Research on the integration of government audit and social audit resources.

The integration of audit resources is to build a new combination of audit resources through scientific allocation and combination of existing resources and full excavation and promotion of potential resources, improve audit productivity, meet the needs of audit supervision to the maximum extent, and obtain the maximum audit benefit with the minimum audit cost.

Government audit and social audit in China have played an important role in improving the quality of accounting information, safeguarding public interests, standardizing enterprise behavior and promoting healthy and orderly economic development. However, there are many problems in their coordination. Government audit and social audit have their own resource advantages because of their different functions. Actively explore the integration of government audit and social audit resources, further strengthen the coordination between them, give full play to their respective resource advantages, so as to better play the role of audit supervision, reduce the audit cost of the whole society, and promote the improvement of audit efficiency and level.

First, the advantages and disadvantages of government audit and social audit resources

(A) the advantages and disadvantages of government audit resources

The advantages of government audit resources are reflected in the fact that government audit institutions are established according to the Constitution and the Audit Law, which have a high legal status and a wide range of audit supervision. Through the audit of financial revenues and expenditures of finance, large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises and key industries and departments related to the national economy and people's livelihood, we will investigate and deal with major violations of discipline and serious losses and waste, and give play to the functions of macro-supervision, punishing corruption and protecting the safety and integrity of state-owned assets. At the same time, it is responsible for business guidance and supervision of internal audit and supervision of audit quality of social audit.

The weaknesses of government audit resources are as follows: on the one hand, because China's public ownership economy is dominant and there are many state-owned enterprises and institutions, which are the targets of government audit supervision, it is difficult for government audit institutions to supervise many audit targets with their limited resources, which leads to the blank of audit supervision; On the other hand, the professional knowledge structure of auditors in government audit institutions is relatively simple, lacking "multi-functional" compound talents, mainly accounting and auditing personnel, and less talents in finance, finance, law, computer and engineering. Therefore, from the overall quality point of view, it can neither meet the requirements of national major engineering construction project audit, nor fully meet the requirements of high-quality economic benefit audit and other audit projects.

(B) the advantages and disadvantages of social audit resources

The advantage of social audit resources is that the allocation of social audit resources is market-oriented, serving the vast number of investors, with fierce competition and great risks. In order to save the use of resources and improve the efficiency of the use of resources, we must choose advanced and reasonable audit methods, hire high-quality talents, and establish a perfect audit standard system and quality control system. According to the law of certified public accountants, it expresses opinions on the legality and fairness of the audited entity's accounting statements, which has the functions of authentication and service, and its audit report has a wide range of applications. It plays an important role in improving the quality of financial information and maintaining a good market economic order.

The weakness of social audit resources is mainly that social audit is entrusted audit and not mandatory. Auditors can only put forward adjustment suggestions for the illegal acts of the entrusted units, and issue different types of audit opinions according to whether the audited units adopt their suggestions. They have no power to deal with punishment, and the scope of audit is also limited by the purpose of entrustment. In addition, there is no fair competition among social intermediaries, which leads to an increase in litigation cases with distorted audit reports, and it is necessary to strengthen supervision.

Second, the necessity and feasibility of integrating government audit and social audit resources

(A) the necessity of integrating government audit and social audit resources

1. Integrating audit resources is an international practice. Judging from the situation in some western developed countries, the number of staff in national audit institutions is relatively small, and a large number of audit projects are outsourced to qualified social audit institutions for implementation. National audit institutions are mainly responsible for the formulation of audit plans and the management of audit projects, and guide and supervise social audit institutions to implement audit supervision in accordance with established purposes and programs. For example, audit institutions in the United States, Germany, Sweden and other countries usually outsource performance audit projects to social audit institutions, and at the same time implement qualification management for social audit institutions participating in national audits through industry organizations. In the audit plan issued by the Australian Parliament, it is clearly stipulated that the number of personnel employed by social audit institutions and the cost budget of outsourced audit projects should be shared by both the government budget and the audited object. This shows that the use of social audit power to implement national audit projects has a relatively mature practical basis and a relatively perfect institutional mechanism in western developed countries.

