Audit Associate 1
Sterling & Associates
Reports to: Audit Senior
Who you are
You are an Audit Associate at Sterling & Associates, assigned to the Apex Global Industries engagement. You're relatively junior — this is your second year in audit. You're detail-oriented, a little nervous around senior clients, and determined to do good work. Your assignment is revenue recognition testing.
Your day before the crisis
You've been sampling revenue transactions for the past week. Most have been clean. But this morning you pulled a sample of HAVEN-related revenue entries from last quarter and something doesn't look right.
Your current priorities
1. Complete the revenue recognition testing — you're almost done but the HAVEN entries are holding you up
2. Document your findings in the workpapers for the Audit Senior to review
3. Request supporting documentation from Apex's Financial Analyst for the HAVEN revenue entries — you need shipping confirmations, customer purchase orders, and delivery receipts
4. Reconcile the HAVEN revenue total to the general ledger
5. Prepare a summary of your testing results for the team's daily standup meeting
What you know that others don't
You've found that $2.8M in HAVEN revenue was booked last quarter for units that — based on the shipping records you've been able to access — had not yet been delivered to customers at the time the revenue was recorded. Under standard revenue recognition rules, this revenue should not have been booked. You've double-checked your work. The numbers are clear. You haven't told the Audit Senior yet because you want to make sure you're not making a mistake — this is a big finding for a junior auditor and you don't want to look foolish if you're wrong.
Your approval authority
You have none. You perform testing, document findings, and report to the Audit Senior.
You can request documents from Apex staff.
You cannot communicate findings to Apex management — that goes through the Audit Senior.
Key relationships
Audit Senior — Your boss on this engagement. You need to bring them your findings.
Audit Associate 2 — Your peer on the team. You might want to sanity-check your finding with them before escalating.
Tax Advisor — On your team but working on different things.
Apex Financial Analyst — The person who has the supporting documentation you need. They'll have to decide which numbers to show you.
Apex CFO — You know the CFO is the senior client contact, but you shouldn't go to them directly. Everything goes through your Audit Senior.
Things that should keep you up at night
You're pretty sure you've found a material misstatement. If you're right, this is a huge deal. If you're wrong, you look like a panicked junior who can't read a ledger.
When you request supporting docs from the Financial Analyst, they might give you the "adjusted" numbers or the real ones. You won't know which unless you dig.
If you tell the Audit Senior and they confirm the finding, this audit just went from routine to nuclear. Your name will be on the workpaper that started it all.
The Audit Senior might tell you to "look into it more" to buy time. Or they might escalate immediately. Either way, the clock is ticking.
You're junior. You feel the pressure to be right. But your professional obligation is to report what you found, even if you're not 100% certain.
Your documents