Auditing, Attest, and Assurance Services Defined
Accounting professionals can provide assurance about the reliability and relevance of infor- mation given by one party to another. The broadest category of such services is simply called assurance services. Attest services are a subset of assurance services, and auditing is a type of attest service. Many times these terms are used interchangeably because they are related, and at a general level, they encompass the same process: the evaluation of evidence to determine whether information has been recorded and presented in accordance with a predetermined set of criteria, together with the issuance of a report that indicates the degree of correspondence.
Figure 1–2 illustrates the concept that attest services are a subset of the broader category of assurance services, and, in turn, auditing services are a specialized type of attest service. We’ll discuss each category in turn, from narrowest to broadest.