16-30 (Objective 16-4) You have been assigned to the confirmation of aged accounts receivable for the Blank Paper Company audit. You have tested the aged trial balance and selected the accounts for confirming. Before the confirmation requests are mailed, the controller asks to look at the accounts you intend to confirm to determine whether he will permit you to send them.

He reviews the list and informs you that he does not want you to confirm six of the accounts on your list. Two of them are credit balances, one is a zero balance, two of the other three have a fairly small balance, and the remaining balance is highly material. The reason he gives is that he feels the confirmations will upset these customers because they are kind of hard to get along with. He does not want the credit balances confirmed because it may encourage the customer to ask for a refund.

In addition, the controller asks you to send an additional 20 confirmations to customers he has listed for you. He does this as a means of credit collection for those stupid idiots who wont know the difference between a CPA and a credit collection agency.

Required

a. Is it acceptable for the controller to review the list of accounts you intend to confirm? Discuss.

b. Discuss the appropriateness of sending the 20 additional confirmations to the customers.

c. What additional procedures should be performed if the auditor agrees with the clients request not to send confirmations to the six customers.