Miguel is a first year staff at Anderson, Olds, and Watershed, CPAS. He has been working on the accounts receivable substantive testing at FastFix, which has an audit time budget of five hours. Through no fault of his own, the accounts receivable testing has been much more difficult than anticipated. It has taken Miguel eight hours to complete his testing. Miguel is considering “eating time” and indicating the testing has only taken five hours on his time sheet.

Required: 

a. What are the purposes for reporting time? 

b. What are the pros and cons of Miguel reporting five hours to complete the work, versus the eight hours it actually has taken? What would you do if you were Miguel?