Internal Audit Plan and Timetable

Learn all about an audit plan and timetable and what it looks like for you as an internal auditor?

Don’t worry, everything that you’ve learned still applies and will help you with your Internal Audit planning as well as expanding to other audit types if you ever follow that path.

With a particular focus on internal audit planning and timetables, I’d like to share with you what might be different in an internal audit.

Before I cover what might be different, it’s important to understand what would be the same too.

You would still:

• - Need to advise auditees of the plan for the audit
• - Need to advise auditees of the timeframe for the audit

The difference is, HOW you would do this.

What we’ve shown you as examples in the training could be seen as quite formal. This is great for external audits and possibly internal audits of large organizations with multiple sites and locations.

However, as an internal auditor, you will more than likely know the auditee and even possibly where they are located, right down to where their desk is. So, there is no need for such a formal Audit Plan and Timetable as in the examples given in the course. The information is still important to communicate, however, you could just do this in a simple email.

What I did when I was an internal auditor, I’d send an email a week or two before the scheduled audit date. In the email I would cover the following:

• - Confirm the audit date and start time
• - Confirm the duration of the audit – so, how long the audit would go for
• - Confirm what the audit would be covering (like what processes and what areas and activities)

If I was going to a different site or a project for the audit I would ask:

• - What PPE was required
• - Where I could park safely
• - Was there any prior induction requirements

And finally, I would always end with something like “Please let me know if there are any questions or anything else I should know before the audit date”.

You can see that you still cover all of the requirements for planning, however in a less formal manner. Essentially you are using the normal method of communication within your business.

Here at Auditor Training Online our Internal Audits are scheduled in a project management platform called Asana. Any communication with auditees is conducted within Asana including the audit plan and timetable – see, we are using the relevant or standard method of communication that we use here at Auditor Training Online. That makes sense, right?

So, don’t overthink it and get too formal with your audit plan and timetable – unless of course, this is your standard method of communication! Look at what communication methods you already use and make use of those. Keep your audit planning consistent with this.

Happy Auditing.

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