ABSTRACT
In the previous chapters we have detailed the transformation in British auditing techniques which have taken place over more than a century. In fact, these changes are largely confined to the last 40 years, since prior to the 1960s the professional audit had altered little since its inception. This bookkeeping audit had a number of characteristic features. Although called an audit the work in Britain typically also involved making up the client’s books. This was the case to the extent that for most clients the main purpose of the audit was for the auditors, to a greater or lesser degree, to do their annual accounting. This so-called audit work could involve making up the books entirely (often from incomplete records), closing off the ledgers, casting the columns of figures and striking a trial balance, drawing up the profit and loss account and balance sheet, and then signing them off as having been audited. The auditor could be required to pick up the job at any stage in this process: at what stage being largely determined by the competence of the client’s own accounting staff. Relatively little of the auditor’s work in Britain, even down to the 1960s, was what they called ‘pure audit’; that is, being handed a completed set of accounts, the accuracy of which they then checked; or in other words the theoretical and indeed statutory meaning of an audit.
