Case Assignment 2.3
1. (a) When confirming year-end accounts receivable, auditors hope to accomplish the objective of obtaining evidence from third parties to evaluate the client’s assertions of year-end accounts receivable amounts. The client’s assertions that accounts receivable confirmation can effectively address are existence, rights, and valuation.
(b) When performing year-end sales cutoff tests, auditors hope to accomplish the objective of obtaining evidence from third parties to evaluate the client’s assertions of sales recorded for the period under audit. The client’s assertions that sales cutoff tests can effectively address are completeness and presentation.
2. Coopers & Lybrand made several significant errors of judgment in its effort to confirm the Wow Wee receivable at the end of 1995. These errors of judgment include ignoring or overlooking red flags including: the 69% change in the percentage of factored accounts receivable from 1994 to 1995, the $2.4 million in sales to Wow Wee booked in the final day of fiscal 1995, the fact that Wow Wee is a manufacturing company, the fact that Wow Wee was left out of the top 25 customers list when it was among the top 5 based on recorded sales, …show more content…
I would classify these errors as reckless as there is no evidence to support that Coopers & Lybrand were involved in the fraud. I think that the auditors did not suspect that fraud would occur at Happiness Express in 1995 as they had previously audited Happiness Express in 1994 and rightfully issued an unqualified opinion. I think that the auditors believed that these were simple mistakes that did not need to be further examined. The company’s revenue grew so significantly from 1994 to 1995 and because of this, I think that is was easy for the auditors to believe that the employees were simply overwhelmed by the company’s alarming growth and made mistakes as a