Computer Assisted Audit Techniques (CAATS)

computer assisted audit technologiesToday’s information, production and financial reporting systems are more complex and have significantly more data than ever. By using this data to their advantage, auditors are now able to perform their statutory audits with a higher level of audit assurance by including CAATs on their engagements.

We provide solutions for External Auditors to include CAATs on their engagements to save time, reduce costs and lower their audit risk.

Do you experience any of these events within your Statutory Audits?

  • Substantive audit approach with a high number of transactions
  • System integration challenges
  • Complex system calculations
  • System or data conversions
  • SAS99 Fraud testing requirements

The Solution

Through the use of specialized data interrogation tools we enable audit teams to better understand their clients’ data and, by doing so, improve their audits.
The data interrogation tools we use are powerful and enable us to query large databases and analyze vast amounts of data (1,000 to 10,000,000 + records).
By leveraging our expertise in data analytics, coupled with our experience in internal controls and the audit process, we can help audit firms with their statutory audits. Using industry leading data analytics tools, we are able to examine transactions within a system in an efficient and cost effective manner that would not be otherwise feasible.

Our Services for External Auditors include:

  • Re-performance of system generated reports
  • Recalculation of account balances
  • Random sample selection for manual review
  • Exception reporting
  • SAS99 JE fraud CAATs

Benefits for External Auditors

Through audit assignments with local audit firms, we observed the following benefits:

  • Saved significant audit hours with tests performed in less time than it takes to manually perform the same task. Savings are generally 40-60% of the time for the test that is automated.
  • Higher level of audit coverage by testing all transactions (100% coverage), rather than a sample of items, resulting in greater assurance in less time.
  • Greater savings next audit and subsequent years, with the same data analysis routines run in minimal time, giving greater efficiency and time savings. (An eight hour test in year 1, might only take two hours in year 2.)
  • Increased audit scope with auditors able to perform tests in areas that would not normally be included in your analysis.