Interim audit scope, client size and client familiarity: An empirical analysis

This study investigates the scope of an audit conducted during the first part of the annual auditing cycle. It measures empirically the probability of auditing various balance sheet and income statement accounts. The results indicate that current assets and liabilities have a higher probability for an interim audit than fixed assets, long‐term debt and equity accounts. Furthermore, the likelihood of including each account in an interim audit increases with client size, so the larger an auditee, the wider the audit scope during the beginning of the audit cycle. Also, the empirical results indicate that the lower the familiarity of the auditor with the auditee, the wider the scope of an interim audit. These results seem to be consistent with auditing theory and intuition.