The terms stake and stake president refer also to districts and district presidents. The terms ward and bishop refer also to branches and branch presidents. The term clerk for finances refers to the clerk or the assistant clerk assigned to help with financial record keeping.
Steps
- Under the direction of the stake audit committee, a stake auditor meets with the bishop and the ward clerk for finances.
- The stake auditor conducts the audit by asking questions, testing financial documents, and recording results.
- Audit questions that have a “No” answer are called audit exceptions and require an explanation. The stake auditor enters the explanation before going to the next audit question.
- After answering all audit questions, the stake auditor reviews the results of the audit with the bishop.
- The bishop writes a corrective action for each audit exception. A corrective action states what will be done to correct the problem and to determine and correct its fundamental cause so that is does not happen again.
- The stake auditor and the bishop sign the audit. See Signing and Submitting an Audit.
- The stake audit committee reviews the audit results, including adequacy of the corrective actions.
- The stake audit committee chairman signs the audit.
- The stake president reviews and signs the audit. The audit is submitted automatically.
Year-end audits should be submitted no later than March 15. Midyear audits should be submitted no later than September 15. Therefore, year-end audits should be completed by stake auditors by the end of February and midyear audits should be completed by stake auditors by the end of August to allow the stake audit committee and stake president sufficient time to review and submit them.
Paper audit forms include additional instructions.