• The auditor will have to gain an understanding of the programs to be tested otherwise he will not do a good job. This will call for some kind of training, which in consequence will affect the audit plan.
• The auditor will have to seek other means of following up transactions from initiation to final recording, since use of audit trail may not be practical.
• When evaluating the system of control, the auditor should avoid becoming too immersed in detail. He must obtain an overall view of the system, including the user-accounting staff and the computer department who maintain the payroll system. These are primary controls which cover completeness i.e. all input data is processed and accuracy.
• Having identified the primary controls, the auditor will know at which point the system controls is being established. In most cases, most of the work will be of clerical nature and that done by the computer is of secondary importance. In this case, it will be unnecessary to examine the program and system development controls in details and administrative controls will only become important if clerical controls are exercised in the computer department
• When the system of control is largely dependent on program control, it becomes necessary to review those in details and in addition to examine the system development and administrative controls so as to ensure that the program control have been designed and implemented correctly.
• Use of test packs: This consists of test data which will be processed in the same way as actual data. By using them in the payroll system, the program being tested will process normal data correctly and react correctly to deliberately invalid data.
