• Authoring Work Programs and Checklists
  • Financial Statement Assertions
  • Areas - Conclusions
  • Authoring Work Programs - Detailed Audit Response
  • Authoritative References
  • Authoring Work Programs - Creating Conditional Conclusions
  • Document Guidance
  • Adding Procedure Guidance
  • Editing Procedures
  • Locking
  • Lock User Procedure Customizations
  • Objectives
  • Tags
  • Work Programs - Author
  • Document Properties
  • Checklist Columns
  • Conditional Conclusions
  • Work Program Columns
  • Work Program Document Properties
  • Adding Authoritative References
  • Adding New Sub Procedures to Authored Procedures
  • Adding Procedures to a Grouping or Sub Grouping
  • Adding Tags to Procedures
  • Allocating procedures to groups
  • Authoring New Procedures
  • Creating New Checklists
  • Creating New Work Programs
  • Edit Procedure Actions
  • Edit Procedure Conditions
  • Modifying Existing Procedures
  • Filtering Procedures
  • Importing procedures from a work program or checklist
  • Inserting and deleting a custom Detailed Audit Response
  • Locking Author Mode
  • Locking user procedure customizations
  • Selecting Audit Responses to Make Available
  • Setting Procedure Availability

Financial Statement Assertions

Assertions are representations by management, explicit or otherwise, that are embodied in the financial statements. An auditor must obtain sufficient competent evidence to support the financial statement assertions.

Found only in work program documents, Audit defaults with four assertions: Completeness (C), Existence (E), Accuracy and Valuation (AV), and Presentation (P). Template authors can define new assertions and remap how assertions are combined. To show or hide the Financial Statement Assertions chart in your work program, select Insert List of Assertions from the Areas menu, or click the toolbar button .

To define a new assertion:

1. Open the AO - General options document.
2. In the General options menu, click Assertions.
3. Click the Number of combined assertions drop-down menu, then select the number of assertions. To define a new custom assertion, you must select 6 assertions or more.

4. Enter the firm standard terminology and abbreviation for the new assertion. Abbreviations can contain 2-4 characters.

   Note: To modify an existing assertion, under the Firm Standard and Abbr. columns, click the drop-down menu and select Other. Enter the new firm standard terminology and abbreviation in the fields that display.

5. Select the Include option beside each corresponding assertion to include it in your template file.
6. Click the Associate base assertions icon (). The icon will display as a warning () if any combined assertions are not associated with a base assertion.
7. Select the base assertions that correspond to each combined assertion. Click OK.

You have defined a new assertion. When using the assertion system in your template, procedures are automatically updated and your Risks and Controls automatically associate with equivalent combined assertions.

To remap how an assertion is combined:

1. Open the AO - General options document.
2. In the General options menu, click Assertions.
3. Click the Associate base assertions icon ().
4. In the Associate base assertions dialog, select the assertions that correspond to each combined assertion. If there is no association, select N/A. Click OK.

You have remapped how the assertion is combined. When modifying your assertions, your procedures will automatically update to store the applicable assertions.

Note: When opening the Financial Statement Areas (FSA) worksheet after updating your assertions settings in an engagement file, you will receive a warning indicating that your assertion settings have been modified and assertions enabled on FSAs should be reviewed. To enable your changes, you will need to manually add the relevant assertions to your FSAs.

This online help system applies to all CaseWare Audit, Review and Compilation products. Not all features are available in all products.