Voluntary audit

Even without specific obligation required by the law, many entities have the necessity, or think opportune, to demand a qualified and independent professional judgment on their own financial reporting. In fact the auditing of accounts can be useful:

• to supply shareholders, physical persons or other entities, assurance about the fairness of the financial reporting and its compliance with the established accounting principles;
• to supply to the administrators useful information and suggestions to the aims of a more aware management, as an example to the aims of the predisposition of budget and future plans, of the dealing with the financials institution, in the merger and acquisition operations, in supporting the function of management contro

Voluntary audit normally complies with the same rules established for legal audits. However when this services is required by an International Group of companies, gda can perform the engagement in compliance with International Audit Standards or on the basis of ‘instruction packages’ received by the parent company preparing, when required, long-form reports and cooperating with the auditors of the parent company in order to streamline the group auditing process.

These kind of services are ruled by the ISA document ISRSs 4400 Engagement to perform Agreed-Upon Procedures Regarding Financial Information. The scope of the audit is generally limited to some items of the financial statement or other financial documents. Therefore the scope of the audit and the level of assurance is more limited than in case of full audit of the financial statement. The audit report, whose distribution is generally limited to the client, details the audit procedures performed and the audit findings, giving evidence of irregularities and reccomedations.

Agreed Upon Procedures engagements are generaly performed in connection with extraordinary operations such as merger and acquisitions.

Agreed Upon Procedures engagements are also applicable when the European Commission require the beneficiaries of funds related to the 7 Framework Programme for the European Scientific Research to obtain “audit certificates” in order to demonstrate the compliance of the costs claimed with the contractual provisions. In such cases the audit procedures to be performed are directly established by the European Commision itself. Similar services are also required by other national or international donors.