Audit Quality Assurance Reviewer
Quality Assurance
SmartSuite for the Audit Quality Assurance Reviewer
The Audit Quality Assurance Reviewer ensures engagements meet internal methodology and the IIA Standards. They verify workpapers are complete and properly reviewed, confirm sign-offs with electronic audit trails, and evaluate reports against methodology and regulatory expectations.
Reports to:
What you own
The Audit Quality Assurance Reviewer ensures engagements meet internal methodology and the IIA Standards.
- Review engagement workpapers against methodology and the Standards
- Verify that reviews and approvals are complete and evidenced
- Evaluate audit reports for accuracy, support and consistency
- Run the quality assurance and improvement program
- Track quality findings and improvement actions
- Prepare for external quality assessments
At a glance
The GRC processes this role owns, touches and depends on.
Owns
accountable for the process
Touches
contributes or approves
Depends on
consumes its output
How the GRC processes connect
Three lines of defence set the frame; the chain shows where each process hands off to the next. Colours follow the Audit Quality Assurance Reviewer: navy is owned, blue is touched, grey is depended on.
- First lineThe business and its control ownersRun the processes, own the controls, fix the issues
- Second lineRisk, compliance and the domain programmesSet the frameworks, assess, monitor and advise
- Third lineInternal auditIndependent assurance to the board and audit committee
Reporting lines
Who this role reports to, who reports to them, and the peers they work with most.
How SmartSuite supports the Audit Quality Assurance Reviewer
The quality assurance and improvement program is yours to run, and the Audit Director, Chief Audit Executive and the external quality assessor judge it by whether every file conforms to methodology and the IIA Standards. SmartSuite gives an Audit Quality Assurance Reviewer complete sight of review cycles, evidenced sign-offs and improvement actions tracked to closure.
Review every engagement against methodology and the Standards
Open any engagement in Internal Audit Management and see each procedure, its attached evidence, its test result and its reviewer, so conformance checks are done in the file rather than from exported copies.
Audit Management suiteBecause every engagement follows the same steps, templates and documentation standards, a missing objective, an untested control or an unreviewed procedure is visible at a glance across the whole department.
Audit Management suiteEvidence is attached to each procedure, so you can test a draft report's statements against the working papers behind them without asking the Audit Manager to walk you through the file.
Audit Management suiteWork with audit managers and internal auditors on quality
Log each quality observation against the engagement it concerns, assign it to the Audit Manager or Internal Auditor responsible and track the fix in Issues Management with a due date.
Audit Management suiteIn-record conversations and mentions keep your review comments beside the procedure they refer to, so the auditor sees the point in context and the exchange is retained.
Audit Management suiteSystemic improvements to templates, steps or training become tracked actions with owners, so the program shows what changed as a result of your reviews, not just what was found.
Audit Management suiteEvidence conformance for the external quality assessment
Every review and approval is recorded as an activity with who did it and when, so supervision is evidenced automatically rather than reconstructed from initials on a cover sheet.
Audit Management suiteDashboards show review completion, open quality findings and recurring issues across engagements, giving the Chief Audit Executive a current conformance picture for the audit committee.
Audit Management suiteComplete activity history, approvals and versions are kept with each engagement, so an external assessor or a regulator sampling your work finds the whole trail in one place.
Audit Management suiteInternal audit. Gives reviewers complete visibility into review cycles, verifying workpapers include complete, accurate and properly reviewed documentation.
Issues and actions. Tracks quality findings and improvement actions to closure.
Reporting. Confirms all reviews and approvals with electronic audit trails and reports conformance.
Products this role uses most
Industry reference
The IIA's Global Internal Audit Standards (2024) require a quality assurance and improvement program with internal assessments and an external quality assessment at least every five years. The reviewer checks workpapers, supervision and reporting against those Standards and the function's methodology.
Regulators read the results. Bank supervisors expect the audit function to be independently assessed under Basel and OCC guidance; government audit organizations undergo peer review under GAO's Yellow Book; healthcare and technology audit functions evidence quality to audit committees and, where external auditors rely on their work, to those auditors under PCAOB AS 2605.
Related roles
Chief Audit Executive
See the roleExplore Further
Guides and definitions from the GRC Knowledge Center and the What-is glossary, chosen for this role.
Frequently asked questions
The Audit Quality Assurance Reviewer ensures engagements meet the function's methodology and the IIA Standards. They review workpapers against both, verify that reviews and approvals are complete and evidenced, evaluate audit reports for accuracy, support and consistency, run the quality assurance and improvement program, track quality findings and improvement actions and prepare the function for external quality assessments. In SmartSuite the reviewer works from the same engagement records as the audit teams.
SmartSuite gives the reviewer complete visibility into review cycles in Internal Audit Management, so they can verify that workpapers include complete, accurate and properly reviewed documentation without requesting files from the engagement team. The reviewer sees which workpapers were reviewed, by whom and when, and whether review notes were cleared before the report was issued, which is the evidence the Standards require for supervision.
Every review and approval is confirmed with an electronic audit trail, so the reviewer can show an external assessor who signed off each workpaper and report, and when, without reconstructing it from emails. Conformance is reported from those trails, giving the function a running picture of adherence to methodology rather than a snapshot assembled in the weeks before the external quality assessment.
Quality findings are logged in Issues Management with owners and dates and tracked to closure, in the same way engagement findings are. That keeps the improvement program accountable: the reviewer can show the Audit Director and Chief Audit Executive which quality issues recur, which improvements were agreed and whether they were completed, and the Audit Managers whose engagements were reviewed see the actions assigned to them.
The reviewer reports conformance to the Audit Director and Chief Audit Executive from SmartSuite, using the audit trails and quality findings as the evidence base. Compliance Assessments & Testing holds compliance test results in the same model, so quality review can extend to that work. The reviewer reads engagement records that already exist rather than building a separate quality file, so the first workflow is a conformance check on one live engagement. New customers can start with SmartSuite Onboarding, a guided four-week program around one or two priority workflows.