Accountancy

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The aim of a financial audit is to assure any stakeholders that a company's accounts are true and fair. For a traditional year-end audit, an auditor has to understand their clients' businesses (how they make money), their accounting policies and processes to figure out if they are fairly representing their income for the financial year and their financial position at the year-end fairly.

Audits are carried out in teams, so that you tend to go to your client site as a team and solve any problems together. In order to produce the audit report at the end and to testify that the accounts are true and fair, the team has to do a lot of testing. This involves diving into the detail of the financials of a company. Some tests are as simple as checking some of the costs back to invoices or agreeing cash back to bank statements. Others are more complicated where you have to have a more profound knowledge of accounting standards, which you will learn as part of your studies towards an Accountancy qualification.

The assurance divisions of professional services firms provide not only the year-end financial audit but also other types of assurance, such as risk assurance, controls tests and other similar services.