Over the past few years, auditing standards have become more and more complex, resulting in higher costs to the clients and more small firms leaving the audit business altogether because they can no longer spend the time and money to keep current. More and more firms will find themselves penalized in the Peer Review process as they inadvertently miss changes. Audits are now changing to a risk based approach and must focus more effort on those areas subject to higher likelihood of errors, which may vary from client to client. As a result, auditors will need to spend more time reviewing the client’s history, studying where they stand in their industry, and examining their controls to determine which areas need to be audited. Additional time will also be required to review their financial procedures and programs. As a result, audits are going to take a lot more time and be more costly to perform.
