The cost of internal audit depends on the number of audit days and the cost per audit day. The main focus of the club is therefore on two separate sets of comparisons:

• Audit Days per £1m turnover:
  this total can be further analysed and compared in three ways:
  • by type of audit, e.g. systems, IT, fraud
  • by system, e.g. payroll, rents
  • by type of risk, e.g. strategic, operational and corporate governance.
• Cost per Audit Day:
  this comparison is supported by two further sets of analyses:
  • costs per auditor, in terms of salaries, travel and other overheads
  • chargeable days per auditor, and the various sources of lost time, e.g. sickness, training.

Other areas considered are:

• CIPFA ’s Code of Practice for Internal Audit
• Staffing: in terms of salary levels, experience and qualifications

Members of this club can also make use of the audit customer satisfaction survey. This starts with a set of standard questions, to which members can add questions of their own, plus their own introduction, explanation etc. The survey can then be emailed to any number of audit service users, and (providing they have the requisite Excel and email software) their responses are automatically forwarded to us and the collated results in due course returned to the authority. At the end of the year, we will circulate comparative scores.