Question

Discuss the differences between auditing and accounting. What overlap in skills exists, if any, between auditors and accountants? How do the responsibilities of auditors and accountants differ? How are they similar?

Answer 1

Auditing simply means reviewing or checking of the already available accounting records and Accounting simply means recoding and maintaining all the accounting records which have all the financial transactions and other related financial data.

The main overlap in skills between auditors and accountants are the high professional qualifications where both auditors and accountants have studied the accounting but auditors are done higher education in accounting by completing the professional degrees like Charted Accountancy etc, whereas the accountants just have completed normal degrees in accounting or sometimes they have even low degree education with more practical experience.

The auditors are responsible for the client to give a certification (normally called audit report) on the true and fair view of the accounting records after reviewing or checking but whereas the accountants are responsible to record and maintain a company's all the financial transactions without cheating or making errors.

They both are similar in case of being responsible to the client or company whose records are accounted and audited.