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History of Auditing Standards

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Auditing standards history in the United States

Auditing profession has relied on agreed upon procedures at the beginning of its emergence. The current formal audit practice has evolved relatively recently. The story of how auditing evolved started in the early 20th century with the growth of industrial revolution, when firms entered the stock market which was unregulated at the time a growing need evolved to detect fraud and make more reliable financial statements as investors began to depend on financial reports.
Federal Trade Commission requested AICPA to provide guidance to accountants and auditors in 1917 as a response AICPA issued a series of recommendation to the accounting community on financial reporting and auditing. In 1929 the AICPA issued a specific guide for auditing (Verification of Financial Statements) and it stated that the extent of the work is a responsibility of the auditor which is one of the most important auditing concepts even now. In 1936 AICPA issued Examination of Financial Statements by Independent Public Accountants, a guide on performing audit procedures on small and mid-sized companies.

The SEC which was created in 1934. A part of its duties was to oversight the auditing profession, and it required the companies to send periodic reports in accordance with GAAP and to provide assurances with their reports. Auditing standards issuance used to be triggered by financial fraud events or crimes. Statement on Auditing Procedure (SAP) No. 1 in October 1939 required physical inspection of inventory and confirmation of receivables was a response to the fraud case of McKesson & Robbins earlier in the same year, as a result of the statement management word wasn’t taken for granted without farther inspection.
Although not formally standardized the technique of sampling was first used in the early 1940s, with the growing volume of

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