Linking the auditing process with analyses techniques: an integrated approach (R-7965)

An auditor, who assures company stakeholders that the company's financial numbers represent reality in a fair way, deals daily with analyzing information. Before the digital era, this information was sparse and paper-based and this low-information environment has been the setting of different international guidelines on how to conduct an audit. Nowadays, more information is stored electronically and can be analysed by means of data analysis. The possible advantages that this new approach holds for the auditing profession have been enumerated in different articles. However, a lot of research that integrates all different aspects, being both auditing concerns and data analyses concerns, still has to be conducted. This research aims to first present a full overview of all different audit phases that could benefit from data analysis, along with a concrete proposal of analysis techniques that could be used. In order not to stay hypothetical, both the real input data that is generally present during audit engagements and technicalities of the analysis techniques are examined for potential combinations. In the following phases of the project, specific auditing tasks of identifying deviations and of how to respond on errors are investigated from a process mining and data mining point of view. The goal is to leverage the full-population testing opportunity for auditors, while also supporting the auditor who deals with the incremented number of potential flags to investigate.

Keywords:business informatics

Disciplines:Applied mathematics in specific fields