What is an Audit Specialist?

Audit specialists are responsible for examining and auditing an organization's financial records to ensure that the financial transactions are truthful and balanced. They work to show that a company is free of fraud and transparent in maintaining its financial records. They are in charge of handling complex and challenging audit projects.

Audit specialists perform these duties to arrive at an ultimate goal: to enhance the organization's growth in a bid to achieve its goals and objectives. Part of their duties includes designing and implementing different audit strategies, procedures, programs for complex assignments. They formulate other policies and procedures for complex tasks and make recommendations to improve a particular project's efficiency.

Audit specialists mostly hold a bachelor's degree in finance, management, audit, or other relevant fields and a certificate in public accounting or a certified management accounting certification. Some years of auditing experience may also prove advantageous in this field. Audit specialists earn an average salary of approximately $59,000 annually, or $28 per hour.

What Does an Audit Specialist Do

There are certain skills that many audit specialists have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed organizational skills, detail oriented and math skills.

Learn more about what an Audit Specialist does

How To Become an Audit Specialist

If you're interested in becoming an audit specialist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 55.4% of audit specialists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 9.6% of audit specialists have master's degrees. Even though most audit specialists have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Learn More About How To Become an Audit Specialist

Top Audit Specialist Jobs Near You

Audit Specialist Career Paths

As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, an audit specialist can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as accountant, progress to a title such as senior accountant and then eventually end up with the title corporate controller.

Average Salary for an Audit Specialist

Audit Specialists in America make an average salary of $58,291 per year or $28 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $99,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $34,000 per year.

Average Audit Specialist Salary

$58,291 Yearly

$28.02 hourly

$34,00010%

$58,000Median

$99,00090%

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What Am I Worth?

Roles and Types of Audit Specialist

The role of an audit specialist includes a wide range of responsibilities. These responsibilities can vary based on an individual's specific job, company, or industry.Here are some general audit specialist responsibilities:

1. Leads critical risk assessments as well as the evaluation of controls
Review and cancel orders held in payment review while abiding by all internal fraud rules. Responsible for reviewing risk reports
Act as liaison between exception processing

There are several types of audit specialist, including:

Auditor

Role:

Auditors are high-level accountants who investigate accounting processes and cash-flow records of firms, corporations, or other organizations to make sure the books are not cooked and everything corresponds to regulations and legal standards.

An auditor does not necessarily work for the IRS. They might be internal auditors of a company or experts conducting external audits, employed by public or private accounting firms.

As auditors are usually associated with revealing fraud, they might trigger people's guilt complex, which can make it a bit hard for them to make new friends. Contrary to popular belief, though, auditors are much less the lone wolves we make them out to be. They work in teams and meet a lot of interesting people through their work, such as leaders of different industries. Sometimes, they even crack a joke. They are just accountants who control other accountants, really.

Auditing is a stable career option with the possibility to earn above average income. So what if people think you are boring?

Average Salary: $54,853
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Overview How To Become Job Description Jobs

Internal Auditor

Role:

The main goal of the internal auditing department of any organization is to gather information that can be analyzed and converted into valuable insights to determine how the company can be run more efficiently. There are four common techniques that are used in the practice of internal auditing to achieve this end. They include observing the target business environment; inspecting the specific risk management, financial reporting, and productivity strategies that are currently in place; inquiring or asking questions of management personnel related to the effectiveness of the current internal controls; and confirming whether the goals and objectives of the business are being met.

If you are interested in working in the area of internal auditing, while in college you might want to choose the electives, federal and state corporate income tax, accounting principals and financial management, and auditing. You will need at least a bachelor's degree in accounting or business administration.

An internal auditor makes an average of $63,273 a year, which translates to $30.42 an hour. Acording to the United States Bureau of Labour Statistics, the career is expected to grow by 6% between the years 2018 and 2028, producing 90,700 new jobs.

Average Salary: $63,013
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Overview How To Become Job Description Jobs

Staff Auditor

Role:

A staff auditor is responsible for analyzing an organization's financial activities, ensuring compliance with regulations, and auditing accounts as needed. Staff auditors work under senior auditors' supervision, and they perform similar roles, albeit at a lower level.

A staff auditor may examine and verify an organization's finances or focus on hiring practices and procedures. Staff auditors focus on identifying risks in a company like financial mismanagement, fraud, and other questionable practices. To do this, they often comb through large spreadsheets to dig up information.

Some staff auditors may also review communications and staff actions during an audit. After the review, they create reports containing their findings and recommendations and submit them to upper management staff.

To become a staff auditor, you need a bachelor's degree in accounting or finance. You may also need to become a Certified Public Accountant, even though it's not a requisite for many employers.

Average Salary: $55,431
Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Overview How To Become Job Description Jobs

States With The Most Audit Specialist Jobs

Mouse over a state to see the number of active audit specialist jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where audit specialists earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.

