Predicting Audit Opinion by a new Metaheuristic Algorithm: Water Cycle Algorithm

An auditor evaluates if financial statements which the firms issue in public, present fairly and are free from material misstatement. The audit report is a written letter containing independent verification of the quality of financial statements used for making economic decisions. Hence, the issuance of such a report can lead to the transmission news and information about the firm and to enhance the degree of confidence in the financial statements. This study predicts audit opinion of the firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during 2018-2020 by a new metaheuristic algorithm named Water Cycle Algorithm (WCA) and compares its results with one of the most popular methods called logistic regression (LG). 24 variables were extracted from the literature and used for this prediction. 4 evaluating criteria were used to compare the predictions of two methods. According to findings, the superiority of the criteria in the WCA was confirmed in comparison to LG. Since WCA was more appropriate, users of financial reports can use it to predict the type of audit opinion in the unaudited interim financial statements, and also, auditors can use it while evaluating and accepting clients and achieving an acceptable level of audit risk, as a quality control tool.