Special Audit of a Newspaper
The primary object
of such an audit is to give an idea to the advertisers about the effectiveness
of their advertisements. In order to eliminate the effect of temporary factors
contributing to sudden increase or decrease in circulation of a newspaper, it
is always better to select short durations, say a month or a quarter of the
year, for the purposes of investigation in the accounts of a newspaper. Auditor
must remain on guard throughout his work against attempts made to show a false
increase in the circulation of a newspaper by including the names of dummy
subscribers. Leading advertisers in the country have set up an Audit Bureau,
which has developed the procedure to be followed by auditors while conducting
such audit.
The audit
programme for verifying the circulation of a newspaper will be on the following
lines:
1- Auditor will verify the number of
copies printed from the printers voucher and the entry for the issue of
newsprint to the press out of the stock held by the company.
2- Auditor will pay greater attention to
the verification of the record of the issue of the copies of the newspaper. He
shall examine the subscribers list for the copies issued to subscribers,
dispatch notes sent to the news agents to verify copies issued to them.
3- Auditor will examine the copies of
bills issued and the record of copies of newspaper issued to the subscribers,
news agents, hawkers etc, in order to verify the accuracy of debit entries
passed into their ledger accounts.
4- Auditor will then proceed to vouch cash
collections, the duplicates of the receipts issued and the credit entries
passed therefore into the accounts of various types of the customers.
5- All additions and deletions to the
subscribes list should be examined carefully in order to confirm that the list
contains only the names of genuine subscribers to whom the newspaper had been
issued.
6- Total of the copies issued daily should
be compiled from the financial records of sales and distribution and should be
compared and reconciled with the total number of copies printed. Causes for
wide discrepancy in two figures should be enquired into.
Average daily
issues will constitute the total circulation of the newspaper. On deduction of
free circulation copies, auditor will get the total of the net paid
circulation.
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