The New Auditing Standard in Sweden - What are the effects of a more detailed auditing standard?

Abstract

Background and problem: During the last couple of years there have been a great number of accounting scandals throughout the world. The line of auditing is by this time going through extensive changes when the rules are changed nationally and internationally. As an adaptation of Swedish accounting and auditing into international standards, a New Auditing Standard in Sweden that compensates for the former Auditing Process has been appointed. The main problem of this thesis is: what are the effects of a more detailed auditing standard? Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effects of the more detailed New Auditing Standard in Sweden. The authors will investigate how it has affected the responsibility of the auditor and if the quality of the auditing has improved since the New Auditing Standard was introduced. Delimitations: The authors can not investigate every aspect of audit regulation and have therefore decided to concentrate more on the aspect of the auditor, and less on the aspect of the companies of which the audit is made. The authors have chosen to delimitate the thesis to the 200 series of the New Auditing Standard. Methodology: This thesis is based on the qualitative approach. The empirical material has been collected through qualitative interviews. Results and conclusion: The effects for large and small companies are different. Cooperation is the key to an audit of high quality. Regulation is only on of the tools in the procedure, the auditor’s choices are influenced by a lot of factors in the surroundings. A more detailed regulation leaves the auditors with a narrower scope to make judgments on their own. Since all companies are different there is no template to follow while conducting the audit, therefore the audit has to be adapted to each company. Suggestions for further research: It would be interesting to investigate what effects the New Auditing Standard has had from the companies’ point of view. In addition, it would be of great interest to investigate further if the requirement for an audit should be kept or not for small companies. Additionally; an investigation of possible scenarios in the future would be of significant interest.