Project #1:

Pages: 20-25 pages

Double space, Times New Roman, 12 font

Find a company with KEY AUDIT MATTER and COSO.

There are 3 files to be provided as submission of this project. 1) is the annual report of the company you have chosen, in pdf format, and 2) and 3) is your report, in BOTH Word and pdf format, addressing all the requirements below for this project.

You may wish to consult CAS 701 (KAM)

Please make sure you USE YOUR OWN WORDS in all the below, develop YOUR OWN coherent writing style, and NOT simply copy and paste.

Whenever you are referring to an item in your chosen annual report, please make sure you reference it so that a reader can find it quickly. PLEASE USE PAGE REFERENCES AND WHERE ON A PAGE IT IS FOUND. For example, “page 38.3” would mean page 38, and 3 tenths of the way down the page.

LANGUAGE and WRITEUP of your project are important; be professional about it. Label appropriately. Above all, make sure it is eminently readable. Don’t force the reader to have to struggle to make sense of your report. Be reader-friendly! READABILITY is important!

1) think about which industry you might like to work in in the medium term, and select an annual report of a company in that industry. It can be anywhere in the world, provided it is in the English language, and provided it is large enough to have a decent sized annual report. It will be more beneficial for you if it contains an audit report with some KAMs. Many such annual reports may be 200 or 300 pages or longer. That will likely work in your favour. A shorter one may also be ok (recall the Bell Canada one, which is 164 pages, and is well-written).

2) get to know your company, as if you are auditing it for the first time. From the information in the annual report, please prepare what might go into a ‘permanent file’ for that company’s audit. As a starting point, you might wish to look at Appendix 1 in CAS 315.

3) please also list in a separate section what other items might go into a permanent file which happen not to be given in this specific annual report.

4) using only the information provided in the annual report, please provide an extensive risk analysis, listing risk factors with a BRIEF explanation, in your own words, of the business risks and risks of material misstatement. You may wish to consult CAS 315 and CAS 540 as a resource. Don’t forget to reference the page numbers and position on the page. Please also try to organize them in a coherent fashion. You may include the KAM here as well.

5) look at the risk factors outside the KAM and decide on a handful you might consider the most important ones. Determine whether they would meet the criterion of a KAM. Do a write up of how you might include them as additional KAM. This would also include the impact on the audit program.

6) please come up with a materiality and performance materiality for the company, along with alternate methods of determining these. Justify your choice. It is possible the audit report and/or the rest of the annual report might include such a number, but come up with your own reasoning, and try to justify the number you have selected.

7) does the company have reports on internal control over financial reporting? Does this include both a management statement acknowledging their responsibility and a separate audit report? Is there anything else in the rest of the annual report on this topic?

8) you may wish to include additional information you might consider important for a fuller understanding of the company and its audit.