Increasing Audit Efficiency and Frequency Through Audit Management

The importance of audits in the financial world cannot be understated. In many industries audit procedures are carried out only when something goes wrong. Finance is not one of those industries. The accuracy of information is of paramount importance to each and every player in the market. Making even the slightest mistakes can have a cascading effect on the whole operation. That is why compliance audits are an essential business process in every finance related organization.

Every audit leaves the management and organization in better shape than before. If issues are found out, they can now be resolved. While audit procedures are carried out according to schedule in most finance related companies, they are still not carried out as often as management likes. The reason is that auditing takes an immense amount of administrative work. Hundreds of documents need to be checked, things must be double checked, reports have to be created, and much more.

If business audits could be made more efficient – meaning if they could be carried out faster or could be increased in scope – it will result in the organization being better managed. That is where audit management systems come in. Audit management systems are already proving to be important auditing tools and will be considered a necessity in a few years in every heavily regulated industry in the world.

Improve audit efficiency

Audit management systems improve audit efficiency by an exponential margin. It is not practically possible for upper management to ensure that all audits carried out manually are carried out perfectly, but it becomes possible with audit management systems. These systems often have pre-built compliance audits for multiple industries as well as checklists. This means that internal auditors don’t have to rely on their own memory or reference any documents to ensure they carried out all audit procedures – they have a checklist inside the audit management system itself.

Better and smarter audit scheduling

There is no need of manually keeping track of audits and ensuring that compliance audits are scheduled properly. Audit management systems also contain audit scheduling tools. Audit procedures can be scheduled by management and the people who are assigned to work on the compliance audit will be notified automatically. Audits that need to reoccur are set up automatically. Managers simply have to redefine how often they should be rescheduled, and all the relevant stakeholders will be notified at the scheduled time automatically.

Audit management systems also come with a built-in audit calendar. This calendar shows all the upcoming business audits, all the audits that have been carried out, as well as status of the different audits currently taking place within the organization. This means that audit managers always have a holistic view of all audit tasks that are active, as well as a view of the audit tasks that are coming up in the near future. Senior management can also quickly view audit in the audit calendar whenever needed.

Integrated audit management

Audit management systems are very powerful on their own, but they become even more powerful when integrated into a GRC solution. Compliance audits can be mapped directly to risks and other factors. This means that rising risks can trigger automatic audit schedules, and conversely audit results are then reflected in the overall risk position of the organization.

Empowering audit managers

Audit management system empowers audit managers to see and do much more than possible when audits are being managed manually. Audit managers always have the relevant information just a few clicks away. If they want to see how the audits were carried out last month, they simply need to check the records within the system. If they want to see how audits have been historically done within a single department, they can extract audit reports just from that department with a few clicks.

Audit managers can also manage audit procedures and tasks from within the system. Their powers are not limited to creating and assigning audits. They can see what progress has been made on any audit they want, and they can talk about corrective actions that need to be taken within the system. Instead of multiple email conversations which are forwarded throughout the organization, all the discussion can happen in one place.

If you want to see what an Audit Management Software like Predict360 can do for your organization, simply sign up for a 30-day free trial. You can also get a live demo of Predict360’s most exciting features by getting in touch with us through chat, or by filling the Contact Us form.

About the company

360factors, Inc. (Austin, TX) helps companies improve business performance by reducing risk and ensuring compliance. Predict360, its flagship software product, vertically integrates regulations and requirements, policies and procedures management, risks and controls, audit management and inspections, and on-line training and qualifications, in a single cloud-based platform based on artificial intelligence.

Remain up-to-date on industry news/updates through our Twitter & Linkedin profiles.