Life of an Auditor: Scheduling Audits

This post is part of a series where I write about the daily life of an auditor, based on my own experiences, of course. I am getting ready to start my second busy season. There is always so many new things to learn!

Things have been pretty quiet around here after some recent deadlines. However, audit season begins in January, and before then we have all kinds of planning work to get to.

In my first year, I was not very involved with audit planning, even though us first years began on October 1st. This year I have 3 clients that I will head to during November and December for preliminary audit work. I should also have some extra inventory counts this year, since I have been asking around if anyone needs someone to count inventory. (Yay, more billable hours!)

We have also been rearranging our schedules, trying to fit clients in. I have a new client in my schedule this year, and I was moved off of two other clients because of this. However, the new client is booked for most of February, a prime time to be audited. We are working on preventing me from having to move off a 3rd client, but right now I have only 2 weeks unscheduled during all of busy season, and both of those weeks are after the due date for this client.

As a first year, I would typically go out to a client's office on the scheduled date, do all my work there, and then move on to the next client. This year, I will have more responsibility for wrapping up audits, even if I am assigned to begin fieldwork on another audit already. My schedule is packed, and I'm wondering how I'll be able to fit any more work in!

However, this second year is definitely a big opportunity to prove that I can handle this responsibility. I think that there will still be a safety net of having a senior and a manager who are ultimately responsible for making sure that the wrap-up is completed, but if I can really step up and help make sure that deadlines are met, I think that it will really be noticed.

Now I'm realizing how unaware of the "wrapping up" process I was as a first year. At the time, I was aware that there was more work to be done, but was relieved that I didn't have to worry about it. This year, I'm not exactly sure what all of this will entail.

Part of the wrapping-up process will be making sure that any open points are cleared - any little questions that remain unanswered must be re-asked to the client, any documentation that is missing must be acquired. All workpapers must be signed off on, all checklists completed. I think a big part of some will be the reporting packages that parent companies have us put together - each reporting package is different, and they all seem to consist of many excel spreadsheets of data that doesn't seem particularly user-friendly. They need everything formatted just so, so that all of the subsidiaries can be combined at the top end with minimum difficulty.

It'll be interesting to see how I feel about these pre-busy season worries after the busy season ends this year!

Is anyone about to start their first busy season as an auditor? How about their second? Any experienced CPAs have some advice to share with first and second year auditors?

Photo by modomatic @ flickr

Related posts:

1. Life of an Auditor: Inventory Counts
2. Life of an Auditor: Billable Hours
3. A year in the life of an auditor
4. Life of an Auditor: Billable Hours Target
5. First Audit Work