Audit documentation an outsider can follow
What makes audit documentation clear enough for an experienced auditor with no link to the engagement, and which records Achekam keeps for the file.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
The inspector opens the inventory section of an audit file. There is a stock count attendance memo, a sample of items, and a conclusion: "Inventory fairly stated." The inspector asks the engagement manager how the sample was chosen, why the slow-moving items were not tested for write-down, and what the team made of the count differences. The manager remembers some of it. The file remembers none of it.
That gap, between what the team knew and what the file shows, is what ISA 230 is about. The standard does not ask for more paper. It asks for documentation that someone outside the engagement could understand without having to ask.
This article sets out what that means in practice, and which of the records an inspector expects Achekam keeps for the firm.
The experienced auditor test
ISA 230 sets the benchmark: the documentation should be sufficient to enable an experienced auditor, having no previous connection with the audit, to understand the nature, timing and extent of the procedures performed, the results and the evidence obtained, and the significant matters arising, with the conclusions reached and the significant professional judgements made.
Three words in that test do the work:
- Experienced. You need not explain auditing to the reader. You do need to explain this client, this risk and this decision.
- No previous connection. The reader has not sat in your planning meeting or heard the partner's view in the corridor. If it is not in the file, it did not happen as far as they can tell.
- Understand. Not merely see that something was done, but follow why it was done that way and what it showed.
A useful discipline is to have someone from another engagement read one section of the file and say what they could not follow. ACCA's article on audit working papers explains how auditors should prepare and organise working papers, and why documenting every matter is neither necessary nor practicable. The test is understanding, not volume.
Who did the work, who reviewed it and when
Every piece of work should show who performed it and when, and who reviewed it, when and to what extent.
In Achekam, each working paper moves through preparation, manager review, partner review, an optional engagement quality review, completion and lock. The preparer cannot also review it, and Achekam refuses any sign-off made by an AI. Sending a paper back, reopening it or locking it needs a written reason. So the question "who prepared and who reviewed this, and in what order?" has an answer recorded as the work moves, rather than reconstructed afterwards. The stages are described in working paper review stages.
Within a work item, each procedure step is marked done only with a written response and its documents, or set aside with a reason, and steps are never deleted. A step set aside is as informative to the outside reader as one completed, provided the reason says why.
Significant matters and judgements
This is where files most often fail. The routine work is documented; the difficult part, the judgement, lives in people's heads.
For each significant matter, the file should show:
- what the matter was and why it was significant;
- what the team did about it, including who was consulted;
- what evidence the team considered, including evidence that pointed the other way;
- what the team concluded, and why that conclusion follows.
Review notes are part of that record. A reviewer can raise review notes on a working paper; the preparer answers and the reviewer clears them, and each note's history is kept. A note that asked "why were slow-moving items not tested?" and the answer that followed show the outside reader that the question was asked and how it was resolved. Write answers that stand on their own: "done" does not help an inspector; "tested the twenty oldest lines for net realisable value; see step four" does.
Cross-references matter too. A conclusion that refers to evidence elsewhere in the file should say exactly where; cross-referencing working papers covers how to do that consistently.
Changes after the file is assembled
Once the auditor's report is issued, the file must be assembled within a set time and then not changed except in controlled ways. In South Africa, IRBA Board Notice 512 of 2023, Rule 4, requires the final engagement file to be assembled within 60 days of the report date and kept for at least five years, for audits of periods beginning on or after 15 December 2024.
In Achekam, after the report is issued the engagement partner assembles and locks the audit file. After that, changes can only be added as addenda, and unlocking needs a second partner or the quality reviewer. An addendum shows the outside reader what was added, by whom and when, without disturbing what was there at the report date. A locked working paper cannot be changed at all.
Records the system keeps for you
Some of the evidence an inspector looks for is about the file rather than in it. Record Governance keeps a log of changes to governed records showing who did what, when and with what result, which can be filtered and checked for an unbroken chain. It covers records under record governance, not every screen, and viewing it needs the AUDIT_LOG_VIEW permission.
Between the review stages, the step responses, the review note histories, the file lock and the change log, much of "who, when and in what order" is captured as the work happens. What no system can capture for you is the reasoning. That remains the team's job, and it is the part an experienced outsider most needs to read.
Pick one section of a recently completed file, give it to a manager from another team, and ask them to write down every question they would have had to ask. Those questions are your documentation gaps.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
