Glossary
Attestation
A practitioner's report on a specific subject matter against stated criteria — narrower than an audit, and not interchangeable with one.
Attestation engagements range from agreed-upon procedures, which report findings without any conclusion, to examinations, which express one. The distinction is frequently blurred in marketing and materially changes what the report means.
Reading one properly means checking which standard it was performed under, what criteria were applied, what period it covers and what was explicitly excluded — all of which appear in the report itself.
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