8.29 TESTING BANK RECONCILIATION CONTROLS LO1, 2, 3

You are testing the controls over bank accounts for your audit client, Orleans Ltd. You note that the responsibility for bank reconciliations has changed due to a corporate reorganisation halfway through the current financial year. Both the staff member performing the bank reconciliations and the supervisor have changed. You are able to talk to only the current staff member and supervisor because the other staff took voluntary redundancies and left the clients employment six months ago.

Required

1. (a) What techniques are available to you to gather evidence about the bank reconciliations? Explain how you would use each technique and comment on the quality of the evidence obtained from each.

2. (b) When you ask the employees responsible for bank reconciliations about how they perform the rec- onciliations there is a possibility that they will not tell the whole truth about their performance of the

   reconciliations. Given this, will you bother to ask them? Explain.

3. (c) Explain the impact of the staff changes on your controls testing program.

4. (d) What are the primary risks for bank reconciliation audits?