The Impact Of Covid-19 On Sme's And The Benefit Of An Audit In Trying To Mitigate The Negative Consequences Of Covid-19.

Abstract

The increase in going concern difficulties for small and medium business has reached a historical point in the last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and one of the most affected sectors was hospitality sector. In the overall, Irish SMEs represents a significant contribution to Irish economy.

Given the above, and considering the specific challenges faced by the hospitality food sector in Ireland the objective of this research is to understand whether audit would be beneficial in mitigating risk to going concern resulting from the pandemic, from the point of view of the auditors and accountant professionals and SME management in the sector.

The study results indicate that there are different opinions on the value and efficiency of a statutory audit for SME businesses among audit and accountant professionals, nevertheless there is an unanimity result of that audit would not be recommended to SMEs and would be better replaced by consultancy since it would offer the same expected results for a SME business, with a considerable lower price, especially considering the pandemic period. This information goes against the findings of researches conducted in Sweden and Denmark 2018, that indicates better results among SMEs that were submitted to audit.