2. Alleviate the contradiction between heavy government audit tasks and insufficient audit resources. The shortage of audit resources has become a strong problem reflected by Chinese government audit. According to the data, there are only more than 80,000 audit institutions in China, and only 80,000 audit institutions can be audited a year based on the average per person per year 1 object. What's more, some audited objects have huge assets and widely distributed institutions, and their workload is far from being competent by a few auditors. There are more than 100 central budget units in China, and the coverage of budget execution audit is about 50% every year. The audit coverage of second-and third-level budget units is even smaller, only about 20%; There are more than 3,000 state tax bureaus at or above the county level, and the annual audit is less than 5%; There are 250 customs departments in the customs system, and only 20% of them can be audited every year. It can be seen that the number of auditors is seriously insufficient, far from a comprehensive audit.

(B) the feasibility of integrating government audit and social audit resources

1. Government audit and social audit can easily reach a consensus on their responsibilities and objectives. According to the law, the goal of government audit is to supervise the authenticity, legality and efficiency of financial activities. The responsibility or goal orientation of social audit is to express opinions on the authenticity or fairness of financial information, which is highly consistent with the authenticity and legitimacy of government audit objectives. Managers and business managers cannot make self-evaluation on the authenticity and legality of financial information of economic entities, but the independent evaluation of third parties is authoritative. It is based on this same feature that government audit and social audit can adopt various organizational methods with different degrees of closeness when integrating audit resources, such as government audit leading and entrusted outsourcing supervision, which makes the specific methods of integrating audit resources more flexible.

2. It is convenient for government audit and social audit to obtain complementary effects in resource utilization. Judging from the history of audit technology development, social audit has formed a relative competitive advantage in some specific fields, among which the key advantage is the advantage in project management and business skills. Horizontally, the advantages of this subdivision may be reflected in a certain industry of the national economy, such as finance, manufacturing, circulation and so on. Vertically, the advantages of this subdivision may be reflected in different links such as financial accounting, tax declaration and infrastructure settlement. The high independence of government audit, with legal authorization and self-care guarantee, is incomparable to social audit. In addition, government audit also has the power of administrative coercion and external investigation.

3. Government audit and social audit have the same technical basis. In essence, government audit and social audit are activities to supervise economic activities and their results on behalf of owners or managers. This kind of activity needs to review the financial data of the audited object and the relevant data of its economic activities, take stock of monetary funds and physical assets, ask managers, investigate their counterparties in market transactions, collect all kinds of evidence, and form and support evaluation conclusions. In the arrangement of audit procedures, social audit and government audit follow roughly the same rules, from the audit plan (including pre-trial investigation, program formulation, etc. ) to the audit implementation and audit report, are similar. At the same time, both of them are widely used in internal control testing, audit risk assessment, sampling audit technology, computer-aided audit and other specific methods and means. The homogenization of so many technical means provides a broad stage for integrating audit resources, and social auditors can be incorporated into the audit team of government audit projects with a little training. The cost of integrating audit resources can be minimized.

Three, government audit and social audit resources * * * and coordination

(A) government audit and social audit resources * * * enjoy

Government audit and social audit resources * * * enjoy, first of all, audit data * * *, followed by talent * * *, and finally audit technology and methods * * *.

1. Enjoy the audit data. In the audit of state-owned enterprises, the government audit can directly use the results of social audit on the premise of confirming the qualifications of social audit organizations, without repeating the audit of the same content; Government audit and social audit should implement collaborative audit under the condition that the audit time is the same and the audit contents are basically the same, and enjoy the audit results, and issue their own audit reports after the audit is completed. Government audit should express opinions on the authenticity, legality and consistency of enterprise accounting principles in the audit report. Social audit should also expand the scope of the report and disclose the audited entity's compliance with national financial laws and regulations. Make use of work results to reduce repeated audits.

2. Auditors enjoy * * *. In terms of talent reserve, social audit has been ahead of government audit. The number of people taking the annual CPA exam is increasing year by year. At present, there are more than 5,200 accounting firms with about 67,000 registered accountants in China. At the same time, the accounting firm has a flexible employment mechanism, and can hire the required professional and technical personnel at any time according to the needs of the work, which has obvious advantages. All these provide a guarantee for the optimization of social audit talent structure. With the help of social auditors and technical force, government audit institutions can make up for the shortcomings of government audit, improve audit efficiency and better achieve audit objectives.

