Audit Cycle

To every season... turn, turn, turn. Even in accounting...
The audit cycle represents the circular process accountants go through to audit a company's financial information. The cycle is typically represented as having between five and seven steps, depending on how the stages are delineated.
(Side question: are going to sleep and waking up two different things? Or two sides of the sleeping process? That's the kind of distinction that comes up in figuring out how many steps there are in the audit cycle. Everyone agrees on the general path of the cycle, but some sources break the steps down more finely.)
Generally, the process works like this:
1. Identify what's being audited
2. Figure out what standards to use in order to judge the situation
3. Collect data
4. Compare the data with the agreed-upon standards
5. Implement change (if necessary)
Some sources then include the step of "re-audit" which basically restarts the cycle.