Part (b) for 4 marks required two procedures to ensure that sales statistics used by the company may be relied upon. This question presented difficulties for almost all of the candidates and was inadequately answered. It would appear that many did not understand what was required of them and they failed to understand what the sales statistics were.

The company was keeping records of sales made by month and by type of customer and colleges. The auditor could place reliance on these and perhaps use them for analytical review purposes, but would have needed to test their reliability first.

Many candidates confused the sales statistics with the royalties that the company gave to its poets and so provided a long list of procedures to test royalties, even though this was required in part (c) of the question.

Many also provided general sales procedures such as ‘vouching a sample of sales from goods despatch note to invoice to the sales ledger’ with no reference to the sales statistics at all.

In addition, the question required a description of two procedures for 4 marks. Hence a reasonable level of detail was required in relation to the explanation of the procedure in order to score 2 marks per point. The level of detail provided in the audit procedures was generally fairly brief. Very few candidates managed to score full marks in this area.