Audit working paper software that holds up in peer review.

Every Indian Chartered Accountant has, at some point, recreated last year's audit file from memory the week before a peer review. Audit Suite is designed so that never happens again. Every working paper is generated as it is needed, attached to the assertion it supports, signed off by preparer and reviewer, and locked into an SA 230 compliant file within 60 days of report sign-off — ready for ICAI peer review or Quality Review Board inspection without a single recreation.

What "audit working papers" actually mean under SA 230

ICAI's Standard on Auditing 230 (Audit Documentation) sets the bar: documentation must be sufficient to enable an experienced auditor, with no previous connection to the audit, to understand what was done, when, by whom, and why. Most firms in India still maintain this in a mix of email threads, physical files, Excel sheets named with the partner's initials, and printed Tally reports stapled together. Audit Suite replaces all of that with a single working-paper system that is structured the way ICAI inspects it.

Working papers auto-generated by Audit Suite

The platform ships with templates for every working paper an Indian statutory audit actually needs. You don't write them from scratch each year — you fill in the variables and the system composes the final document.

Planning & acceptance

• Engagement letter under SA 210 (with client-specific scope, fee and timeline)
• Independence and conflict-check confirmation
• Audit planning memo, including SA 315 risk-of-material-misstatement (RMM) summary
• Materiality computation under SA 320 (overall, performance, clearly-trivial)
• Audit strategy and audit programme

Risk assessment & response

• Understanding the entity — business, industry, regulatory environment
• Internal control walkthrough memos (per significant cycle)
• Fraud risk assessment under SA 240 (incentives, opportunities, rationalisations)
• Related-party identification and confirmation (SA 550)
• Going concern assessment (SA 570)

Substantive procedures

• Cash & bank — BRS comparison, deposit-in-transit ageing, cash count memo
• Trade receivables — ageing review, balance confirmation log (SA 505), provision adequacy
• Inventory — physical verification observation, cut-off testing, valuation review
• Fixed assets — addition vouching, depreciation re-computation, title verification (CARO clause (i)(c))
• Borrowings — sanction-letter review, end-use certification (CARO clause (ix))
• Statutory dues — GST, TDS, ESI, PF tracker (CARO clause (vii))
• Journal entries — high-value JE testing under SA 240
• Analytical procedures — ratio analysis, period-over-period variance memo

Completion & reporting

• Management representation letter (SA 580)
• Subsequent-events review (SA 560)
• Misstatement schedule (corrected and uncorrected)
• Schedule III disclosure checklist
• CARO 2020 report (all 21 clauses with applicability)
• Final auditor's report under SA 700 / 705 / 706

Lead schedules — the bridge between TB and FS

The lead schedule is the connecting tissue between the trial balance and the financial statements. Most Indian firms maintain this in Excel — one tab per FS line item, copy-pasted from Tally, with a CY column, a PY column, and a free-form "remarks" column. The problem with that approach is that nothing reconciles automatically.

Audit Suite generates lead schedules directly from the imported trial balance. Each FS line — Trade Receivables, Plant & Machinery, Sales — is broken down into its constituent ledgers, with CY and PY balances pulled from the TB import. A variance column flags movements above your materiality. Auditor conclusions are typed in once and carried into the final working paper.

Mapped to ICAI Standards on Auditing

The 60-day file assembly rule, enforced

SA 230 paragraph A21 requires the auditor to assemble the final audit file within 60 days of the date of the auditor's report. After that window, no further changes may be made except to add documentation of facts known to the auditor that, had they been known at the report date, may have caused a change in the report. Audit Suite enforces this with a hard lock at day 60 — additions after that point are recorded as supplementary entries with a separate audit trail, exactly as ICAI inspectors expect to find.

FAQ

Related