Audit Analytics: Types, Benefits and Use Cases

If you’re not yet using audit analytics, the quality of your audits might be suffering. Audit analytics is a potent practice that helps auditors, accountants and finance professionals get more value from data analysis and statistics. These days, with powerful software available to carry out analytics, there’s no excuse not to improve the quality of audits, make smarter business decisions and drive better results.

If you’re still new to the idea of audit analytics, you’re in the right place. The multiple types of audit analytics techniques that auditors can use in various situations can get confusing. Let’s dig into how you can use and benefit from audit analytics.

What is audit analytics?

Audit analytics is a form of data analysis that applies statistical techniques, allowing auditors to dive deep into financial data and unlock valuable insights relevant to their examination. These techniques typically analyze information gleaned from:

• financial statements
• general ledgers
• transactional data

There are now many technological tools that carry out audit data analytics. These are powerful in helping audit professionals detect errors, fraud and irregularities, as well as identify potential risks and evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls. Audit analytics tools produce higher-quality evidence to support audit findings than previously possible with audit sampling, as they can analyze entire data sets.

Leveraging audit analytics allows internal audit teams to streamline their audit process and achieve more accurate findings. Teams can uncover hidden patterns or anomalies in data sets and deeply understand organizations’ financial situations. 

Internal audit data analytics also provide organizations with valuable feedback regarding their financial risk and reporting practices. An improved audit methodology enhances operations and mitigates potential risks.

Types of audit analytics processes

There are three typical stages in audit analytics that auditors and finance experts follow when performing an audit. They include the common types of audit analytics processes. The analytics process may vary depending on the nature of the audit, the needs of the company and how accessible the data is.

Preliminary analytical review

For auditors, the preliminary analytical review is a crucial stage in the audit process. Auditors closely review the financial data of an organization to spot any unusual patterns, variations or noteworthy changes that could indicate potential risks of misstatement.

During this phase, auditors gain a thorough grasp of the company in terms of its operations, industry dynamics and financial performance.

The preliminary analytical review helps identify places where the entity needs more auditing or testing and ensures it addresses any risks and adopts appropriate audit procedures.

Substantive analytical procedures

Auditors typically perform substantive analytical procedures during the testing phase of the audit. This is where they analyze and test financial data and clients’ systems to gather evidence to support the financial statement assertions. 

This type of analytics process assesses the accuracy of financial data with the use of: 

• Ratio analysis: Efficiency ratio analysis compares lines on financial statements over a period of years to assess things like liquidity or profitability. Industry comparison ratio analysis compares the same ratios of other companies to understand the performance in the industry.
• Trend analysis: Revenue and cost trend analysis reviews the consistency of a company’s earnings and expenses. Investment trend analysis can monitor company stock prices. 
• Reasonableness analysis: Reasonableness analysis is used to check a company’s transactions and ensure all are valid. 
• Regression analysis: This analyzes the correlation between factors like debts, earnings and expenses to make predictions.

The nature and extent of substantive analytical procedures depend on the auditor’s professional judgment, materiality considerations and assessed risks of material misstatement.

Final analytical review

The final analytical review happens at the end of the audit, just before issuing the auditor’s report. It involves a comprehensive review of the financial statements and other audit evidence to assess overall reliability and consistency. This final evaluation ensures that auditor financial statements are free of material misstatements. Any notable discrepancies or odd findings may call for extra audit steps or additional investigation.

Key benefits of audit analytics

There are several advantages to using audit analytics in your auditing process. Most notably, audit analytics uncover new risk areas, lead to more accurate reports, reduce inaccuracies and save time.

Improved risk management

Audit analytics is a game-changer for risk management. Through a deeper understanding of data, auditors and financial experts can identify potential hazards and even forecast and avoid problems before they arise. It allows them to proactively monitor financial data in real time, stay a step ahead of any dangers and keep risks at bay. 

Clearer audit reports

Using audit analytics, auditors can produce more precise audit reports through: 

• stronger data insights
• visual representation of complex data
• consistent reporting practices

With data analytics tools, auditors can evaluate financial data more thoroughly. They can also produce evidence-supported findings and communicate better with clients through visual aids. Consistent reporting procedures enhance audit reports’ clarity and reliability, promoting greater comprehension and decision-making.

Enhanced audit quality

Audit analytics boosts audit quality by promoting consistency and standardization in audit procedures. Automated tools help reduce audit errors and identify inconsistencies.

Powerful data insights help auditors to detect risks, prioritize procedures and better allocate resources. They use analytics to make evidence-based audit decisions, resulting in a more effective audit process.

Greater efficiency

Leveraging internal audit analytics is a powerful way to significantly enhance audit efficiency. Auditors can more quickly and effectively analyze financial data, easily identifying risks and anomalies. 

AI and automation enable auditors to streamline audit procedures and save valuable hours and effort on repetitive tasks. Incorporating audit analytics in the audit process can significantly increase productivity and save time and resources while still delivering high-quality results.

When and where is audit analytics typically used?

Audit analytics help enhance various audit types, like financial statement audits, internal audits, compliance audits and operational audits. Multiple sectors use analytics, including technology, manufacturing, banking, healthcare and retail. Auditors in both small and large audit firms and internal auditors in enterprises of all sizes and complexity levels may employ audit analytics.

Auditors can apply audit analytics in all phases of the audit process:

• planning: Analytics helps teams assess data availability and quality and develop an audit plan.
• execution: Auditors can use it to analyze financial data and identify potential risks, errors, fraud and irregularities.
• reporting: Audit analytics helps with the preparation of audit reports that communicate findings using data-driven insights and visuals.

A recent survey conducted with accounting and audit professionals found that audit analytics added the most value in the following areas:

• accounts payable and accounts receivable
• duplicate detection 
• sampling 
• data imports and extractions of large data sets
• continuous auditing and monitoring 
• fraud detection
• analysis of p-cards
• payroll and timesheets 
• joins and comparisons 
• inventory audits

Improve your overall audit process with Caseware software tools

Implementing audit analytics with Caseware can significantly improve your audit process. Caseware’s audit solution offers one centralized location for your documents and evidence, real-time collaboration among team members, a visualization tool to understand the big picture of your progress, and customizable dashboards for each audit workflow. Easily track progress, document everything, work efficiently as a team and identify areas for improvement.