personality types.
• Develop a flexible supervisory style that is effective with many different people.

Prerequisite: Ten to 22 months of public accounting experience and completion of the AICPA course Staff Training – Level 1 or equivalent.

Note: Accessible immediately after completing the purchase process