Law No. 307-FZ dated December 30, 2008 defines an audit as an independent verification of an organization’s accounting records, when the auditor expresses an opinion on its reliability in his conclusion (clause 3 of Article 1 of Law No. 307-FZ). Such an audit can be carried out at the request of the organization, that is, voluntarily, but for some legal entities the audit is required by law. We will consider the criteria for mandatory audit in this article.

What are mandatory audit criteria?

There is no unambiguous closed list of criteria in the audit legislation. All cases where a mandatory audit of financial statements for 2016 should be carried out were collected in the information of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. This list includes the following main criteria for mandatory audit in 2017:

conducting a certain type of activity,
exceeding established income or asset limits,
a certain organizational and legal form,
belonging to a specific organization,
presentation of consolidated statements.

Companies should conduct a mandatory audit, the criteria for which are given above, annually. The results of the audit are formalized in an audit report and are subject to entry into the Unified Federal Register of information on the facts of the activities of legal entities.

Statutory audit for 2017 - criteria

We list for which organizations, based on the results of 2017, it will be mandatory to have an audit report, based on the main criteria for a mandatory audit:

for credit organizations, credit history bureaus, organizations that are professional participants in the securities market, insurance companies, mutual insurance companies, clearing organizations, trade organizers, gambling organizers, lottery operators, special depositories, non-state pension, joint-stock investment and other funds managing mutual fund or non-state pension fund companies, as well as organizations that have securities and others admitted to trading;
for organizations whose revenue for 2016 exceeded 400 million rubles, or whose balance sheet assets as of December 31, 2016 amounted to more than 60 million rubles; these criteria for conducting a mandatory audit in 2017 do not apply to state unitary enterprises, municipal unitary enterprises, agricultural cooperatives and government agencies;
absolutely for all joint-stock companies, as well as funds, state corporations, state-owned companies, federal state unitary enterprises, public law companies;
for the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the Deposit Insurance Agency, state corporations Rostec, Rosatom, JSC Russian Railways, the Credit Assistance Fund, etc., in this case, the criterion for mandatory audit is belonging to a specific organization;
for organizations presenting or disclosing annual consolidated financial statements.

Such criteria for conducting a mandatory audit are provided for in Art. 5 of Law No. 307-FZ and other laws of the Russian Federation. For example, the law of December 1, 2007 No. 315-FZ obliges to conduct audits in self-regulatory organizations (clause 4 of Article 12 of Law No. 315-FZ), and according to the law of December 30, 2004 No. 214-FZ, the developer’s reporting is subject to a mandatory audit, clause 9. 4 tbsp. 18 of Law No. 315-FZ). Housing savings cooperatives, government, microfinance and other organizations are also subject to audit.

Mandatory audit - 2017 criteria for LLC

The presence of an auditor's report as part of the annual reporting, especially for limited liability companies, is not stipulated by Law No. 315-FZ, but if the LLC falls under any of the criteria listed above, then an audit is mandatory for it.

Thus, in 2017, a mandatory audit is required for LLCs, the criteria of which are as follows:

revenue in 2016 excluding VAT exceeds RUB 400 million, or
balance sheet assets as of December 31, 2016 exceed 60 million rubles.

If such an LLC belongs to small businesses, this status does not exempt it from mandatory audit.

The LLC Law No. 14-FZ dated 02/08/1998 provides for an audit by decision of the general meeting of company participants, and a mandatory audit is required if this is established by other laws and regulations (Article 48 of Law No. 14-FZ).

If there is no mandatory audit (2017 criteria): fines

The audit report is not included in the annual financial statements submitted to the Federal Tax Service, but it must be included in the set of accounting reports submitted to the statistical authorities.

Failure to submit an audit report as part of the reporting to Rosstat, or violation of the deadline for submission for an organization will result in a fine of 3 to 5 thousand rubles, for officials - 300-500 rubles. (Article 19.7 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation).

If an audit was not carried out at all, and the organization does not have a mandatory audit report, this is a gross administrative violation, for which a fine of 5 to 10 thousand rubles is imposed on the company’s management. In case of repeated violation, the fine will increase to 20 thousand rubles. or the official will be disqualified for 1-2 years (Article 15.11 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation).

