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• Computer-Assisted Audit Techniques [CAAT] involve the use of computers in the process of an audit rather than limiting it to an entirely ‘manual’ approach
• Originally coined to denote the use of computerized tools to interrogate or extract data from computer systems for audit purposes when the common techniques being applied for performing similar functions were almost entirely manual-based
SoftCAAT Features & Benefits:
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Do you as an auditor, face any of the following problems?
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Ad-hoc and time consuming audit process due to manual method of auditing |
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Find it difficult to handle high volume of audit data. |
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Use spread sheets to analyse audit data |
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Intuitively feel that your existing procedure does not allow you to carryout exhaustive audits |
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Find it difficult to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of audits |
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Use manual method of keeping track of your audit tasks |
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In today’s business Scenario, where most information is available in digital format, the greatest challenges for you as an auditor is to use the appropriate tools to access, analyze and audit digital data.
| How can the auditor or audit firm/team benefit from using SoftCAAT? |
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By using SoftCAAT to audit digital data, the focus can shift from time- consuming manual verifications to intelligent automated analysis of the audit data to provide better assurance and value addition to clients, external or internal.
SoftCAAT scores over manual method of auditing in several ways, including the following:
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SoftCAAT eliminate the need to understand the intricacies of the system being audited before proceeding with actual audit. This results in saving time for auditors and they will be able to start the audit process without any loss of time. |
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SoftCAAT provides a variety of audit specific routines such as sampling, stratification, aging analysis, classification, summarization etc to help auditors to easily narrow down to specific transactions to be audited. This eliminates the need to go through exhaustive paper documents for the purpose of narrowing down on transactions to be audited. |
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SoftCAAT also eliminates the need to prepare any specialized MIS reports, just for the purpose of auditing. |
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SoftCAAT automatically stores the results of tests carried out during the course of auditing and helps the auditor to support his findings and recommendations. |
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Features: |
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Auditee Details: Maintain Auditee details such as company name, address, contact person and audit team details etc. |
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Audit Details: Maintain details of audit such as audit name, start date, end date, audit objective, scope, audit deliverables, previous audit date and other details
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Import Wizard option allows audit data to be brought into SoftCAAT for the purpose of analysis and other audit activities. The user-friendly import wizard will guide the users through a series of steps and instructions for importing the file into the Software. |
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Join Files option helps in combining fields from two files and creating a single resultant file. |
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Relationship Builder option allows the user to relate records from different files and perform data analysis |
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Append Files option helps in concatenating two files |
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Data Analysis – Basic Features: |
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Basic Data Analysis functions allow users to narrow down to specific transactions easily. |
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Find option finds and highlights the specified search content present in the current active audit data. The ‘Find All Having’ option and ‘Find Next’ option will find the first appearance of the search text. The ‘Find All Records Containing’ option finds all the occurrence of the text to be found and filters the current audit data based on the occurrence of the text. |
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Auto Filter option is similar to the ‘Auto Filter’ feature in Excel. It filters and displays the rows that met the selected value from the Filter list. |
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Sort Fields option is used to display the data in the desired order on a single field or on multiple fields. |
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Identify Duplicates feature is used to detect whether key fields in the audit data contain duplicates in the sequence. It can be used to identify duplicates within a single field such as duplicate invoice numbers on an accounts receivable file. The ‘Duplicate Key Exclusion’ feature identifies duplicate items in a file but only where an additional field specified is different . |
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Sequence Check data analysis option checks the designated key fields to determine if they are in sequential order and reports in the results. It checks for duplicate or missing document numbers, such as invoice or check numbers. |
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Identify Gaps helps in detecting gaps in a sequence of data for data types such as numeric, character and date |
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Statistics option provides the summary of the audit data. It quickly highlights abnormalities in the file, which can then establish a direction for subsequent approach or analysis. Statistics produces summaries for each data type i.e., Numeric, Date and Character data type. |
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Compare Files option compare two files based on numeric fields and produce a report on differences between the two. |
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Data Analysis – Advanced Features: |
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Analytical Tool option allows maximum flexibility and features for data analysis. This option allows users to query audit data using wizard/advanced/SQL mode. |
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Stratify option helps to total the number and value of records within each specified value band and produces a stratification report. It also has drill-down capabilities and allows users to double click and view the transactions grouped under the relevant stratum. Stratifications can be performed on numeric, character, date and key fields. |
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Classify option counts number of records relating to each unique value of a character field and accumulates totals of specified numeric fields for each value. |
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Aging option presents aged summaries of data. This summary may be based on the current date or a specified cutoff date and helps in performing aging analysis for payables, receivables etc. |
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Summarize option accumulate totals of numeric fields for each distinct value of one or more key character fields. |
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Cumulative Total option creates a field with the result of the cumulative total of the selected field for cumulative total. |
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Benford’s Law is useful to understand patterns of data and identify variances from Benford’s Law or variances between patterns in two sets of actual data. SoftCAAT computes the number of occurrence of the number 1 to 9 in the first/second/third/fourth digit of any numeric field and stratifies the numbers sequentially from 1 to 9 and the displays the variance from Benford’s Law |
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Sampling is an objective statistical sampling method to draw a small number of transactions from huge number transactions for the purpose of physical verification. |
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Pivot Table helps to quickly summarize large amounts of data. You can rotate its rows and columns to see different summaries of the source data, filter the data by displaying different pages, or display the details for areas of interest.
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MIS Analysis can be used to perform analysis of transactions based on a periods such as Unique Date, Day, Month, Quarter or Year. |
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Export option allows users to generate reports in other file formats so that the report can be used directly by other Software for further processing. |
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Excel/HTML View populates the audit data in Microsoft Excel Application which can be saved to carryout necessary formatting. HTML View option displays the audit data in HTML format so that it can be viewed using internet browsers. |
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Report Wizard option guides you with a series of steps for designing the report in the GUI Format. This feature provides the option of previewing the designed report through the wizard. It also provides the option of saving the report in the Text, MS Excel, MS Word, HTML formats. |
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Templates are available in SoftCAAT which guide user in performing specific tasks. For example: Template of Credit Period Analysis primarily is used to find range of credit period and to confirm enforcement of Credit policy. The output of this analysis enables to find time taken by customers for paying dues in number of days starting from 0 day to 360 days. |
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Re-Run Task helps to re-run already executed tasks with same/different parameters. |
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Audit Table options helps to view the audit log with details of tasks performed along with the conditions set and summary of the audit tasks performed. |
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