Importance of materiality judgments Explain the differences between performance materiality and tolerable misstatement

Performance materiality refers to the amount or amounts set by the auditor at less than the materiality level for the financial statements as a whole or for particular classes of transactions, account balances, or disclosures. If the auditor plans the audit only to detect individual material misstatements, the auditor would be overlooking the fact that the aggregate of individually immaterial misstatements can cause the financial statements as a whole to be materially misstated. Performance materiality is used for assessing the risks of material misstatement and determining the nature, timing, and extent of audit procedures to perform during the audit opinion formulation process. If performance materiality is set too high, the auditor might not perform sufficient procedures to detect material misstatements in the financial statements. If performance materiality is set too low, the auditor might perform more substantive procedures than necessary. Performance materiality is different from, but relates to, the concept of tolerable misstatement.
Tolerable misstatement is the amount of misstatement in an account balance that the auditor could tolerate and still not judge the underlying account balance to be materially misstated. Tolerable misstatement is the application of performance materiality to a particular sampling procedure, so it is always less than or equal to performance materiality.