If there is no mandatory audit according to the 2017 criteria for an LLC, the penalties will be similar.

For a JSC, the fines are much more significant - disclosure of information not in full, including accounting records without an audit report, threatens with an administrative fine in the amount established by clause 2 of Art. 15.19 Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation:

30-50 thousand rubles. for officials (or their disqualification from 1 to 2 years),
700 thousand – 1 million rubles. for the organization.

In recent years, the state has taken a course towards maximum openness and transparency of information about economic entities. Changes are being made in all areas. The auditing industry has not been left behind. The main goal of the amendments is to increase business transparency, reduce pressure on honest companies, and bring tax offenders out of the shadows to eliminate unfair competition.

Changes since 2017 in the field of mandatory audit of financial statements

1. Requirement for the preparation of audit reports in accordance with ISAs since 2017. What should we expect?

Our state strives for European indicators in terms of financial reporting. Therefore, another step towards increasing its publicity and transparency was the introduction of international auditing standards (ISA) in the Russian Federation on January 1, 2017 (Orders of the Ministry of Finance of Russia dated October 24, 2016 N 192n, dated November 9, 2016 No. 207n).

For audit companies this means the following changes:

increase in the number of audit procedures

increase in the volume of data required to analyze the activities of audited companies

new quality standards for mandatory audits

new standards of information in the auditor's report

introduction of a modified opinion in the conclusion

For audited companies this means:

PROS: improving the quality of business risk assessment; a conclusion that will contain not only an assessment of the company’s financial statements, but also pay attention to significant risks for the business, etc.; expanded report information for accounting and for external and internal interested users: shareholders, board of directors, etc.

MINUSES: increase in the cost of mandatory audit since 2017; increasing the deadline for providing an audit report; increase in the cost of bank loans for companies (due to an increase in the level of transparency of the company’s activities and reflection of all identified business risks in the audit report)

2. Information about taxes, fines, income and expenses, and headcount will appear on the Federal Tax Service website

Information about economic entities is becoming more open. From June 1, 2016, tax secrets are no longer (amendments to Article 102 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation were introduced by Federal Law No. 134-FZ dated May 1, 2016):

information on the average number of employees of the organization;
the amount of taxes and fees paid by the organization, with the exception of taxes paid when importing goods into the EAEU and by tax agents;
amounts of income and expenses according to financial statements.

On July 1, 2017, the publication of this information in the public domain on the official website of the Federal Tax Service on the Internet began.

In addition, information on the amounts of arrears, arrears of penalties and fines, applied special regimes and the participation of taxpayers in consolidated groups will be published on the Federal Tax Service website.

Thanks to the appearance of additional information about legal entities in the public domain, taxpayers have an additional opportunity to assess the risks when choosing a counterparty, and there will also be an additional argument to prove to the Federal Tax Service in the event of claims that due diligence was exercised when concluding a transaction.

3. Information about the mandatory audit is posted on the Federal Resources website

From October 1, 2016 in Russia, the results of the mandatory audit of accounting (financial) statements become public. Corresponding amendments were made to the Federal Law “On Auditing Activities”. Organizations subject to mandatory audit must now enter information about the audit results into the Unified Federal Register of Information on the Facts of Activities of Legal Entities (hereinafter referred to as the EFRS http://www.fedresurs.ru/) within 3 business days after receiving the audit report. Such information includes:

name, INN, OGRN, SNILS of the audited entity;
name (full name), INN, OGRN (OGRNIP), SNILS of the auditing organization (individual auditor);
a list of accounting (financial) statements that were audited;
the period of preparation of the accounting (financial) statements in respect of which the audit was carried out;
date of the auditor's report;
the opinion of the auditing organization (individual auditor) on the reliability of the accounting (financial) statements of the audited entity, indicating the circumstances that have or may have a significant impact on the reliability of such statements.

Violation by an official of the audited organization of the obligation to disclose such information may entail an administrative fine provided for in parts 6-8 of Article 14.25 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, up to 50 thousand rubles or disqualification for a period of one to three years.

