MODERN APPROACHES TO THE AUDIT OF FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

Introduction. The invasion of the territory of Ukraine has had a significant impact on the activities of business entities, including audit activities. Management should carefully assess the impact of the economic consequences of the war on the entity's operations in order to prepare complete and reliable financial statements and make appropriate and timely management decisions. The legislator considers the audit of financial statements as an audit service to verify accounting data and indicators of financial statements and/or consolidated financial statements of a legal entity or representative office of a foreign business entity, or other entity that submits financial statements and consolidated financial statements of a group, in order to express an independent auditor's opinion on its compliance in all material aspects with the requirements of national accounting regulations (standards), international financial reporting standards, and international financial reporting standards. Methods. In the course of the research, various methods were used, namely: monographic method - to study the latest scientific publications, regulations and statistics on the research topic; abstract and logical method - for theoretical generalizations and formulation of conclusions; tabular method - for a visual representation of theoretical material (presentation of the regulatory framework for the mandatory audit of financial statements); analysis and synthesis - to build an algorithm for auditing the financial statements of business entities under martial law. Results. The analysis of the current legislation has shown that the mandatory audit of financial statements applies to a certain range of business entities, and services for the mandatory audit of financial statements of enterprises can only be provided by audit entities that are officially published on the official website of the Audit Chamber of Ukraine in Section III «Audit Entities entitled to conduct a mandatory audit of financial statements». It is proved that martial law, and especially military operations, have affected the audit activity in Ukraine in general and the audit of financial statements in particular, and the reasons for this situation are disclosed. It is emphasized that in the current conditions of Ukrainian enterprises, auditors should consider revising their assessment of the risks of material misstatement of financial statements caused by the war, for example, related to the liquidity of the client's company. Discussion. Given that the scope of tasks and methodology for conducting the audit of financial statements have changed, it is necessary to conduct further research on the peculiarities of conducting the audit in the current conditions in Ukraine. Keywords: statutory audit, financial statements, audit of financial statements, going concern, audit opinion.