Documenting Your EBP Audit: What You Need to Know

What you document matters

Understanding different parts of the employee benefit plan (EBP) audit process can help you think holistically about your level of audit documentation.

You'll learn the appropriate level of documentation when performing EBP audit procedures, which involves testing items that are not typically tested in audits of other types of entities.

Real-life examples

You'll also gain insights from real-life examples and solutions as you are guided by a former employee benefit plan expert panel member and peer reviewer.

Additionally, reviewing these examples will help you truly understand documentation in an EBP audit and learn best practices for documentation to incorporate into your audits.

Key Topics

• Professional standards
• Audit planning
• Risk assessment and control testing
• Documentation best practices for investments and plan expenses
• Key audit areas in the financial statements, such as contributions and contributions receivable, benefit payments, and participant notes receivable
• Participant data and participant accounts
• Initial audits, plan mergers, and other issues

Learning Outcomes

• Recognize areas in employee benefit plan audits that commonly lead to documentation deficiencies.
• Recall the AICPA professional standards that address audit documentation.
• Recall the practical aspects of unique EBP audit planning procedures.
• Recognize effective documentation of risk assessment.
• Recognize effective documentation of system narratives and walk-throughs.
• Recall documentation concepts for investments and participant notes receivable.
• Identify best practices for documenting audit procedures surrounding contributions and benefit payments.
• Recall documentation for other audit areas not related to specific accounts.

Who Will Benefit

• Auditors of employee benefit plans