Internal and external audits: the main differences and similarities

Checking the state of affairs in any of the company is necessary because only the constant strict control over the financial transactions can guarantee the normal operation of the company, not subject to malign influence of errors, negligence and fraud staff.That is why the internal and external audits are extremely important for the life of any company.In this article we will look at both of the above type of audit and try to understand how they differ from each other.

Internal and external audits are essentially checks the state of the company in a particular industry.Traditionally, the concept of auditing is associated only with the financial condition of the company, but in fact can be checked anything.For example, can be carried out an internal audit of quality management system, the results of which will give a clear idea of ​​how the company controls the quality of products, and what force is applied to it to increase.This check will allow to identify the most weaknesses of the quality management system and to generate concrete proposals for improvement.

internal and external audit differ among themselves as to who will carry out the test.For example, internal audit employees.The decision to conduct an internal audit of the company's management accepted that if there is a suspicion of the existence of any violations or internal audits conducted regularly.To conduct inspections is a special committee of internal auditors, who for some period will check the state of affairs of the company in a particular sector.The indisputable advantage of the internal audit is its free as well as the fact that the information remains within the company, and no unauthorized persons will not have access to it.However, internal audit has its drawbacks: the company's employees will not be able to ensure the proper independence and impartiality when checking because they are somehow connected with the rest of the company's employees, in addition, each of the auditors have to check including his department, and the temptation to tweakthe test results will be incredibly large.That is why the selection of staff in the commission of Internal Auditors is a very important moment connected with many difficulties, and only if the Commission is composed of competent employees from different departments, you can count on qualified and efficient conduct of inspections.

external audit conducted by an independent expert - a representative of the auditing firm, which undertakes for a fee to check the financial status of the organization and report any violations detected in a special letter, which the auditor's report.This type of audit will undoubtedly be more objective, because the audience - independent experts who have no links with the organization which it inspects.However, there is a downside: the auditor, with all that he is a professional, undertakes to keep all information secret, yet is external to the company, and therefore be 100% sure that he never,Under no circumstances use the information, yet can not.In order to objectively evaluate the quality of the audit, carried out internal quality control audit, which is similar to the internal audit, however, has some differences related to the fact that the tested results of the audit.After carrying out such control decision on further cooperation with one or another audit firm.

Thus, internal and external audit processes are similar, with the main difference that the internal audit staff of the company, and external - independent experts.To achieve the optimum ratio of performance verification and wasted resources necessary to the successful combination of both external and internal audits, each of which has both undeniably positive and negative sides.