Diligence in auditing made easy

With auditing firms under the spotlight recently there has never been a more pressing need for auditing vigilance to restore the faith in the profession.

While auditors have multiple roles, their function of providing assurance or perspective regarding the integrity of an organisation’s financial statements is crucial – whether from an investigative or declarative point of view. Auditing fixed assets helps uncover invalid asset transactions, non-compliant asset valuation and incorrect asset classification.

This is key to the accuracy of any financial statement. Validating data and entries such as property and asset ownership of both the company and of directors under audit, as well as asset management, form part of the process for which auditors require a trustworthy source of information. “An auditor needs to satisfy himself as to the actual existence of assets and liabilities appearing in the financial statement of the organisation that is under audit.

This process can be time consuming and requires diligence – but technology has provided more effective and time efficient solutions”, says Greg Brown, director at LexisNexis South Africa.Granting an assurance that financial statements and company documents presented to SARS, banks or creditors are a reasonably accurate representation carries risk.

As such it is essential for auditors to follow the necessary steps in the auditing process to test information and transactions represented in these statements of account. Utilising a web-based programme such as LexisWinDeed – with the largest accumulated database of properties, individuals and companies in South Africa and a proven track record since 2002 for reports on property and asset ownership – provides auditors with dependable and relevant data in real time.

“With many unique functionalities on offer, in depth search options provided by Lexis WinDeed, which are also available even when the Deed’s office is offline, mean that all bases are covered.

This allows auditors to rest assured that they have access to up to date and reliable information as part of their extensive and compliant audits,” says Brown.For more information, visit:

https://www.lexisnexis.co.za/lexiswindeed