Planning materiality is an audit term that refers to the tolerable aggregate value of errors and misstatements that would still allow financial statements to be materially accurate and earn a positive audit opinion. Even an unqualified, or “clean,” audit opinion asserts only that the financial statements are free of material misstatements, not that they are 100% accurate. Performance materiality is a smaller dollar value than the planning materiality that auditors use at a detailed level. The gap between planning and performance materiality is a risk cushion intended to compensate for undetected errors, sampling risk and uncorrected findings. The performance materiality is the “working” value used to determine statistical samples and tests at an account level.