We believe that a collaborative working relationship throughout the engagement will facilitate a successful audit. It is our intention to involve you, our management, in every step of the audit process so that you will understand what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Although every audit is unique, the audit process is similar for most engagements and generally consists of four phases:

• Planning

• Field Work

• Reporting

• Follow-up

Your involvement is critical at each stage of the audit process.  As in any special project, an audit results in a certain amount of time being diverted from your department’s usual routine. One of our key objectives is to minimize the disruption of routine activities.

Generally the following process will occur once a department, area, process, or other activity is selected for audit.

The Internal Audit is responsible for appropriate follow-up on audit findings and recommendations. All significant findings will remain in an open issues file until cleared by the Internal Audit manager. Generally, Internal Audit will conduct a follow-up audit within 12-18 months from the date of the original audit report and report the status of the implementation of the audit recommendations to the original recipients of the audit report. In addition, the Internal Audit manager will periodically report the status of the open issues file to the FAC and the CFO.