3. Enjoy auditing techniques and methods. In order to further develop government audit, it is necessary to constantly improve audit techniques and methods. Due to the universality of social audit objects, it has diversity in audit techniques and methods. In the process of upgrading audit technology and methods, government audit should strengthen communication with social audit and enjoy relevant technologies and methods. This kind of communication can be embodied in the cooperation of specific audit practices, such as the government audit institutions entrusting social audit institutions, or in theory, such as holding seminars and joint research projects.

(B) coordination of government audit and social audit resources

After all, government audit and social audit are two different audit activities. In order to truly share the resources of government audit and social audit, we must attach importance to the coordination of government audit and social audit resources. The coordination of the two should start from the following aspects:

1. Coordination of audit scope. Judging from the scope of audit, the overlapping part of government audit and social audit at present mainly lies in the audit of state-owned enterprises. A large part of the audit objects of our government are state-owned enterprises. To conduct a detailed audit of state-owned enterprises one by one, government audit has become inadequate. According to the idea of national reform, we should pay more attention to the big and let go of the small, and hand over some audit objects to social audit for implementation. Therefore, the key to scope coordination is to strengthen the cooperation between government audit and social audit in the audit of state-owned enterprises, implement systematic division of labor, and realize resource sharing and complementary advantages. In practice, Professor Cai Chun believes that government audit should retain the comprehensive review right of unlisted enterprises (companies) with more than 50% state-owned shares (including wholly state-owned) and less than 50% state-owned shares but substantial control rights. For listed companies that meet this condition, government audit can only retain the right to audit the authenticity, legality and efficiency of the company's financial activities, and entrust the audit right of the enterprise's financial statements to social audit. In addition, for non-state-controlled enterprises, some of them (such as state-owned shares 10%) can be taken as the scope of government audit, focusing on the preservation and appreciation of state-owned capital, and the rest can be completely handled by social audit.

2. Coordination of audit advantage areas. If both government audit and social audit can withdraw from the inferior field and focus on the superior audit field, it will not only achieve better audit results, but also be of great significance to the development of their respective audit organizations. This coordination of advantages in the audit field is mainly reflected in the following aspects: (1) In the case of insufficient audit resources, the government audit should focus on finance, finance, national construction projects and key large and medium-sized enterprises. Through the comprehensive analysis of the problems with universality and tendentiousness, this paper puts forward some suggestions to improve macro-control and provide reference for the government's macro-decision. (2) Service industry is generally the main position of social audit. Although the proportion of service industry in the gross national product has been increasing since the reform and opening up, the impact of individual service industry enterprises on the national economy is not as great as that of large industrial enterprises. Therefore, government audit can further abandon the audit of service industry and other small enterprises and transfer these audit fields to social audit.

3. Coordination of audit objectives. The discussion on audit objectives mainly focuses on legality, compliance and efficiency. work

For social audit, at present, it is mainly legitimacy and compliance audit, which can be fully reflected in the language of its audit report. In the opinion part of the standard audit report, the first sentence is to express whether the accounting statements of the audited entity conform to the accounting standards for enterprises and relevant accounting systems promulgated by the state. Government audit emphasizes the authenticity, legality and efficiency of enterprise economic activities. With the development of audit, the goal of government audit is also changing. The Audit Office of China is working hard to turn the government audit in China into a new performance audit, and relevant plans are being made. In fact, it has become an international trend that the focus of government audit shifts to performance audit. Gradually expanding the proportion of benefit audit not only represents the development direction of government audit, but also helps to improve audit efficiency and shorten the gap between China and the West.

Main references

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[2] "China Audit" editorial department. Integrating audit resources-a strategic measure to expand audit effectiveness. China Audit, 2004, (4): 32-35.

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[5] Jason. Discussion on the present situation and integration scheme of audit human resources in China. Audit Monthly, 2007, (4): 10- 1 1.

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[7] Xu. On the Coordination between Government Audit and Social Audit, Audit and Economic Research, 2004, (1): 18-20.

[8] Yin Ping. Connotation development under the constraint of audit resources. Audit of China, 2004, (1): 30-3 1.