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CMA Intermediate · Corporate Accounting and Auditing · Audit Sampling, Audit Techniques and Analytical Procedure

An auditor of a company with 5,000 purchase vouchers intends to draw conclusions about the entire population. Which approach is ordinarily NOT appropriate as a sample selection technique, according to SA 530?

Selecting only the March vouchers is block selection, which cannot ordinarily support conclusions about the whole population. Contiguous items tend to resemble one another and differ from items elsewhere. Random, systematic and monetary unit selection are recognised methods that give each unit a chance of selection.

  1. ARandom selection using random number tables
  2. BSelecting all vouchers of March, as one block of contiguous items, to represent the whole yearCorrect
  3. CSystematic selection with a sampling interval of 50 after a random start
  4. DMonetary Unit Sampling for value-weighted selection

Explanation

Block selection cannot ordinarily be used in audit sampling because items in a sequence tend to share characteristics that differ from items elsewhere. Examining March may be a valid procedure in itself, but it is rarely appropriate for inferences about the whole population. The other three are recognised selection methods.

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