The GAAS Guide (2013)describes today's engagement standards, practices, and procedures in use today, including Statements on Auditing Standards (SASs), Statements on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAEs), and Statements on Standards on Accounting and Review Services (SSARSs) and their relationship to the PCAOB's standards. The latest interpretations of all the standards are also included. Most importantly, it has been updated to reflect changes in auditing standards and the related Codification of Statements on Auditing Standards resulting from the Auditing Standards Board’s Clarity and Convergence Project.
The book is organized to follow the arrangement of the AICPA's Professional Standards. Each section begins with a list of authoritative pronouncements and an Overview. A Promulgated Procedures Checklist identifies the essential professional responsibilities that must be satisfied in each phase of an engagement followed by an Analysis and Application of Reporting Standards, which explains how each specific promulgated procedure should be applied. Practitioner's Aids provide additional guidance on how to apply the promulgated standards to specific engagements.
Throughout the book Risk Assessment Points, Engagement Strategies, Planning Aid Reminders, and Observations provide helpful, practical tips. Fraud Pointers alert practitioners to issues affecting auditor responsibility for fraud and fraud risks throughout the audit engagement. To keep CPAs abreast of potential changes affecting AICPA professional standards, this edition contains new overviews of outstanding exposure drafts, which highlight key elements of possible changes to existing professional standards.
The sample letters, reports, and checklists found in the text are included on a CD-ROM that accompanies the book and can be printed and customized to meet all of your auditing needs.
The GAAS Guide meets accounting industry standards as overseen by the AICPA's peer review system (the book reproduces a letter by the book's peer reviewer).
This book can be used in conjunction with the GAAS Update Service.
The 2013 Edition includes coverage of the following:
- SAS-122 (essentially all AU sections) (Clarification and Recodification), issued in October 2011
- SAS-123 (AU 200, AU 230, AU 260, AU 705, AU 720, AU 915, and AU 935) (Omnibus Statement on Auditing Standards — 2011), issued in October 2011
- SAS-124 (AU 910) (Financial Statements Prepared in Accordance with a Financial Reporting Framework Generally Accepted in Another Country), issued in October 2011
- SAS-125 (AU 905) (Alert that Restricts the Use of the Auditor’s Written Communication), issued in December 2011
- SSAE-17 (AT 301) (Reporting on Compiled Prospective Financial Statements When the Practitioner’s Independence is Impaired)
- SSARS-20 (Revised Applicability of Statements on Standards for Accounting and Review Services)
SAS-122 is particularly noteworthy as it represents the culmination of the ASB’s efforts to clarify the auditing standards and to largely converge its standards with the standards of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. As such, SAS-122 supersedes most of the existing auditing standards and recodifies the clarified and converged standards in one place (essentially similar to the design of SAS-1 many years ago). In addition, as part of its efforts, the ASB has issued these new standards using a new codification numbering sequence. We adopt this new numbering sequence in this year’s Guide.
