A senior manager at the Toronto office of accounting firm Davis, Ellis & Thurn (DE&T) reflected on last year’s Upper Canada Bank (UCB) audit and wondered how he should plan for the upcoming 2012 audit. The senior manager was responsible for overseeing the audit of UCB’s retail segment (UCBR). Specifically, he was concerned about the test-of-controls portion of the UCBR audit, since the team had faced some challenges the previous summer. For years, UCB had been a client of DE&T, but it was only in 2011 that the firm had bid on and was granted the test-of-controls portion, which had formerly been completed on behalf of DE&T by UCB’s internal auditors. Now, reflecting on the previous year’s engagement, the senior manager wondered what changes he would make with respect to budgeting, staffing, and training, and to the client relationship in order to ensure that the client was satisfied and the UCBR audit remained profitable.