4. From 2018, audit confidentiality will likely be abolished

The corresponding Draft Law No. 96436-7 on amendments to Articles 82 and 93.1 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation has already been submitted to the State Duma.

Let us remind you that, according to the current version of Article 82 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, when exercising tax control, the collection, storage, use and dissemination of information about a taxpayer obtained in violation of the requirement to ensure the confidentiality of information constituting the professional secret of other persons, in particular attorney-client secret, audit secret, is not allowed.

However, from January 1, 2018, it is proposed to exclude audit secrecy from this article. In addition, it is proposed to establish the right of officials of the Federal Tax Service to request from auditors documents (information) received by them about the taxpayer during audit activities and in the provision of other audit-related services. The requested documents must be related to the calculation and payment (withholding, transfer) of tax (fee) and can be requested from auditors if the taxpayer has not submitted them to the Federal Tax Service on his own.

So, the area of accounting and reporting, as well as tax obligations of companies, is becoming more transparent.

So that by March 2018, when closing the 2017 financial year and submitting the annual financial statements, you do not end up with an auditor’s report, containing numerous reservations, We advise companies:

Conduct an audit in 2 stages (stage 1 - based on the results of the 9th month of 2017 in October-December 2017, stage 2 - based on the results of 2017 in the first quarter of 2018).

In this case, the auditors will complete almost the entire amount of work before the end of the reporting year, which will allow the organization to take into account their conclusions and recommendations in order to approach the annual report without distortions and errors in accounting. In this case, the organization will be able to eliminate haste and errors in reports and reduce the burden on accounting at the end of the year.

It is no secret that accounting and preparation of tax returns are the sphere of activity of the chief accountant. However, managers and founders should remember that responsibility for the accountant’s mistakes extends to them too.

As is known, if there are significant accounting distortions, the audit report may be negative, which will require the organization to additional costs associated with correcting the identified violations. For a re-audit of the revised financial statements, this means an additional payment for the auditors’ time for verification and the time period for issuing an opinion will also increase. For the audit of the revised financial statements, you will need to make an additional payment, since the volume of the auditor’s work increases, and accordingly, the deadlines too.

Carrying out the bulk of the work based on the results of reporting for 9 months will help both the accounting department and the auditors to avoid these troubles. And even after receiving a report with a list of significant errors made when preparing reports for 9 months, the organization will have time to make the necessary corrections in accounting and receive a positive audit report at the end of the year

If auditors first come to the company in February-March, the accounting department has too little time to make changes. At the same time, accountants prepare the annual report and experience double workload, which does not have the best effect on the results.

- Break down the audit by year.

When conducting an audit in two stages, its cost will be evenly distributed over 2017-2018 and will not require a one-time diversion of funds from the company’s economic activities in 2018.

- Do not treat the audit as a formal procedure only for submitting financial statements. The formal approach and formal attitude towards auditing have sunk into oblivion. Today, this is not acceptable both on the part of the audited entities and on the part of the auditors.

Why deprive yourself of the opportunity to receive quality feedback on the state of affairs of the company? The organization's accountants will correct identified inconsistencies in a timely manner, and will not spend a lot of time and effort on this, as they would have spent correcting documents retroactively.

If errors are discovered only at the beginning of the next year, the accounting department spends time clarifying the declarations, and the company spends money on additional payment of arrears and penalties.

Let us remind you that from October 1, 2017, the rules for calculating penalties for organizations will change. The innovations concern the arrears that will arise from October 1, 2017 . If the delay exceeds 30 calendar days, penalties will be calculated as follows:

based on 1/300 of the refinancing rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, valid in the period from the 1st to the 30th calendar days (inclusive) of such delay;
based on 1/150 of the refinancing rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, relevant for the period starting from the 31st calendar day of delay, which is proportional to the interest paid on bank loans.

- Take the choice of an audit company seriously.

The market is saturated with many offers, both from individuals and from various companies. Our company “FIN-AUDIT” has been on the audit services market for the 17th year.

Business reputation and work quality standards are impeccable. We are always ready for a constructive dialogue with audited entities on issues that arise during the audit.

Do not forget that for the absence of an audit report or failure to enter the relevant information into the Unified Federal Reserve System, you can receive a large fine.

