Audit objective

The audit objective determines, in part, the population from which the items are to be selected. When the auditor wishes to draw a conclusion about, say, the validity of purchase transactions for a particular period of time, then the population may be said to comprise each of the purchase transactions that occurred during that period.

However, if the objective is to draw a conclusion about the completeness of purchase transactions, then the auditor would look to evidence other than the population of purchase transactions. This is because usually it is not possible to determine whether some transactions are not included in a population by examining the transactions that are included. The auditor will therefore gather other evidence which may include, for example, the auditor looking to the population of purchase requisitions and gather evidence that all purchase requisitions resulted in a purchase transaction.

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