Research On The Application And Development Strategy Of Off-site Audit Technology In Annual Report Audit

During the audit of the 2019 annual report,COVID-19 broke out,and various measures to prevent the spread of the epidemic impeded the normal process of the annual audit of audits.In response to the outbreak of the epidemic,accounting firms have devoted themselves to the implementation of off-site audit technology,which has promoted the practical application process of off-site audit technology.For a time,the motivation,practice and future application strategy of off-site audit technology in annual report audit have become the focus of hot discussion.Therefore,the research on the application of off-site audit technology in annual report audit by accounting firms can build a bridge between theory and practice;This paper discusses the development strategy of off-site audit technology applied by accounting firms,which can be used as a reference for the practical application of accounting firms in the future.This paper selects the international "big four" accounting firms and non "big four" accounting firms as the research object,and takes the disclosure of key audit matters in the audit report as the data source to analyze the problems and reasons existing in the practical application of off-site audit technology,to explore the strategy,guarantee and attention points of the application of off-site audit technology in the development process of accounting firms in the future.The specific research process and results are as follows:Firstly,this paper summarizes the literature related to off-site audit technology and key audit matter at home and abroad,and discusses the research results and research prospects of off-site audit technology in annual report audit based on risk oriented audit theory,audit expectation gap theory and audit system process theory.Secondly,based on remote audit guidance during the time of COVID-19 issued by CICPA(2020),this paper summarizes three commonly used off-site auditing technologies: traditional information communication technology,video link and remote access technology and data analysis technology,and collectively analyzes the overall situation of these three technologies in the audit of the 2019 annual report.Thirdly,this paper analyzes the application of off-site audit technology of international "big four" accounting firms and non "big four" accounting firms in the audit of the 2019 annual report.Starting from the statistics of the overall practice and the analysis of the specific practice,this paper compares the common situation and individual differences between the two in practice,and analyzes the problems and reasons in the overall practice.Finally,based on the future of accounting firms,this paper makes a SWOT analysis of the application of off-site audit technology in the annual report audit,and discusses the strategic suggestions,safeguard measures and attention points of the application of off-site audit technology in the annual report audit from the accounting firm level.The case study found that in the audit of the 2019 annual report,the application of off-site audit technology has the following problems: the real-time risk early warning is not achieved;the reliability of obtaining evidence remains to be discussed;professional and technical personnel are out of touch with the project;the frequency and depth of application are not enough.Based on SWOT analysis,this paper obtains the overall strategy of the application of off-site audit technology in the future:(1)seize the opportunity: summarize the practical experience,improve the quality of off-site audit technology application;improve the application and development speed of off-site audit technology in annual report audit;(2)avoid the threats: optimize the matching between off-site audit technology and practical application needs;solve the problem of data security;(3)use the advantage: explore the construction of cloud audit platform;take off-site audit technology as the core competitiveness;(4)overcome the disadvantages:reserve professional and technical personnel to realize the specialization of audit team;reasonable planning of funds,rational development of off-site audit technology.Then,it puts forward the safeguard measures for the implementation of off-site audit technology from the working system,research and development teams and infrastructure.Finally,this paper expounds the attention points in the application of off-site audit technology by accounting firms.