Miss our recent webinar, Making Audits Easier? No sweat – we have all the key takeaways here in a five-part blog series dedicated to providing you what you need to know to reduce stress, mitigate risk, and save time and energy during audit season.
During the webinar, our own Assistant Controller, Brian Pocek delivered tried and true methods for preserving your sanity when an audit is in progress at your organization. His first advice – go electronic whenever possible.
Going electronic solves a lot of challenges in preparing for audits just by the nature of it – having information easily accessible and at your fingertips without having to rely on paper copies that can be spread out in filing cabinets, in desks, in storage, across multiple offices, at offsite storage facilities, etc. will make your life instantly easier.
Going electronic also:
- Eliminates risk by creating a repository of approvals for easy retrieval and for performing access reviews to confirm SOX compliance
- Reduces time and frustration from searching for paper invoices, approval documentations, contracts, receipts, expense reports, etc.
- Simplifies tie-backs by making it easier to walk the auditor through the audit trail without having to introduce multiple types of documents.
- Creates auditable trail by documenting approvals, payments, receipt of goods, etc. in one system, as activity happens
- Removes guess work by increasing readability of documents and saves time on reading faded/smudged approvals and receipts. Having various locations locate and scan needed documents is not only inefficient, the documents are often illegible due to multiple handlings and collecting dust/dirt from the surrounding environment – especially when documents are coming from a manufacturing setting
Going electronic also helps save the company money on the audit. The auditor must document all conversations and approval trails in the audit work papers. The more items they can have electronically makes their life easier when documenting, since it can all be attached in the audit program instead of having an external binder filled with work papers. This also makes it easier for the auditing manager and partner to review (who might be offsite), which in turn will benefit you with faster turnaround times on follow up questions needed to complete the audit. The less time they spend on your audit, the less you pay in hourly fees.
To hear Brian elaborate on these points and offer case study evidence from his personal experience working as an auditor and in the finance industry, view the full on-demand webinar and stay tuned for Part 2 of this series.
The post Making Audits Easier: Part 1 – Going Electronic appeared first on Verian.