Assurance and Financial Statements
The purpose of an audit is to enable the auditor to express an audit opinion on whether the financial information gives a true and fair view (or is “presented fairly”) in conformity with the basis of accounting indicated. The auditor performs procedures designed to obtain reasonable assurance about the reliability of management’s representations in the financial statements.
Guidelines established by the International Auditing Practices Committee recognize three types of service that an accountant can provide on financial statements: an audit, a review, and a compilation. Each type of service offers a different degree of assurance, as depicted in Figure 2, about financial statement presentation and disclosures. This booklet deals only with the assurances users obtain from an audit, which is the greatest degree of assurance available to users.