One of the most urgent tasks that auditors set for software developers is the automation and standardization of the activities of auditors at all stages of the audit. This article will explain the benefits of board management software for auditors.
Software solutions supporting audit procedures
The rapid development of information technology at the end of the twentieth century determined the vector of business improvement in informatization. In the modern world, the competitiveness of companies is already closely related to the use of various information systems that provide the most accurate and up-to-date information about certain aspects of the business. Most companies actively implement and use packages of office applications, decision support information systems, BI class systems, ERP, etc. The professional services industry is no exception. Auditing activity today is impossible without the use of various information systems. Most audit firms seek to automate their activities at all three levels of management: operational, tactical, and strategic.
The activity of an audit company is not the easiest object of automation, and there are many features and problems; some of them can complicate the work of the company but at the same time, make it desirable and even necessary to automate many procedures and business processes. For example, as a result of business consolidation, there is a need to pay more attention to management accounting, analysis of employee employment, development and consolidation of a unified audit methodology, and improvement of internal quality control.
Currently, the use of digital solutions to support audit procedures in medium and small businesses remains low. Meanwhile, in companies providing such services, introducing specialized audit programs helps reduce the cost of auditing, increase audit efficiency and, as a result, increase competitiveness.
Modern board portal solutions can help auditors quickly make the right decisions based on a risk-based approach to auditing, a ready-made audit methodology, and a full-featured set of audit procedures for risk assessment, audit planning, sample generation and analysis, audit documentation, and automatic conclusions by audit sections. In addition, such platforms offer work with all audit projects in a single secure database, with common reference books, common audit methods templates, and templates for auditor working documents.
How can the audit team be more productive with the board portal?
The functionality of board management software like Diligent allows the boards to share duties between employees, monitor their implementation in real-time, and interact remotely, which is very important at present. In the program, the auditor goes through the procedures interconnected into a single, pre-verified, ready-made verification algorithm (methodology template). Then, the program analyzes all information on the audit and displays the results in a simple and visual form, which allows the auditor to evaluate the evidence in the aggregate and draw a reasonable conclusion.
So, following the https://board-room.org/diligent/, board software ensures the following valuable functions for auditors:
- Secure communication at the board level;
- The central source of information in which all file activities are stored in a completely transparent and audit-proof manner;
- Real-time and historical view of all incoming and outgoing files, including downloads, views, and edits to board documents, available via a web interface;
- Transparency down to the file level;
- Transparency for every login, login failure, error, administrative settings, permission change, and system event.
In the board software, the audit is carried out in an automated mode following the established universal methodology.