I find it very hard to believe that an accountant would just start zipping through and destroying his work product on how they performed a client's audit, what they found, questions posed, or asked, data leading to qualifying statements regarding audits, etc.
I have worked with a CPA and it was always his practice to save all the notes, including 'message notes' where a client called with a quesiton or asked the CPA to call him back, etc., even my benign comments regarding what account # was to be used for some piece of equipment or an expense. Granted, this was tax work, but I would certainly think a large firm would be held to the same, if not better, standards.
Absolutely. Any documents that I gathered that had nothing to do with the audit were either destroyed or returned. Keeping them cause legal problems.
I find it very hard to believe that an accountant would just start zipping through and destroying his work product on how they performed a client's audit, what they found, questions posed, or asked, data leading to qualifying statements regarding audits, etc.
We are advised by our peer review and by our insurance companies to avoid keeping records that are not a required part of the evidence we felt necessary to form our opinion. It used to be that accountants gathered everything they could even if they didn't think they needed it. Then came the lawyers. They subpeona all the records. The accountants get on the stand and the lawyer starts asking questions about some obscure copies of bank statements. The accoutant answers, I never looked at them. The lawyer says What ? You never looked at them and you call yourself an auditor ? The accountant says I didn't think they were necessary to look at to give my opinion. I just got copies of everything. The lawyer says then why did you keep this stuff and why did you make it part of your files if it wasn't important. Jury says accountant is negligent.
I have worked with a CPA and it was always his practice to save all the notes, including 'message notes' where a client called with a quesiton or asked the CPA to call him back, etc., even my benign comments regarding what account # was to be used for some piece of equipment or an expense. Granted, this was tax work, but I would certainly think a large firm would be held to the same, if not better, standards.
Different potential for suit. In one case the suit is coming from the client who is not going to remember what he was told when he gets the penalty notice. The auditor is going to get sued by a third party.