Sufficient appropriate audit evidence

Audit evidence is the information an auditor uses to reach a conclusion and support the audit opinion. It includes accounting records and information from other sources, such as a customer’s confirmation, a signed delivery note or the auditor’s own inventory count. mia.org.my

Sufficiency concerns the quantity of evidence. Appropriateness concerns its quality, which depends on two things: whether the evidence addresses the audit question (relevance) and whether the auditor can depend on it (reliability). mia.org.my

Concept	Question the auditor asks	Example at Jengka Furniture Sdn. Bhd.
Sufficiency	Have I obtained enough evidence, considering the risk and the quality of the evidence available?	Sales rose sharply in the final week of December. The auditor examines more year-end transactions and gives particular attention to large or unusual sales.
Relevance	Does this evidence address the particular assertion I am testing?	To test completeness of sales, the auditor selects signed delivery notes and traces them to the sales ledger. This can reveal deliveries that the company omitted from sales.
Reliability	How dependable is the evidence, given its source and how I obtained it?	To test existence of a receivable, a written reply received directly from the customer generally carries more weight than a verbal assurance from the sales manager.

Example: The auditor inspects 100 tables in the warehouse. This provides evidence that the tables exist. If the question is whether the company owns them, inspecting another 100 tables still leaves ownership unresolved. The auditor needs different evidence, such as purchase records or consignment agreements. This illustrates why obtaining more evidence cannot make up for poor relevance.