Report Writing and Communicating to the Audit Committee.
The internal audit checklist is just one of the many tools which are available from the auditor’s toolbox that helps to ensure each internal audit addresses the necessary requirements. It stands as a reference point before, during and after the audit process and if developed for a specific audit and used correctly will provide the following benefits.Recommendations: Describe any suggestions for improvement. Action plan: Make an action plan from the recommendations with responsibilities for action and a timescale for implementation. Identify who will implement the action plan and provide a re-audit date.Audit reports demand to be written in detail and be as specific as possible. Before you can cover all points in your report, you have to gain a broad understanding of its key objectives. Having these objectives in mind will help you prepare for the technicalities involved in writing an internal audit reportand ensures it serves its purpose.
To write a good audit report takes practice. To write a great audit report takes much more practice. Hopefully the discussion presented in this article will help bridge that gap to present much better audit reports, be they for internal or external audits. Before you begin writing the audit report think about your intended audience.For internal auditors, reports enable audit follow-up, provide a means to teach and train audit staff, summarize results of audit work and support the auditor’s performance evaluation. The goal of effective reporting is to help ensure stakeholders’ understanding of the issues, the risk and impact to operations and to share practical solutions.
GP training: Writing up an audit for your e-portfolio. In the first of two articles on how to write up an audit, a typical e-portfolio entry is used to explain the theory and practice of writing audits as learning logs.
