Audit Smart Apps
the challenge
Our client organization has a large audit team that works with a comprehensive and detailed audit work plan every financial year. Their audit universe has more than 80 specific audit areas covering sections such as procurement, accounts payable, treasury, inventory and manufacturing. Due to the significant amount of work involved in performing regular audit duties, the auditors could not find the time required to build custom tests on Arbutus to aid them in their auditing work. We were contracted to convert their entire audit plan (and the tests involved) as Smart Apps in Arbutus Analyzer.
Solution
Using Arbutus Analyzer and Python, we built more than 75 Smart Apps that perform the data analysis required for each audit area. Arbutus Smart Apps are procedures (scripts) that execute a specific task against specified data for a specified period.
We received the organizations entire audit universe and having already configured access to their SAP ERP application, we scripted and deployed procedures that perform a specified audit task in the organizations’ audit plan. The Smart Apps were designed to allow the user to specify the period under review and to select how they would like the results shared with them. (Via email or as a data file on Analyzer.)
Each Smart App performs 100% data analysis (no sampling of data) on each audit area and may return multiple results files based on the audit plan requirements.
Some of the audit areas covered include : 3-way matching on invoices, supplier credit terms, changes in master data, procurement planning etc.
Results
One of the biggest advantages in replicating the audit plan in Arbutus Analyzer is that every auditor can run complex analysis without necessarily having the skillset to design and deploy analytic scripts. Smart Apps do not require advanced knowledge of Arbutus to run but can be run by anyone with access to Arbutus Analyzer.
The audit department has dramatically reduced the turn-around time required for their audit processes as an entire audit can be run entirely in Arbutus and results or exceptions obtained in a few moments.
Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you will have solved the problem and doing the impossible.
Seeing is believing.
Get in touch with us today for a demonstration (using your own data) of what our analysis can do for you.