Testing Credit Procedures
Failure to apply credit policy correctly and consistently has implications for the adequacy of the organization’s allowance for uncollectible accounts. The following tests provide evidence pertaining to the valuation/allocation audit objectives and, to a lesser extent, the accuracy objective.
The auditor needs, therefore, to determine that effective procedures exist to establish appropriate customer credit limits; communicate this information adequately to the credit policy decision makers; review credit policy periodically and revise it as necessary; and monitor adherence to current credit policy.
The auditor can verify the correctness of programmed decision rules by using either the test data or integrated test facility (ITF) approaches to directly test their functionality. This testing is easily accomplished by creating several dummy customer accounts with various lines of credit and then processing test transactions that will exceed some of the credit limits. The auditor can then analyze the rejected transactions to determine if the computer application correctly applied the credit policy. The integrity of reference data is an important element in testing credit policy controls. A correctly functioning computer application cannot successfully apply credit policy if customer credit limits are excessively high or can be changed by unauthorized personnel. The auditor needs to verify that authority for making line-of-credit changes is limited to authorized credit department personnel. Performing substantive tests of detail to identify customers with excessive credit limits can do this. Substantive tests traditionally follow tests of controls because the results of tests of controls are used to determine the nature, timing, and extent of the substantive tests. In this case, however, substantive tests may be the most efficient way to verify if credit policy is being properly applied