If a company owns many business locations (for example, many store locations), and in the aggregate they could cause material misstatements to the financial statements, the auditor would need to obtain sufficient audit evidence for all the locations to conclude on ICFR effectiveness. Assume the stores do not share a standard accounting system, backroom operations and entity level controls are not uniform across locations.
Is it possible that this situation could make the audit procedures that would need to be performed cost prohibitive – so that the company could not get an audit? Discuss. How might the company need to modify its procedures?