With year-end financial reporting now winding down, audit inspection teams are hitting the ground under strict orders to see whether Auditing Standard No. 5 is indeed taking root at audit firms.
The Public Company Accounting Board went so far as to hold a special two-day training session for its inspectors in April to indoctrinate them in the ways of AS5. They will now be checking audits of 2007 financial reports to assess how auditing firms embraced the standard, which was issued last year to alleviate companies’ struggles with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
