1. In the October 17, 2020 Minutes of the Audit Committee, Mr. Ramirez, Apollo's internal auditor, stated that the year before, the company had been able to save on audit fees when their staff had prepared a stack of schedules and analyzes for their former auditor's needs. The fact that the company internal auditor prepared schedules and analysis reports on their own contained many possibilities of fraud due to lack of independence in audit procedures.

2. In the October 17, 2020 Minutes of the Audit Committee, Ms. Costain, Apollo's treasurer, stated that their department is short on staff time and needs our tax department help prepare the state franchise tax return as well as the federal tax returns. The potential issue is that Apollo is short in staff at the moment, raising the concern of separation of duty in the company. One person has many responsibilities at the same time opens more doors for fraud or negligence to happen

3. One potential issue is raised by the fact that Larry Lancaster is both Chairman of the Board and also Apollo's President & CEO, causing a potential conflict of interest. Additionally, Mr. Unum is both a member of the board and Apollo's VP of Finance. This further complicates the conflict of interest

4. In both the January 6, 2020 and the June 30, 2020 Board of Director meeting minutes, Mr. Lancaster, responds with "They better increase by that much, or heads will roll". This shows that he is expecting the sales to increase, and on personality aspect, he has an aggressive management style that may force or scare people to meet the company goals. This management style might encourage or force employees to do inappropriate actions to be able to reach the goal since they are afraid of losing their job if they do not do so. Similarly, the company's high level executives might also take risks or make poor business decisions, just to be able to reach the goal in sales.

5. In the January 6, 2020 Board of Director meeting minutes, over Mr. Horstmann's vehement disagreement, the board authorized purchase of equipment totalling $1.3 million to facilitate internal production of Apollo products by a vote of 6-1. This raise the concern of existence and occurrence if the payments are made or used on something else.

Question: What procedures can external auditors perform to address these concerns? (Please explain procedures for each scenario)

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Internal Auditors Lack of Independence External auditors can address this concern by conducting a review of the internal audit functions practices a... View the full answer