Part (b) for 6 marks required procedures the auditor should undertake during the inventory count of Lily. Performance was unsatisfactory on this part of the question.
The requirement stated in capitals that procedures DURING the count were required; however a significant proportion of candidates ignored this word completely and provided procedures both before and after the count.
Many answers actually stated “before the count…”, candidates must read the question requirements properly. Those candidates who had read the question properly often struggled to provide an adequate number of well described points.
The common answers given were “to observe the inventory counters” although candidates did not make it clear what they were observing for; or “undertake test counts” but with no explanation of the direction of the test and whether it was for completeness or existence. Some candidates provided all possible inventory tests, in particular focusing on NRV testing.
This demonstrated that candidates had learnt a standard list of inventory tests and rather than applying these to the question set just proceeded to list them all. This approach wastes time and does not tend to score well as of the six answers provided very few tended to be relevant.