Background: The audit has not always been as it is today. The first law requiring auditing was legislated in the Companies Act 1895. Many events have taken place in the audit history; among them was the Krueger crash, which affected the auditing profession hard in Sweden. This led to new recommendations and laws that would save the profession. Because of the events in the past, there are many who question the Audit profession and discussions have been held regarding the auditor's independence and objectivity.

Background: The district nurses profession has traditionally been health promotion. In order to find patients with excessive alcohol intake, district nurses use AUDIT. Research shows that health professionals find it difficult to face alcohol abusers in primary care. AIM: The aim is to describe how district nurses work with AUDIT. Method: Semi-structured interviews with six informants were carried out.

Audit is a service of society that takes place in the public interest. To guarantee the quality of auditing a quality control is done with predetermined time intervals. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze the concept quality and the procedure of the quality control and further to tie concepts like trust and ethics to the Audit profession. To make the picture complete the paper also provides an insight regarding what deficiencies in quality, in other words failures, means to the Audit profession. By performing semi-structured interviews with seven qualified auditors, active on different auditing firms in Skåne, substantial information was collected.

The expectation gap is the definition of the differences between what the interests expects from the auditor and what the auditor delivers. A number of studies have been done regarding the expectation gap and generally they point at the existence of an expectation gap.In our paper we want to discover and see how strategies are used in the process to reduce the expectation gap from three levels. The levels we treat are auditors, audit bureaus and the profession. We have chosen to examine the strategies used by the three levels to reduce the expectation gap to following interest groups, owners, management/board of directors, and creditors.The purpose with our paper is to create understanding about how auditors, audit bureaus and the profession use strategies in the process to reduce the expectation gap.With existing theories as ground we have construed and developed our own theory about which thinkable strategies the three levels can use.We have interviewed auditors, representatives from bureaus and a spokesman for the profession. In the examination we have used telephone interviews with questions based on our operationalization.

Background: With the removal of audit requirement for companies in Sweden from the first of november 2010, a lot of companies has chosen not to keep the audit requirement. So far 57 percent of the small companies has chosen to keep the audit, in spite of that they don´t need to which led us to the problem statement: Which are the factors that affect a small limited company to choose to keep the audit, in spite that now there is a possibility to choose not to use audit anymore?Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to examine why small limited companies choose to keep the audit, in spite that now there is a possibility to choose not to use audit?Method: This research founds itself in a qualitative study with a deductive research approach. We have been studying secondary data in books and articles and preformed 29 phone interviews with small ltd company owners in Sweden. The selection consisted of 14 companies with credit debts and 15 companies without credit debts.

Background: With the removal of audit requirement for companies in Sweden from the first of november 2010, a lot of companies has chosen not to keep the audit requirement. So far 57 percent of the small companies has chosen to keep the audit, in spite of that they don´t need to which led us to the problem statement: Which are the factors that affect a small limited company to choose to keep the audit, in spite that now there is a possibility to choose not to use audit anymore?Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to examine why small limited companies choose to keep the audit, in spite that now there is a possibility to choose not to use audit?Method: This research founds itself in a qualitative study with a deductive research approach. We have been studying secondary data in books and articles and preformed 29 phone interviews with small ltd company owners in Sweden. The selection consisted of 14 companies with credit debts and 15 companies without credit debts.

Sweden has had statutory audit, which also includes a management audit, for all companies since 1988. A legislative proposal now suggests that the statutory audit shall be abolished for all small and medium sized companies starting on July 1, 2010. The aim for this master?s thesis is therefore to study how the service of auditing will be affected by the legislative proposal. To answer the research question the authors have taken on a qualitative approach and fifteen interviews with representatives for different Swedish auditing firms have been completed.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze how auditors are affected by quality controls and if audit practice changes because of quality controls. To fulfill the purpose of this study there has been interviews made with five auditors. The conclusion by this study is that the interviewed auditors work practices are affected by quality controls and that the extent and effect depends on the auditor and the office that the auditor works in. The auditors who worked as quality reviewers at the agencies where they are employed at, we felt that they were more secured in the response towards quality controls. This may be because they are quality reviewers themselves and they know what the quality control requires and what must be met to be approved.

In 2010 mandatory audit was revoked for small and medium sized companies in Sweden. At the same time the authorization for accounting consultants was established with the aim of raising the knowledge and status of the profession. Even though The Swedish Companies Registration Office has discovered more errors in the accounting after the mandatory audit was eliminated, it especially concerns those companies who does not have neither an auditor or an accounting consultant. One of the reasons often mentioned to be audited is the auditors role when it comes to lending decisions. Our empirical studie show that the auditors most important function, being unbiased, is not what is of greatest importance for the credit institutions.Instead it was professional skills, and for small and medium enterprises (SME) it was consulting they requested the most.

That an auditor brings good quality to the work he is performing is of great importance, not only for the company in question but also for its stakeholders. The information that the company disclose gets more credibility because of the auditor quality assurance. That the auditor tenure would affect the quality has been researched with different results, dependent on the legislation in the current country or region. In this paper we study how audit quality is affected of the audit tenure in Sweden. Based on research made in Belgium we have formulated hypothesis with factors that can affect the audit quality.

Background: Currently Sweden has the possibility to like other EU countries raise the limits of statutory audit, but have chosen significantly lower limits. The reform was adopted in 2010 and only applies to smaller companies and there is great pressure for the limits to rise in future. This would enable Swedish companies to compete on equal terms in Europe. Aim: The aim of our study is to investigate the impact of the removal of the statutory audit for smaller companies from audit and accounting bureaus perspective and also the possible impact if the limits were to rise. Furthermore we want to explore how the supplies of other financial services have developed as a result of this.

The aim of the study is to describe and analyze bank officials' views about what auditors will do. The main motivation comes from the government?s proposals that the audit duty will be abolished and it can lead to that bank officials in a bigger extent can influence the audit?s formulation. It can also lead to that a consumer audit becomes reality. The study covers a sample of 302 bank officials where 153 have participated through a survey questionnaire.

Purpose: To investigate whether or not the credit granters believe the quality in audits will deteriorate after the abolishment of statutory audit and, if that is the case, how the abolishment will strike the purpose and goal of accounting.Approach: To answer our purpose we carried out a literature study to later implement interviews with four granters of credits specialised in business accounts.Findings: The process of credit granting will not change after the abolishment of statutory audit for companies still using audit reports. Though, for other companies the process will change dramatically since the lean time of the process will increase. Higher demands will be put on these companies since the reliability in the economic information will decrease when it is no longer being reviewed in the same sense. Though, the credit granters believe that some form of substitute for audit will be demanded in order for the companies to be granted credits from the bank..

Purpose: The purpose with this study is to see what the small limited companiesprefer of the alternatives to the statutory audit that has been created inthe others EU-countries. These alternatives can be current in Sweden tomaintain the credibility.Method: Quantitative procedure.Conclusions: By the result to judge from the small limited companies prefer the alternativeto the statutory audit where they do not need to hire further helpto complete the audit. That is probably why the bookkeeping agency hasbeen chosen to give a guarantee for quality endorsement..

The independent audit function plays an important role in our modern society as it strengthens the credibility of information given out by firms. A fundamental condition for the maintenance of confidence towards the audit function is the auditor?s independence. This phenomenon has been acknowledged threw several well-known audit scandals during the last decade, including the classical Enronscandal. In the repercussions of these huge auditing scandals, governments all over the world were now founding more restrictive rules and laws about audit independence.