The following information describes a charitable organisation, Succour Pty Ltd. Succour Pty Ltd.’s revenue comes from donations, the sale of raffle tickets and from hosting fundraising dinners. Most...

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The following information describes a charitable organisation, Succour Pty Ltd.


Succour Pty Ltd.’s revenue comes from donations, the sale of raffle tickets and from hosting fundraising dinners. Most revenue is received in cash, but increasingly, money comes from credit cards. Receipts are provided to people who donate money to the organisation so that they claim a taxation refund. Receipts are not issued for raffle ticket sales or for client payments to attend fundraising dinners.


Most expenditure is made in cash, except for office rent, telephone, utilities and the three employees’ wages. These are paid by direct debit from the bank account. One employee is the chief operating officer (CEO) who reports to the board of directors. He oversees the operation of the whole organisation but is particularly responsible for the purchase of any fixed assets and for negotiations on rent agreements, etc. His partner is the second employee. She is involved with the coordination of raffle ticket sales and the organisation of the fundraising activities. The third employee, the bookkeeper, looks after the accounting processes. The charity is managed by a board of directors which consists of two independent directors and the CEO. The board of directors meets monthly and always reviews the monthly (or annual) financial reports. The monthly report is prepared by the bookkeeper and includes a comparison of actual to budget results, and a comparison of this year to last year results. One member of the board holds a Masters of Commerce degree from Deakin University, with a major in accounting and has extensive work experience in a mid-tier accounting firm. The other director has significant experience working in a large charitable organisation. The two independent directors are very busy and rely heavily on the CEO. Board meetings are often hurried as one or other of the directors has to rush to another commitment. The CEO appoints and liaises with the external auditors. The CEO manages all risks within the company and does not bring these to the Directors as he knows they are very busy people.


The charity rents a small office in Burwood. Cash is held in the bookkeepers’ top desk drawer before banking. As the bookkeeper is very busy, the banking is undertaken once a week. Most expenses are paid by the bookkeeper from the cash collected from fundraising activities and donations although if there is not enough cash to pay for cash expenses, the bookkeeper withdraws cash from the bank account. There is no formal approval method for cash payments but the board of directors discusses all major expenditure in advance.


Required


You are an audit assistant working for Awesome Audits and Succour Pty Ltd. is a prospective client. The audit partner from Awesome Audits wants you to draft an internal memorandum based on the above information which addresses the following items:




  1. Overall factors to consider when making the client acceptance decision on Succour Pty Ltd.


    (10 marks)




  2. Perceived strengths in corporate governance in the prospective client. (15 marks)




  3. Overview of perceived inherent and control risks in the prospective client. (15 marks)




6


4. Explain how and why the perceived risks may impact the audit strategy, especially regarding the amount of substantive procedures undertaken. (10 marks)


5. Proposed safeguards for the perceived risks identified in the prospective client. (10 marks) 6. Risk of liability for Awesome Audits if Succour Pty Ltd. stops paying rent. (15 marks)


You are not required to provide an opinion whether the prospective client should be accepted or not. Your task is to assist the audit partner on the decision process, supporting your arguments on the evidence provided, regulations and case law.

Answered Same DayApr 28, 2020MAA705Deakin University

Answer To: The following information describes a charitable organisation, Succour Pty Ltd. Succour Pty Ltd.’s...

Abr Writing answered on Apr 30 2020
137 Votes
Internal Memorandum
Introduction
In any organization the internal memorandum is of utmost importance as it helps in delivering the necessary information to the colleagues and the subsequent managers in an organization. The information that is included while drafting the internal memorandum involves information on the objectives, goals, the problems and difficulties that might be faced in the organization regarding the deadlines and other similar issues. The main fact to be kept in mind while drafting
the internal memorandum is, it should be as brief as possible so that the message can be conveyed effectively to the employees and various other managerial staff. In the current assignment we will be drafting an internal memorandum for the charity organization Succour Pty Ltd. who will be our prospective client and the assistance will be provided to the audit partners that will enable it to include the information that has been mentioned in the assignment.
Factors to be considered while making the decision on client’s acceptance with respect to the Succour Pty Ltd.
Appropriate background check of the company: The audit firm before accepting client’ (Succour Pty Ltd.) request for conduction of suitable audit procedures, should first conduct a background checking of the charity organizations with respect to the other competitors in the same industry and its comparative market position (Cassell, et. al., 2012). For this purpose, both qualitative and quantitative data of past three to five years should be analyzed that can be made available from a number of sources.
Collection of appropriate information regarding the general details of the company: The audit partners would focus on collecting key information about the Succour Pty Ltd. Like its prior work environment and experience, the charitable work done by the company in recent years and the legal issues faced by the company while conducting the charity activities.
Determination of the risk events: The next factor to be considered by the firm would be regarding the potential risk that the company might face in future with the help of the information that has been collected and evaluated by the audit firm (Knechel & Salterio, 2016). The different risk factor includes six to eight factors on which the decision would be based like the regularity in the dividend declaration of the Succour Pty Ltd., company’ initiative with respect to the CSR policies and last if the directors are also heading a company which is soon to be bankrupt by the company.
Evaluation of risk events in terms that the audit procedure would not be able to detect the issue and there after assigning an appropriate value: This will mainly focus on evaluating the events that will adversely affect the audit firm and will the audit firm would be able to recover from such a risk event or it would affect the reputation of the audit firm in the long range (Rosli, et. al., 2012).
Computation of level of risk on the basis of probability of occurring or the risk and the subsequent impact on the decision making: A comparative high value on the product of these two factors would result in a potential risk to the audit firm to our case organization i.e. Awesome Audit and this affect the audit firms’ decision.
Perceived strengths in terms of corporate governance in the prospective client – Succour Pty Ltd
As far as the strengths are concerned, the organizational management and accountability areas are well defined. It is very necessary in any type of organization that the accountability is set and work is allotted in the proper manner so that every person knows exactly what he needs to do, in what manner he needs to do and after completion of the work to whom he has to report his work (Krishnan & Yang, 2009). The firm is governed by effective corporate governance by the system of rules processes and practices by which Succour Pty Ltd is controlled and directed. Corporate governance involves essentially the balancing of interest of organization’s many stakeholders, for example, management, shareholders, suppliers, customers, government, financiers and the entire community. The current company is doing its best in order to maintain its corporate governance within the charitable organization.
There are three partners in the charitable organizations and all of them are the organization’s employees too. One of them is the CEO, his job is to manage the overall operations of the organization and he is the one who reports to the board of directors. The second employee handles the overall management of the fund raising activities and coordination of raffle tickets. The third employee is the bookkeeper who has the responsibility to maintain the accounts of the charitable organization. He also prepares the reports of comparison. Hence the work is divided in a systematic manner. Also the boards of directors are both well qualified and they help the organization by giving proper suggestions and proposals to improvise the working performance of the organization. Apart from that they also...
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