The West Agribusiness Company recently purchased three large fruit farms and a dairy operating under the name of Newberry Farms. All of the company’s products had been marketed through the previous owner, Coe County Farm Cooperative. The farms were managed by local personnel, none of whom had any formal training in either agriculture or agribusiness. They had been more like caretakers than managers, and had let the coop run the business. The co-op provided marketing and accounting services to the co-op members. West had not decided how it wanted to manage the Newberry Farm properties.

West’s management decided to wait for the results of an internal audit of operations before deciding whether to replace Newberry’s management, provide training, or simply let them proceed.

Required:

Prepare a set of audit program steps for the preliminary survey portion of this audit.

Discuss the purpose of each step and what information about the auditee each step would provide.