The American Institute of CPAs has released a new audit guide to help auditors with assessing the fair value of financial instruments.

The AICPA Audit Guide "Special Considerations in Auditing Financial Instruments" was developed by auditing and financial instrument experts in public practice. It provides background information about financial instruments and discussion of audit considerations relating to financial instruments.

The guide reflects the new clarified auditing standards resulting from the AICPA’s Clarity Project. It incorporates the clarified auditing standards to enable auditors to understand the recently issued auditing standards, as well as begin updating their audit methodologies, resources and tools.

The approach is intended to give auditors the opportunity to review and understand the changes made by their third-party audit methodology and resource providers. The clarified auditing standards are effective for audits of financial statements for periods ending on or after Dec. 15, 2012 for calendar year 2012 audits.

The new audit guide provides assistance to auditors with material that accounting firms can use in developing their training programs and internal guidance. The information is relevant to entities of all sizes, the AICPA noted, because all entities may be subject to the risks of material misstatement when using financial instruments.

The audit guide also contains background information to provide auditors with more in-depth understanding of financial instruments. The new guide provides detailed implementation guidance to auditors in assessing and responding to the risk of material misstatement related to financial instruments and provides guidance on reporting considerations relevant to financial instruments.

The implementation auditing guidance is supplemented with a series of case studies.

To order the guide, visit CPA2Biz.com.