Impact of E-Commerce on Auditing

E-commerce has tremendously increased the complexity of transactions as most of the business contracts are made between unknown parties. In this environment, reliability of trading partners, financial viability of companies, data security, and dependability on the system has to be ensured. E-system has also changed the manner of audit, and the nature of services required from an auditor. The auditors must have expertise in the use of IT, apart from proficiency in their domain areas to ensure that the financial statements fairly present financial position, results of operation and cash flow of an entity. The present study identifies some of the problems experienced by the professionals while auditing in the e-environment and highlights the new opportunities for auditors in this system. A pre-structured questionnaire has been used to find out the practices and opinions of 75 professional auditors on various aspects related to e-audit. It has been found that, in the opinion of the auditors, manipulation in the information kept in electronic form can be traced comfortably. The absence of vouchers in e-environment does not cause any difficulty in the audit. It is also possible to detect exploitation of anonymity provided by the internet. E-commerce environment has opened up new vistas of opportunities in many areas. It is hoped that the present work would be useful to the professionals, policy makers, regulators and managers in developing systems for auditing commercial transactions in the e-environment.