Every eligible company requires to conduct secretarial audit every year through Practicing CS for which you can use this secretarial audit checklist. Besides this many Internal Audit Heads also includes audit of corporate affairs department in their annual audit plan. Basically there is no difference in audit done by Secretarial Internal Audit team and Practicing Company secretary but Internal audit will include more in depth coverage and also cover processes of secretarial department.

What is Secretarial Audit

Secretarial Audit is a process to check the compliance of a company to the laws, rules, regulations, notifications notified by MCA and also the provisions of the Companies Act and its rule therein.

The compliances around companies are very complex and increasing day by day. It is the responsibilities of the directors, promoters and other KMPs to make company complied in every sense. So it is important that a Practicing Company Secretary to be hired to conduct a secretarial audit as per the frequency decided by both the parties

Secretarial Audit as per Companies Act

Section 2014 (1) of the Act deals with the provisions regarding Secretarial Audit. As per the companies act, the secretarial audit is compulsory for the following companies

1. Every listed company
2. Public company with paid-up capital greater than 50 crores
3. Public company with turnover greater than 250 crores
4. Any private company who is a subsidiary of a public company which falls under the above two categories

The act also mentions hat only a practicing Company Secretary who is a member of the Institute of  Company Secretaries of India are authorised to carry out a statutory secretarial audit of these companies.

Secretarial Audit Checklist in excel

I have created Secretarial Audit checklist that can be used in Internal audit as well. This checklist is chapter wise and covers entire companies act. Main advantage of this Secretarial audit checklist is that you can identify which law is applicable only to Public company and which is is applicable to both Pvt and Public company.

I hope this secretarial audit checklist will help you conducting your internal audit easily and if you need any other support do mail me at [email protected]. Do share this with your friends if you like this i will bring more checklist in coming days 🙂

Thank You !!