The audit of financial (accounting) statements for 2017 is required to be carried out by:

legal entities whose revenue in 2016 exceeded 400 million rubles.
or balance sheet assets at the end of the year exceed 60 million rubles.
developers within the framework of Federal Law 214-FZ
companies preparing consolidated financial statements
joint stock companies, including non-public ones.
public offering companies
banks, insurance companies and some other categories in cases established by laws No. 307-FZ “On Auditing Activities”, 208 Federal Law “On Consolidated Reporting”.

Let us recall that according to Federal Law No. 402-FZ, the company must provide an audit report to the territorial division of Rosstat either simultaneously with the submission of financial statements, or no later than 10 business days from the day following the date of the audit report, but no later than December 31 of the year following reporting.

A company that falls under the mandatory audit criteria cannot choose whether or not to submit an audit report to the statistical authorities. You will definitely have to give it up.

We wish YOU successful completion of the 2017 audit. Our company “FIN-AUDIT”, in turn, is ready to provide a high-quality approach when carrying out audit procedures and preparing an audit report.

What does the legislation say about mandatory audit for LLCs in 2017? What are the criteria? Are there any chances that a limited liability company is not subject to mandatory audit at all? This is discussed in our consultation.

There's always a chance

Such an organizational and legal structure as a limited liability company is today the most popular form of doing business in Russia. Usually it involves a very small authorized capital and staff. However, it also happens exactly the opposite: it can be a large company with good financial turnover. Of course, in both the first and second cases, you need to know about the criteria for the mandatory audit of an LLC in 2017.

It is important to clearly understand that the current legislation does not directly establish the criteria for mandatory audit for LLCs in 2017. Including the 2008 Law “On Auditing Activities” No. 307-FZ. However, it is categorically impossible to conclude from this that the current legislation does not establish a requirement to conduct a mandatory audit in an LLC.

Moreover: The fact that a limited liability company has the status of a small business representative by law does not in itself automatically exempt the company from undergoing a mandatory audit. For LLCs, criteria of this kind are not established by law.

What the law says

The 2008 Federal Law “On Auditing Activities” No. 307-FZ, which we mentioned, established a number of criteria from which one can understand whether an LLC is subject to mandatory audit. But very few of them fall under this organizational and legal structure of doing business.

According to Article 5 of this Federal Law, LLCs subject to mandatory audit in the year preceding the reporting year have:

Revenue from sales (products, goods, work, services) over 400 million rubles (excluding VAT);
The size of assets on the balance sheet at the end of the year exceeded 60 million rubles.

Sanctions

What will happen if you do not conduct a mandatory audit for an LLC when it is required by law (see above)?

The fact is that the current legal norms do not provide for sanctions as such for the very fact of failure to conduct a legally obligatory audit. However, they can be punished for the lack of an audit report. Basically, administrative sanctions are provided for this.

Thus, the liability of an LLC for failure to conduct a mandatory audit, or more precisely, the lack of an auditor’s conclusion on annual reporting, falls under:

Article 19.7 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation - when the audit report, along with a copy of the financial statements, was not submitted on time or was not submitted at all to the local branch of Rosstat;
Part 1 of Article 15.11 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation - for gross violation of the requirements for accounting (financial) reporting.

Accounting in an organization is an important system that allows owners and managers to quickly obtain data on the state of affairs at the enterprise. No one doubts that the data in this system must be correct and up to date. That is why an audit of financial statements is provided.

Mandatory audit

In cases established by law, such verification of financial statements is mandatory. A mandatory audit of an enterprise's financial statements is provided, for example, for open joint-stock companies, banks, stock exchanges, insurance companies, as well as for companies whose revenue for the previous reporting year amounted to more than 400 million rubles. or the amount of assets on the balance sheet as of the end of the year preceding the reporting year is more than 60 million rubles. These are the requirements of Art. 5 of Federal Law No. 307-FZ of December 30, 2008 “On Auditing Activities”. In other cases, verification of reporting is optional, but desirable. The main purpose of a reporting audit is to confirm its reliability.

