The influence of profit, revenues and debt on audit prices in large companies: Insights from Slovenia

The global financial crisis that erupted in August 2007 following the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market had a significant impact on the financial markets. Ten years ago, Slovenia was confronted with the outbreak of significant financial and economic turbulence, and only in 2017 did the country’s GDP return to pre-crisis levels. Taking into account the fact that the performance of companies deteriorates to a certain extent during a crisis, this paper examines the influence of selected factors on the price of statutory audits for large companies in Slovenia in the period 2010 to 2014. The final sample consists of 177 large enterprises in Slovenia for each year or a total of 885 units (population). The main factors observed were taken from the financial statements. These are operating revenue, profit (loss), and indebtedness of the enterprise. Three hypotheses were tested by regression analysis, ANOVA, and Independent-Samples Median Test. In the research, we found that statistically significant factors of the price of a statutory audit due to the Slovenian Agency for Public Oversight are only the operating income of the audited enterprise. Over the past 40 years, studies have been conducted worldwide to determine audit fees, with a focus on English-speaking countries. This field of research is still in its infancy in Slovenia, and little research has been done on the determinants of the fees charged by the firms that exist here.