Auditing Top-Ten List: Financial Statement Assertions & Risks

In this one-hour webcast, Sunish Mehta walks through financial statement assertions and related risks in the context of the full audit lifecycle—risk assessment procedures, risk assessment, and further audit procedures. Using a practical “audit pipeline” model, he shows how overall risk, assertion-level risk, and fraud risk drive the design of procedures so auditors can achieve effectiveness first and efficiency second on nonpublic audits.

Building from a concise plain-English refresher on the core assertions (existence/occurrence, completeness, valuation, allocation, rights and obligations, accuracy, classification, cutoff, and presentation and disclosure), Mehta introduces a focused Top 10 framework: overall and assertion-level risks, significant and fraud risks, specific and high-volume/IT-driven risks, directional risk under GAAP vs special purpose frameworks, and the critical “linkage” between identified risks and the nature, timing, and extent of audit procedures. Throughout, he emphasizes documentation quality, professional skepticism, and avoiding “same as last year” thinking when assessing and responding to risk.