External Nonfinancial Measures in Substantive Analytical Procedures: Contributions of Weather Information

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent studies and new standards suggest that auditors can use information from expanded external sources to verify their clients’ financial information. We propose advanced substantive analytical procedures with external nonfinancial measures derived from weather information to test whether it helps detect misstatements. Using computational simulations and daily store-level sales data, we test whether the proposed procedures with weather indicators outperform the procedures without such indicators in substantive analytical procedures to identify overstated daily store sales. For the multilocation retail firm examined in this study, we find that the models with one or more weather indicators perform better at detecting misstatements than the models without them. When the reliability of relevant internal information is in question, the usefulness of weather indicators is apparent. Overall, our results provide evidence suggesting the potential value of external nonfinancial measures in auditing.