Auditing, Attestation, and Assurance Services

Auditing, attestation, and assurance services are very important terms when speaking of the auditing process. Many companies use these three services, and there are many examples that could be spoken of. Auditing is the first service, and it is the most commonly used in today’s society. “Auditing can be defined as a systematic process of objectively obtaining and evaluating regarding assertions about economic actions and events to ascertain the degree of correspondence between those assertions and established criteria and communicating the results to interested users” (Boynton & Johnson, p. 6, 2006). The IRS would be a good example because they can conduct an audit against you or your company if they see any information that looks fraudulent or incorrect on a tax return. If there is information that if found to be incorrect, they will send out an auditor to do an investigation on you or your company.

“Attestation is the next service and can be defined as when a CPA firm issues a written communication that expresses a conclusion about the reliability of a written assertion that is the responsibility of another party” (Boynton & Johnson, p. 13, 2006). A good example would be internal controls. An owner has the authority to request to have a certain area of their company looked into if they think that there are concerns with internal controls such as the accounting for inventory. “The last service is assurance and can be defined as an independent professional service that improves the quality of information, or its context, for decision makers” (Boynton & Johnson, p. 11, 2006). A good example may be a customer satisfaction survey. A company may use an independent accounting firm to send out this survey so they can knowhow well their company is doing and if there may be any changes that need to be made to make it better.