Auditing Fundamentals for Finance Professionals Training Course

Course overview

Finance professionals are frequently expected to provide assurance over account balances, reconciliations, controls, and management reports without having been trained in the audit process behind those requests. This creates avoidable risk: evidence may be incomplete, sampling may be poorly justified, exceptions may not be investigated to root cause, and audit findings may be reported without a clear link to financial risk. This course equips finance staff to understand, perform, support, and respond to audit work with defensible documentation.

Participants learn the end-to-end audit cycle, from planning and risk assessment through control testing, substantive procedures, sampling, evidence evaluation, findings, and reporting. They apply the COSO Internal Control—Integrated Framework and key concepts from ISA 315 to identify financial statement risks and design proportionate audit procedures. Practical skills include building risk-control matrices, preparing audit workpapers, testing reconciliations and journal entries, documenting exceptions, calculating sample selections, and drafting findings with agreed actions.

Delivery combines instructor-led explanation with realistic finance audit cases involving revenue, expenses, cash, payroll, fixed assets, and close-process controls. Participants work individually and in small groups using Excel-based audit schedules and Caseware IDEA demonstrations to analyse transaction populations and test supporting evidence. By the end of the week, each participant leaves with a completed audit planning pack: a risk assessment, risk-control matrix, audit programme, sample workpapers, findings log, and personal action plan for applying the methods in their own finance environment.

The course is suited to finance professionals who need a practical grounding in audit, whether they support internal or external auditors, conduct finance-control reviews, or are moving into audit, risk, or compliance responsibilities.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map the audit lifecycle from engagement planning through reporting and follow-up
• Assess financial reporting risks using assertions, materiality, and ISA 315 risk concepts
• Build a risk-control matrix linking processes, risks, controls, evidence, and test procedures
• Design audit programmes for cash, revenue, expenditure, payroll, and financial close controls
• Perform walkthroughs and document process narratives, control owners, and control gaps
• Select and test samples using random, systematic, and risk-based sampling methods
• Prepare audit workpapers that document evidence, exceptions, conclusions, and reviewer sign-off
• Draft risk-rated audit findings with root causes, management actions, owners, and due dates

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Financial Accountants — who prepare reconciliations and schedules that must withstand audit scrutiny
• Finance Managers — who oversee close controls, financial reporting quality, and audit responses
• Internal Audit Analysts — who need a structured foundation in audit planning, testing, and workpapers
• Management Accountants — who review financial data and need to identify control and reporting risks
• Risk and Compliance Officers — who assess finance-control effectiveness and track remediation actions
• External Audit Associates — who require practical experience of financial-process testing and evidence documentation

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand the basic purpose of a general ledger, trial balance, reconciliations, journals, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and month-end close. They should be comfortable reading financial reports and using Excel for sorting, filtering, formulas, and simple calculations. Some exposure to finance controls, internal audit requests, or external audit evidence is helpful but not essential. Participants do not need prior audit certification, knowledge of audit software, advanced accounting standards, statistical expertise, or programming skills. Complete beginners to finance should first gain basic bookkeeping and financial statement knowledge before attending.

Training methodology

The instructor uses short, focused teaching sessions to introduce audit concepts, followed by guided application to finance-process cases. Participants create risk-control matrices, conduct a walkthrough, inspect supporting evidence, select samples in Excel, and record results in structured workpaper templates. Group discussions compare testing approaches and challenge the sufficiency of evidence and conclusions. Case material includes revenue, cash, expenditure, payroll, and close controls. The final session includes an application-planning workshop in which participants adapt the course templates to a current finance audit or control-review priority.

Course outline

Day 1: Audit purpose, scope, and financial risk

• Roles of internal audit, external audit, finance management, and audit committees
• Audit objectives, assurance levels, and the audit trail
• Financial statement assertions for transactions, balances, and disclosures
• Materiality, performance materiality, and tolerable misstatement
• ISA 315 risk assessment concepts and significant risks
• COSO Internal Control—Integrated Framework principles
• Audit planning documents, scope statements, and engagement objectives

Workshop: Participants assess a month-end close case and produce an initial audit scope, assertion map, and ranked financial risk register.

Day 2: Understanding processes and evaluating controls

• Finance-process walkthroughs from initiation to general ledger posting
• Narrative process documentation and swimlane flowcharts
• Control design versus operating effectiveness
• Preventive, detective, manual, automated, and IT-dependent controls
• Segregation-of-duties analysis for finance processes
• Risk-control matrix construction and control owner identification
• Control gaps, compensating controls, and residual risk evaluation

Workshop: Participants conduct a simulated procure-to-pay walkthrough and build a risk-control matrix with proposed test procedures.

Day 3: Audit evidence, testing, and sampling

• Sufficiency, appropriateness, reliability, and relevance of audit evidence
• Inspection, observation, inquiry, reperformance, and analytical procedures
• Test-of-control attributes and expected evidence
• Substantive procedures for account balances and transaction classes
• Random, systematic, haphazard, and risk-based sample selection
• Sample size drivers, population definition, and sampling documentation
• Excel filters, pivot tables, duplicate checks, and exception flags

Workshop: Participants use an accounts-payable population to select samples, test invoice evidence, and complete a control-testing workpaper.

Day 4: Testing key finance areas and investigating exceptions

• Bank reconciliation testing and outstanding-item investigation
• Revenue recognition testing and cut-off procedures
• Expense, purchasing, and payment control testing
• Journal-entry testing for unusual, manual, and late postings
• Payroll master-data and approval-control testing
• Fixed-asset existence, valuation, and depreciation checks
• Root-cause analysis using five whys and cause-and-effect categories

Workshop: Participants investigate a set of journal and reconciliation exceptions, document evidence, and determine whether each issue is isolated or systemic.

Day 5: Workpapers, findings, and audit-ready action plans

• Audit workpaper structure, indexing, cross-referencing, and review notes
• Documenting test populations, samples, exceptions, and conclusions
• Evaluating aggregate exceptions against materiality and control reliance
• Risk-rating findings by impact, likelihood, and control failure
• Writing findings with condition, criteria, cause, consequence, and recommendation
• Management action plans, accountable owners, and target dates
• Audit reporting, follow-up testing, and remediation tracking

Workshop: Participants assemble a complete audit file and present a risk-rated finding with a management action plan for peer review.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Caseware IDEA, COSO Internal Control—Integrated Framework, ISA 315

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions