An organization has developed a large database that tracks employees, employee benefits, payroll deductions, job classifications, and other similar information. The internal auditor reviews the retirement benefits plan and determines that the pension and medical benefits have been changed several times in the past ten years. The auditor wishes to determine whether there is justification to perform further audit investigation. The most appropriate audit procedure would be
to:
- Review the trend of overall retirement expense over the last ten years. If the retirement expense increased, it would indicate the need for further investigation.
- Use generalized audit software to select a monetary-unit sample of retirement pay, and determine whether each retired employee was paid correctly.
- Review reasonableness of retirement pay and medical expenses on a per-person basis stratified by which plan was in effect when the employee retired.
- Use generalized audit software to select an attributes sample of retirement pay, and perform detailed testing to determine whether each person chosen was given the proper benefits.