Auditing being entirely theoretical is perceived by many as a tedious and monotonous subject. It is that subject where you feel you have been studying for eternity now, but still have not been able to complete the syllabus. Also, many students end up scoring less in auditing despite their preparation. It is because of the poor presentation skills and the lack of ability to express the thoughts in written words. Working on presentation skills at the time of preparation of exam would be able to produce great results. For Auditing as well, i would recommend Padhuka’s books since the content is made pointer wise and is easy for the students to comprehend.The following tips shall be useful while preparing the auditing and assurance syllabus:
- Always start your preparation with the Standards on Auditing. Split the entire standards into batches with 4 standards in each batch. Try to fix a deadline to complete each batch rather than each SA. Once you have completed standards on auditing, 25 to 30 percent of the syllabus is already covered. Move on to the other chapters as the next step.
- Always study with the side headings and enhance your written practice by jotting down the side headings and the keywords as you read. Once you have completed a particular topic, try to explain that topic in your own words to assess if you are able to gather your thoughts properly. If the material that you are using does not contain pointer wise answers, then split it yourself with applicable side headings.
- Study all the points in an answer. For example, if an answer consists of 10 subpoints, study and remember all the 10 subpoints. It is not necessary for you to write all the 10 points in the examination. However , only if you study those 10 points, you will be able to remember atleast 5 points. This is a really good strategy to use in theory papers.
- Study and practice all the questions from the practice manual. This is really important. Give the highest priority to be thorough with all the questions in the practice manual since you can be assured a minimum of 20 to 30 marks with questions appearing in the same pattern as that of the practice manual.
- Club your preparation of auditing with any other practical subject. For example, do not try to cover auditing syllabus at one shot. It is really difficult, as it tends to get dry and boring after a point of time. Hence club it with accounts or costing or any other practical subject.
- Another way to make this subject interesting is to imagine yourself as the auditor. When you imagine yourself to be the auditor, it becomes much easier to relate to the content and comprehend why certain audits are carried out in a certain way or why is risk assessment important and other questions like these.
- There are few specific set of keywords that are used in almost every answer and is very important to definitely be present in your answer paper, no matter what the question is. One such example is ‘Sufficient appropriate audit evidence’. This phrase, as polished as it sounds is an essential phrase to be included in your auditing paper. You cannot complete your examination without this phrase because it is used almost in every page of the book. So, pay attention to such repetitive phrases and make note of them so that you can use them in your answers and make your answer paper look more professional and polished.
All the topics are important . However, few important and easy topics to score are :
- Audit of government entities
- Audits of NGO,other entities
- Audit sampling
- Risk assessment and internal control
- All the standards on auditing
- Audit documentation and audit evidence
- Bank audit
- Company audit
Prepare these topics well and try to achieve a leverage in the examinations.
All these tips adds more value to your learning, in addition to the contents mentioned in the book.
Happy learning! 🙂