SAMPLING IN AUDIT TESTING :

Sampling is a process of selecting a subset of a population of items for the purpose of making inferences to the whole population. Accounting populations usually consist of a large number of items (debtors, creditors), often totalling millions of rupees, and a detailed examination of all accounts is not possible. Audit sampling is defined as

“The application of audit procedures to less than 100% of the items within an account balance or class of transactions to enable the auditor to obtain and evaluate evidence about some characteristic of the items selected in order to form or assist in forming a conclusion concerning the population which makes up the account balance or class of transactions”

A fundamental element of any audit programme will be the selection of transactions to be tested as a sample of all available transactions. Sampling is used in both compliance and substantive testing and is described in numerous textbooks in auditing