It's the process which checks assets against published accounts to deliver a true and fair account. Auditing is also about understanding and analysis; we need to advise our firm's clients on rules and procedures for the reporting of accounts and help them understand regulations.  

What does an auditor do? 

No two clients are the same and every project is different. An auditor will be on a client site for the duration of the audit - this will range in duration from a couple of weeks to anywhere up to three months depending on the size of the client. Larger projects may see you working as part of a multi-disciplinary team. 

Typically, audits consist of a cycle of research; consultation; communication and inspection; analysis and reporting. Auditors start projects by gaining an in-depth understanding of the client's business through research, conversations and a series of visits. You'll meet with Financial Directors and Senior Managers to discuss strategy and operations, and begin the inspection and analysis:  

• Reviewing previous audits to gain insights into client-specific processes.
• Checking client records against bank records.
• Checking the existence and accuracy of listed assets.
• Confirming an accurate and complete list of client suppliers.
• Examining the client's stock-taking methods.
• Performing a sample stock-take to evaluate the accuracy of the client's records.
• Testing client processes and controls.

The next stage is to construct a report showing your findings, highlighting the key issues, making any recommendations and showing the final accounts. The wide range of businesses and projects we work on means that auditors have huge variety in their roles, and get to team up with people from many different KPMG business streams. Client visits are a huge part of the role so you'll be moving from environment to environment and experiencing a huge range of different industries, locations and businesses. The variation in this role means there's no set pattern for the type of checks you'll carry out: auditors do plenty of interesting things like checking that the people and buildings a company says they have actually exist.