Question

Explain why it is necessary to allocate the preliminary judgment about materiality to individual accounts (segments) in the financial statements. What is this called? Also explain why allocating to balance sheet accounts is more common than allocating to income statement accounts.

Answer 1

Allocating the preliminary judgment about materiality to individual accounts (segments) is necessary because evidence is accumulated for accounts (segments) rather than for the financial statements as a whole. Allocating to accounts (segments) establishes a tolerable misstatement amount for each account, which helps the auditor decide the appropriate audit evidence to accumulate for each account. Most practitioners allocate materiality to balance sheet accounts rather than income statement accounts because most income statement misstatements have an equal effect on the balance sheet due to the nature of double-entry accounting. Because there are fewer balance sheet accounts than income statement accounts in most audits, and because most audit procedures focus on balance sheet accounts, materiality should be allocated only to balance sheet accounts.