Objectives of the audit of financial statements

In the process of auditing the financial statements of an enterprise, the auditor must solve the following tasks:

Assessing the correctness of the composition and content of the enterprise reporting forms themselves.
Assessment of compliance and interconnection of reporting indicators.
Assessing the correctness and compliance of the accounting and taxation methods used in the organization with current legislation.
Assessing the correctness of the formation of consolidated reporting.

As a rule, to perform these tasks, the auditor will need a balance sheet, a profit and loss statement, a cash flow statement, a statement of changes in capital, an appendix to the balance sheet, a report on the intended use of funds received, and an explanatory note. The auditor will also request balance sheets and the general ledger. As a result, the auditor must answer the question of whether the financial statements are reliable and whether the methodology for their preparation complies with legal requirements.

Main stages of financial statements audit

As part of an audit of financial statements, a specialist auditor goes through the following mandatory stages.

Preparatory or introductory stage of verification. At this stage, the auditor gets acquainted with the company and receives the most complete information about the company’s activities. At this stage of the audit, the auditor studies the regional and industry characteristics of the company, the degree of automation of accounting processes, the company’s financial obligations, and the internal control system.

Audit planning is the second stage of an accounting audit. This is a significant verification stage both in terms of time and the volume of work performed. It is at this stage that an inspection schedule is drawn up, inspection areas are specified in detail, a group of specialists participating in the inspection is formed, and the areas to be inspected are agreed upon with the company. This stage is described in detail in clause 9 of standard No. 3 “Audit Planning”, approved. Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated September 23, 2002 N 696. Based on the plan, an audit program is formed. In the future, as necessary, during the inspection itself, the plan and program can be revised.

The third stage is the actual audit itself. At this stage, the collection, assessment and analysis of facts relating to the company’s activities take place. The audit is carried out on the basis of federal and international standards. The following procedures are used in the process of auditing financial statements:

Well, at the fourth and final stage, the results of the audit of the enterprise’s financial statements are summed up and an audit report is drawn up, in which the auditor expresses his professional opinion on the reliability of the financial statements, calculating the level of materiality.

The regulation of Russian business activities is increasingly approaching, which is associated with both the influx of foreign investment and the entry of Russian companies into foreign capital markets.

For effective interaction with Russian and foreign partners in Russia for 2020 international auditing standards were introduced, which seriously influenced the current practice of conducting inspections.

The audit requirements for limited liability companies do not apply to all companies, but only to legal entities, falling under certain criteria. This is due to the fact that most LLCs belonging to small and medium-sized businesses have small financial turnover, do not list their shares or bonds on the securities market by publishing a prospectus, and do not attract money from individuals. Consequently, there is no need for additional verification of the reliability of their reporting.

Main criteria for verification

Companies whose activities affect the interests of many third parties or those that have sufficiently high financial performance must undergo a mandatory audit. These criteria are established by audit legislation and are sometimes changed in terms of increasing the thresholds for revenue and.

The requirements for an LLC are divided into two groups: by type of activity and other similar characteristics and by financial indicators. Based on these characteristics, LLCs can be identified that are subject to mandatory audit. Joint stock companies in the form of PJSC, whose shares are distributed by public subscription, are checked in any case, regardless of compliance with other criteria.

Subjects

The law establishes the following groups of limited liability companies for which an audit of annual reporting is mandatory:

By type of activity– audits are required to be carried out by banks, insurance companies, pension funds, holding companies that prepare consolidated statements for the holding and publish them, companies whose bonds are traded on the organized securities market.
According to financial indicators These requirements apply to enterprises with revenue exceeding 400 million rubles, as well as if the currency of the balance sheet asset exceeds 60 million rubles.

If a limited liability company falls under these criteria, the requirements for conducting an audit of its annual financial statements become mandatory. Compared to last year, nothing has changed in these criteria; no new subjects or requirements have appeared.

According to the new goals and objectives of the mandatory audit in 2020, there will be not only standard verification of the accuracy of financial statements and identification of errors arising during accounting, but also business analysis. The first two tasks remain in full and are somewhat expanded, so the responsibility to check the work of internal auditors also falls on the shoulders of external auditors.

The task of business analysis is to identify risks, factors that cause obstacles to the development of the company’s activities, and develop recommendations for such changes in financial and economic activities that will help eliminate these risks.

