Power tools: 2002 audit software usage survey; three avid users talk about how they use top-rated software products to automate their most important tasks. Plus, the results from the IIA's annual poll of members' application preferences are revealed

Internal Auditor, August, 2002 by Christy Chapman

Another difficulty we've encountered is TeamMate's inability to search across different audits for various types of information, such as what best practices are being used; how a certain step is being executed; how many of the items across a particular country are in follow-up and what their status is; and how many final and draft reports have been issued during the current month or year. Right now, because the software will only search within a single audit, we have to access one audit at a time and manually compile the data for these types of summary reports.

To remedy this problem, we're preparing to implement TeamCentral, a companion product to TeamMate that will give us the data-mining capability needed to compile such reports. TeamMate will be set up to automatically send specific information about each exception entered by the auditors to an Access-based repository that will reside on our international server in Arkansas. This information will include any follow-up details, as well as any documents that are associated with the exception. In addition, a profile of the audit that identifies the auditor-in-charge, the main contact, and the scope and objectives will also be sent to the server.

Once it's up and running, TeamCentral will provide users with a Web interface to view audit information. The tool will enable our management to pull summarized information from across different audits.

AN INDISPENSABLE TOOL

Even without the add-on product, Team-Mate still plays a central role in our audit activity. In fact, as our company expands into other countries, we'll be increasing our usage by adding more licenses. Automated workpaper software is one of our strategic tools; we can't do an audit without it. Team-Mate really does drive our entire audit process.

HAROLD LEDERMAN, CHIEF INTERNAL AUDITOR

SAINT VINCENTS CATHOLIC MEDICAL CENTERS OF NEW YORK

USES MICROSOFT EXCEL FOR DATA ANALYSIS

OUR TINY DEPARTMENT CONsists only of myself and two other auditors. Yet our organization employs 14,000 individuals in five business units and operates with a $1.4 billion budget. In addition, we serve as internal consultants as well as auditors. These combined demands require us to be very efficient.

SIMPLE, BUT EFFECTIVE

Excel, as the backbone of our data analysis activity, is key to that efficiency. One Excel operation we've found particularly valuable, though it's one of the software's more basic features, is the subtotal function. Suppose, for example, we need to examine a database in Excel that lists cost centers or service areas and contains sub-lists of employee payroll information, such as overtime, within each list. We can design the spreadsheet so that every time there is a change in employee name, cost center, or account number -- or even all three -- Excel will subtotal the data. And we don't have to write any macros or perform any special programming to perform this task. This function alone saves us a tremendous amount of work when trying to determine the audit scope based on risk analysis of the data.