Skills / Audit and assurance

Audit sampling

What it does

Draws a monetary-unit (MUS/PPS), stratified, or random attribute sample and produces the worksheet that states its own basis — assertion tested, population and how it was obtained, method, every parameter, the arithmetic behind the sample size, and the seed.

Sampling is where audit files are most often indefensible, and almost never because the sample was too small. It is because the basis was never written down. A reviewer three years later cannot tell why 40 items were chosen, how they were chosen, whether the population was complete, or what the result implies about the balance as a whole. This produces a selection that can be re-performed exactly. Everything else is secondary.

What it proves

No selection is produced unless four conditions hold:

  • The population ties to a stated control total — the GL or trial balance figure the population should equal. If it does not agree, sampling stops. A sample drawn from an incomplete population supports nothing, and the projection understates misstatement by exactly the amount that was missing.
  • A random seed is recorded — every selection is reproducible from the seed, the method, and the parameters. This is what makes the workpaper defensible.
  • Sample size is derived, not chosen — it follows from tolerable misstatement, expected misstatement, and risk of incorrect acceptance, all recorded on the workpaper.
  • Negative and zero balances are handled explicitly, not silently dropped.

The reliability factor is computed as -ln(risk). Expansion factors and attribute sample sizes are firm methodology and must be supplied — they are not invented. Projection uses tainting per item and compares to tolerable misstatement.

What you get

Six tabs:

  1. Sampling Plan — assertion, population and its source, control total and the tie-out, method, every parameter, computed sample size with its arithmetic, seed, negative-balance treatment, sign-off block. The tab that has to answer a reviewer's questions with nobody present to explain.
  2. Selection — every selected item with its row in the population, book value, selection basis (top stratum / interval hit / random), and blank columns for evidence examined, audited amount, difference, and disposition.
  3. Population Summary — count, total, distribution by size band, coverage in items and dollars, top-stratum items examined in full.
  4. Not Selected — the untested remainder, visible and quantified rather than implicit.
  5. Projection — once results are entered: differences found, tainting per item, projected misstatement against tolerable, and the conclusion.
  6. Reproducibility — the exact command, seed, parameters, and a hash of the population file, so a reviewer can confirm the same population produces the same sample.

Where it stops

It does not supply firm methodology. Expansion factors, attribute sample size tables, and the risk parameters themselves come from the firm's own approach and must be entered — a sampling plan built on defaults nobody chose is the problem this skill exists to prevent.

It does not decide whether a projected misstatement is material, and it does not conclude on the account.