Internal audit as a way to improvement of company activity

Abstract

The objective of this article is to discuss the necessity of conducting regular audits of businesses. It pre-sents a brief history of auditing and the successive stages of the development of audit institutions.  The article emphasises the differences between internal audit and internal control and explains the basic aims and functions of internal audit. The article outlines the ethical rules of auditors’ work and summarises the re-quirements that must be met by prospective auditors. A functional division into financial audit and opera-tional audit is also discussed. Towards the end, the article presents a schematic description of an audit of a business, which contains the most important stages of the audit process in terms of organisation.