Professional paper
The importance of audit as a quality indicator of the financial statements
Željko Tintor
orcid.org/0000-0002-5405-4843
; Retra d.o.o. for Audit and Business Consulting in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The rapid market development and globalization require entrepreneurs to make timely and correct business decisions. The risk of such decisions does not allow them to make decisions based only on intuition but requires reliable and trustworthy information. In this context, the role of business accounting is of particular importance. By using modern technological developments, it gathers information about business events, classifies and processes them in accordance with regulations and accounting standards, and transforms them into its information that will enable business decision making. The types, form and content
of such information are different, but a particularly significant place and role belong to the financial statements as holders of accounting information. Good business decisions can only be made after obtaining such information and analyzing the balance sheet and results of operations contained in the financial statements. For the information contained in the financial statements to be usable, they must be of high quality and reliable, which means that they must be relevant, verifiable, objective and realistic. The quality of the financial statements implies that the processing of business events and the preparation of financial statements is based on the consistent application of legal regulations and the adopted accounting standards and methods of preparing them. The reliability of the financial statements implies that in the financial statements there are no situations or business results that do not correspond to the actual situations and business results, as measured by the applicable legal frameworks and accounting standards, and without unfounded statements of situations and business results. The quality and reliability of the financial statements are ensured by an audit. Audit of financial statements by independent experts is a necessity in a market economy, both for the owners of the capital of a business entity and for their business partners, state institutions, banks, etc. By using the financial statements of the selected company, this paper gives an overview of the most common deviations in relation to the actual situations and business results, which make these financial statements lack the necessary quality and reliability. By applying appropriate audit procedures and methods, such discrepancies have been detected and adjusted to the actual situation, and comparisons of the financial statements before and after the audit have shown changes that ensure the quality and reliability of the financial statements, for
business decision-makers and other users of those reports.
Keywords
quality of financial statements; audit of financial statements; audit procedures and methods; reliability of financial statements
Hrčak ID:
230582
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2019.
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