The work of any enterprise is impossible without the use of wage labor of many people who sell their labor in order to make money. In turn, the company pays them wages as a payment for the purchased labor. In order to check whether all settlements between the owners of the workforce and its buyer, that is, the employing company, are carried out correctly, an audit of payroll accounting is carried out.
Verification of financial transactions related to the payment of wage labor is carried out in several stages, which are characteristic of all types of audits. The audit of payroll calculations is carried out in accordance with international audit standards - special documents that govern all stages of the audit - from the preparation of the plan to the issuance of an opinion. Due to the use of these standards, verification will be unified for all countries of the world, which is very important for multinational corporations.
The audit of remuneration includes the verification of the following points:
The number of employees according to the staffing table, their salary and bonus rates, the number of sick leave, absenteeism and absenteeism. Thus, the occurrence of all obligations of the enterprise to its employees is checked, according to which it must pay them certain amounts as wages.
After checking the occurrence of the obligations of the enterprise to its employees, you need to focus on checking their implementation by the enterprise. At this point, the audit of payroll expenses focuses on payroll, bank statements, cash registers - in short, all those documents that can confirm that employees received their salaries.
An audit of payroll calculations should pay particular attention to two non-standard cases of pay - sick leave and leave. Since in these cases the calculation of payments is somewhat different than with the standard payment of wages, it is necessary to completely or at least selectively recalculate payments to employees who were on vacation or on sick leave, and compare the figure with the one calculated by the accountant of the company . In case of discrepancies, it is necessary to eliminate the discrepancy by either paying extra or withholding the overpaid amount from the employee.
The last point that should be touched upon by the audit of payroll calculations is the firm’s settlements with social insurance funds of citizens, as well as with the tax office. The fact is that the company pays taxes for its employees, such as a tax on the financial income of individuals, as well as various taxes received by social funds: pension, accident insurance, disability insurance and others. In order to make sure that these payments are accrued correctly, it is necessary to conduct a selective check of the calculation for certain categories of employees - this will make it possible to assess the overall correctness of the calculation of accruals. If any errors are found, it is necessary to conduct a full check of calculations on taxes and contributions.
An audit of payroll calculations implies the issuance at the end of the audit of a special opinion, which will indicate how things are going with the payroll in the enterprise, whether there are unrecorded wage arrears, or vice versa, whether wages were paid for unworked hours to employees. Depending on the results of the audit, the company's management will make further decisions on putting things in order in the financial affairs of the company.