Despite the fact that the conclusion is subject to mandatory publication starting this year, its business part must be completed as correct and balanced as possible, one should not allow an incorrect interpretation of certain facts of economic life.

Legislation

In addition to basic laws, mandatory auditing is regulated by the Order of the Ministry of Finance No. 192n, issued on October 24, 2016. They put it into force 30 international auditing standards.

Also, a little later, Order No. 203n was adopted, which approved 18 more standards. Among most significant changes:

introduction of phased audit principles;
introduction of the concept of audit evidence;
changing the form of the conclusion, instead of a standard report, an extended document is offered with an analysis of the organization’s activities, business risks and other issues;
preparation of a modified report;
The audit report performed for organizations for which a statutory audit is required must be published.

With the introduction of new standards, the responsibility of audit organizations has increased, and competition will also increase, since the publication of reports will give everyone the opportunity to become familiar with the quality of the work of auditors before concluding contracts.

The work of auditors was seriously influenced by repeal of audit secrecy provisions. According to it, employees of audit companies are required to report so-called “strange” client transactions to financial monitoring authorities.

Changes in cost

The new standards have significantly increased the labor intensity of the work of reporting specialists. Seriously changed requirements and the need to fill out additional tables increased the labor costs of specialists for 30-40% , the price for these services should have increased proportionally.

In any case, the cost of the auditor’s services must be approved by the company’s participants, therefore, when the issue of a mandatory audit is brought to a meeting of participants, the price must be determined.

Check procedure

Audit and its essence have not undergone any changes. As a standard, the correctness of accounting is checked on the basis of documents from a certain sample; a complete audit is not carried out. But the volume of information provided has increased significantly, and hence the workload on the accountant.

In addition, the need for business analysis forces the management of the enterprise to take part in the inspection, from which comments will be required on certain risks in the activity. The standards impose on the auditors themselves the responsibility to inform management about shortcomings in the operation of internal audit systems.

The auditor must be determined at a meeting of participants. He begins checking as soon as the reports are ready, but before they are submitted. Thus, the main work on the auditor will be for March– for financial statements, for June- for the tax office.

Taking into account the significant complexity of the requirements, it is better not to take risks and start checking as early as possible; there is a high risk of not having time to prepare a report, which can lead to various sanctions.

In addition, conducting a phased audit will give accountants and financiers the opportunity to benefit from consultations with auditors on controversial issues of tax legislation and accounting throughout the year.

The result of the check will be drawing up a conclusion, seriously different from previously accepted forms. A collection of recommended forms of opinions has been approved by the Ministry of Finance; it contains recommendations for ordinary and special opinions that are formed based on the results of an audit of consolidated statements.

Can an organization be punished for failing to conduct a mandatory audit? Yes, but sanctions will not follow directly. First of all, she will be denied acceptance of the annual financial statements. Such failure leads to the imposition of administrative responsibility on her.

It may also be established that there has been a gross violation of the rules for maintaining accounting records, which will lead to an administrative fine in the amount of up to 20,000 rubles. Small fines may be imposed for failure to provide a conclusion along with reporting and statistical authorities.

Compared to previous periods, almost nothing has changed, with the exception of the requirements for the inclusion of data on the mandatory audit in the Unified State Register in accordance with Law 129-FZ and the requirements for the mandatory publication of audit results.

Failure to comply with this requirement may be grounds for administrative liability; the manager may be disqualified or subject to a fine. up to 50,000 rubles(Clause 6, 7, 8 of Article 14.2 of the Administrative Code).

The sanctions imposed on the auditors themselves have become more stringent. For unreliable conclusions, they may be subject to sanctions in accordance with the Code of Administrative Offenses, and it is also expected to introduce criminal liability if the preparation of a poor-quality report led to significant losses. The law on criminal liability is still under consideration.

Changes in the inspection procedure, on the one hand, are positive, increasing the transparency of enterprises and the trust of investors and partners in them, on the other hand, the disclosure of additional information, which is no longer a tax secret, can lead to an increase in the cost of bank loans due to the publicity of some risks. But in the end analysis of documentation under the new rules should benefit the business.

Why is an audit needed? Details are in this video.