Obtaining Audit Evidence for Assessing Companies’ Ability to Continue as a Going Concern, Using Duration Models

According to The International Standards on Auditing, the purpose of the auditor in an audit engagement is to express an independent, objective and a professional opinion regarding the accuracy of the financial statements of the companies audited. During his mission, the auditors must also assess the company’s ability to continue as a going concern, with a major impact on the preparation and the quality of financial statements that are reported. To support his opinion, regarding the hypothesis of going concern, the auditor must obtain sufficient and appropriate audit evidence, and perform the necessary audit procedures. For that, analytical procedures ensure a series of comparative information at the level of analyzed periods or branch, useful to the auditor in the audit engagement. The present study aims to obtain a deterministic model based on duration models, for assessing the audited companies’ ability to continue as a going concern. The research results are useful to the auditor in the assessment of the audited company’s compliance with the going concern assumption, in preparation of financial statements. The analysis was performed on a sample of 77 companies quoted on the Bucharest Stock Exchange that were subject to the insolvency risk, in the period 2008-2011. To obtain the research results, data were treated with statistical software SPSS 19.0.