Client-prepared schedules in the audit file
How to mark, check and sign schedules a client prepares, such as a fixed asset register or debtors listing, before they count as audit working papers.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Half the paper on a typical audit file in a small or mid-sized practice was produced by the client. The fixed asset register, the debtors age analysis, the accruals listing, the VAT reconciliation, the loan schedule: the financial manager prepares them, e-mails them over, and the trainee files them under the right section. Months later a reviewer opens the file and cannot tell which schedules the team tested and which it simply received.
That ambiguity is a documentation failure, not a filing quirk. This article sets out how client-prepared schedules should be identified, checked and signed so that they become audit working papers rather than client paperwork sitting in an audit file.
Why the client's name must be on it
ACCA advises that working papers prepared by client staff should normally be clearly identified as prepared by the client, and should be signed by the member of the audit team responsible for that area to show they have been checked. In ACCA's words, the team member's signature indicates the schedule has been "audited".
The reasoning runs back to ISA 230. ACCA cites the standard's objective: documentation that gives a sufficient and appropriate record of the basis for the auditor's report, and evidence that the audit was planned and performed in line with the ISAs and applicable legal and regulatory requirements. A schedule that nobody can attribute, and that shows no sign of being tested, contributes nothing to that record. Worse, it can mislead a reviewer into thinking an area is covered when it is not.
ACCA's article on documentation and an effective audit service explains these documentation requirements in more detail.
The schedule is not the evidence
ACCA draws a distinction that helps here: audit procedures are the actions auditors carry out, and audit evidence is what the auditor obtains as a result. Its example is the circularisation of receivables, where the circularisation is the procedure and the customers' replies are the evidence.
A client's debtors listing is neither. It is the population the team works from. The evidence comes from what the team then does with it: agreeing the total to the ledger, recalculating the ageing, and confirming or vouching selected balances. That is why the client's schedule needs the team's work visibly layered on top of it before it earns a place as a working paper.
Checking a client schedule
The checks are familiar, but writing them down as a routine stops them being skipped under time pressure:
- Agree. Agree the schedule's totals to the trial balance or general ledger at the same date.
- Cast and recalculate. Re-add columns, and recalculate any depreciation, interest or ageing the client has worked out.
- Test the content. Select items and vouch them to source documents, or trace source documents into the schedule.
- Look for what is missing. Ask whether the schedule could omit items, and test completeness from the other direction.
- Conclude. Write a short conclusion on the schedule itself.
ACCA explains that under ISA 230 the auditor must record the identifying characteristics of the items tested, who performed the audit work and the date it was completed, and who reviewed the work and the date and extent of that review. On a client schedule that means invoice numbers or asset tags beside the ticks, the preparer's initials and date, and the reviewer's initials and date. Without those, the ticks are decoration.
Receiving schedules through a request link
How the schedule arrives matters more than it seems. A file that came by e-mail attachment, was saved to a laptop and then uploaded to the file has no clear trail back to the client.
In Achekam, staff create, send and track requests to clients for documents, answers and confirmations in one RFI console, whichever screen the request was raised from. On the request page, the client uploads files or folders and answers questions, and what they send is filed in that client's vault folder. Executable file types are blocked, and files are limited to 100 MB each by default. Uploads are virus-scanned only where the server operator has set up ClamAV; otherwise structural checks run, and the record says which happened.
The practical gain is provenance. The schedule in the vault folder is the one the client sent in reply to a specific request, which is a cleaner starting point than "found in my inbox".
Tying the client's figures to the trial balance
The first check on any client schedule is whether it agrees to the books. Achekam builds lead schedules from the engagement's trial balance, with each figure traceable to its trial balance lines. Staff can record an audit adjustment on a line with a reason, and findings can be raised from a working paper and then closed or withdrawn.
A working paper can also carry a spreadsheet workbook whose figures are refreshed from the engagement's trial balance, with any figure it could not read listed. Refreshing is refused once the file is locked or while the paper is under review. That gives the team a fixed point to agree the client's totals to, and a list of anything that did not come through, rather than a manual copy that drifts out of date when the trial balance changes.
Labelling and sign-off conventions
Agree one convention for the whole firm and put it in the methodology:
- Header: "Prepared by client" with the client's preparer's name, and "Obtained by" with the team member and the date received.
- Source: the request it answered, so anyone can find the original.
- Tick marks: a legend on the schedule, explaining each tick used.
- Work done: a short note of the procedures performed and the items selected.
- Sign-off: the responsible team member's initials and date, then the reviewer's.
For building the request list that produces these schedules, see the audit PBC list, and for what to do with documents clients upload, read audit evidence from client uploads.
A schedule with the client's name at the top and the auditor's signature at the bottom tells the reviewer exactly what happened in between. That is the whole point of the convention.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
