Planning

You have to get to find out information eg look at draft FS and perform analytical procedures, talk to the FD, look at last year’s audit file for problems that arose then (more effort needed if this is the first audit).

This allows risk assessment. The auditor then responds to the risk assessment by formulating the audit strategy (eg hope to reply on controls or full substantive). So if the client changed the IT system part way through the year there could be almost two audits to do: before the change and after the change with careful examination of the change process from one system to the other.

Then the detailed plan (who, when, how long etc)