Average Salary: Job Openings:

Number Of Audit Specialist Jobs By State

Rank	State	Number of Jobs	Average Salary
1	California	2,105	$73,002
2	Texas	1,383	$61,115
3	Florida	1,376	$38,380
4	New York	1,180	$71,841
5	Illinois	954	$64,223
6	North Carolina	862	$49,196
7	Pennsylvania	791	$51,914
8	Georgia	758	$49,394
9	Virginia	712	$63,848
10	Massachusetts	691	$51,185
11	Ohio	617	$47,847
12	Michigan	541	$53,969
13	New Jersey	536	$71,047
14	Arizona	525	$49,084
15	Indiana	450	$53,726
16	Minnesota	447	$48,188
17	Maryland	439	$52,803
18	Missouri	435	$49,494
19	Washington	406	$68,951
20	Colorado	375	$58,138
21	Iowa	363	$45,916
22	Wisconsin	360	$51,819
23	Tennessee	339	$44,726
24	Oregon	279	$72,002
25	Connecticut	251	$55,158
26	Alabama	238	$42,641
27	Louisiana	227	$42,637
28	Utah	226	$49,235
29	South Carolina	226	$47,689
30	Nebraska	207	$48,435
31	Kentucky	203	$43,667
32	Kansas	194	$49,375
33	Oklahoma	182	$48,680
34	Arkansas	181	$50,190
35	Nevada	173	$49,996
36	Delaware	113	$58,719
37	New Mexico	109	$47,065
38	New Hampshire	107	$40,567
39	Idaho	105	$64,737
40	Hawaii	104	$40,600
41	Mississippi	98	$52,686
42	Montana	96	$50,848
43	Maine	94	$35,358
44	West Virginia	79	$40,262
45	North Dakota	77	$46,180
46	Rhode Island	73	$48,942
47	Alaska	62	$61,124
48	Vermont	61	$40,454
49	Wyoming	58	$47,325
50	South Dakota	57	$46,738

Audit Specialist Education

Audit Specialist Majors

Business

31.8 %

Accounting

21.6 %

Finance

6.4 %

Audit Specialist Degrees

Bachelors

55.4 %

The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 10.7% of audit specialists listed audit reports on their resume, but soft skills such as organizational skills and detail oriented are important as well.

Audit Reports, 10.7%

Patients, 7.8%

Customer Service, 7.4%

Internal Audit, 6.2%

Audit Findings, 4.7%

Other Skills, 63.2%

Choose From 10+ Customizable Audit Specialist Resume templates

Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Audit Specialist templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Audit Specialist resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.

Audit Specialist diversity

Audit Specialist Gender Distribution

Female

66%

Male

34%

After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:

Among audit specialists, 66.3% of them are women, while 33.7% are men.

The most common race/ethnicity among audit specialists is White, which makes up 63.6% of all audit specialists.

The most common foreign language among audit specialists is Spanish at 43.4%.

Online Courses For Audit Specialist That You May Like

Advertising Disclosure

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Internal Audit, Risk Management, Compliance, Governance, Internal Controls, CIA, Audit Report, Audit Charter, IIA...

Show More Online Courses For Audit Specialist

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Best States For an Audit Specialist

Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as an audit specialist. The best states for people in this position are California, Oregon, New York, and New Jersey. Audit specialists make the most in California with an average salary of $73,002. Whereas in Oregon and New York, they would average $72,002 and $71,841, respectively. While audit specialists would only make an average of $71,047 in New Jersey, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.

1. New York

Total Audit Specialist Jobs: 1,180

Highest 10% Earn:

$135,000

Location Quotient:

1.27

$71,841

Avg. Salary

View 1,180 Audit Specialist Jobs In NY

2. District of Columbia

Total Audit Specialist Jobs: 193

Highest 10% Earn:

$128,000

Location Quotient:

1.59

$70,108

Avg. Salary

View 193 Audit Specialist Jobs In DC

3. California

Total Audit Specialist Jobs: 2,105

Highest 10% Earn:

$127,000

Location Quotient:

0.99

$73,002

Avg. Salary

View 2,105 Audit Specialist Jobs In CA

Full List Of Best States For Audit Specialists

How Do Audit Specialists Rate Their Jobs?

Top Audit Specialist Employers

Most Common Employers For Audit Specialist

Rank	Company	Average Salary	Hourly Rate	Job Openings
1	Pwc	$89,775	$43.16	23
2	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	$85,465	$41.09	12
3	Medtronic	$78,352	$37.67	18
4	Accenture	$76,109	$36.59	11
5	KPMG LLP	$71,204	$34.23	13
6	Freedom Mortgage	$64,684	$31.10	10
7	Humana	$59,580	$28.64	45
8	Kaiser Permanente	$58,801	$28.27	9
9	UPS	$56,365	$27.10	9
10	Frontier Airlines	$51,437	$24.73	9

Audit Specialist Videos

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Updated April 6, 2023

What is an Audit Specialist?

What Does an Audit Specialist Do

How To Become an Audit Specialist

Audit Specialist Career Paths

Average Salary for an Audit Specialist

Roles and Types of Audit Specialist

Auditor

Role:

Internal Auditor

Role:

Staff Auditor

Role:

States With The Most Audit Specialist Jobs

Number Of Audit Specialist Jobs By State

Audit Specialist Education

Audit Specialist Majors

Audit Specialist Degrees

Top Colleges for Audit Specialists

1. University of Pennsylvania

2. Northwestern University

3. University of Southern California

4. SUNY at Binghamton

5. Villanova University

6. San Diego State University

7. Bentley University

8. SUNY Farmingdale

9. Boston University

10. SUNY Stony Brook

Top Skills For an Audit Specialist

Choose From 10+ Customizable Audit Specialist Resume templates

Audit Specialist diversity

Audit Specialist Gender Distribution

Online Courses For Audit Specialist That You May Like

Best States For an Audit Specialist

How Do Audit Specialists Rate Their Jobs?

Top Audit Specialist Employers

Most Common Employers For Audit Specialist

Audit Specialist Videos

Audit Specialist Related Careers

Audit Specialist Related Jobs

What Similar Roles Do

Resume For Related Jobs