Existence of Debtors - Audit Process

The easiest technique to establish the existence of a debtor is to enquire the debtor if he exists. This is done through use of a practice recognise as debtor's circularisation that is basically a direct confirmation from the debtors.

Reason or advantages for circularising debtors are:

1) To acquire confirmatory direct external evidence of the beneficial and existence ownership of the asset debtors.

2) To provide evidence to the figure in the accounts for debtors is a fair or true one.

3) To offer confirmatory evidence to the system of recording and debtors and documenting sales and the controls there on can be relied upon to create an accurate figure for debtors. Normally, tests that are designed to acquire evidence of the reliability of the system are called compliance tests. Therefore Circularisation is useful both for compliance and substantive tests.

4) To give evidence as to the correctness of cut off. Cut off is the technical term required to ensure about in computing profits sales are exactly compared along with the costs of the goods sold. Cut off tests can be substantive that is examining last numbers of documents or compliance such is, whether controls exists their application can be tested.

5) To give evidence on the existence of disputed items.