Audit Report Lag

Timeliness is mentioned as a component of relevance and one of qualitative characteristics of information in SFAC2. In addition it is also mentioned as a constraint of qualitative characteristics of information in Iran’s Conceptual Framework. This indicates the importance of access to information and financial reports at the appropriate period. Audit report lag is considered as a fault in timely financial reporting that causes reduction in quality of accounting information. This paper reviews the literature on audit report lag and published domestic and foreign study till the current year (1393). It also determines the factors of audit report lag and visualizes manner and amount of their effects. Also it would motivate the researchers to conduct more research in this field. Based on this study, it recommends that a few variables that had been tested in previous studies can be re-examined in the future studies of audit report lag.