Audits are necessary and determining processes in companies. A good audit and subsequent actions can improve productivity and increase the work well-being of employees. Therefore, audit and control software have become great allies of institutions when it comes to reviewing their processes.
Learn about all the possibilities that an audit and control software can give to the editors of your company during the implementation of audit programs, and take a step towards the digitalization of these processes.
Audit Software
Software is a series of programs and protocols that execute tasks. The main task of audit software is to save human capital time when it comes to collecting data that can be uploaded to a platform, analyzed and processed. In other words, software automates the audit process.
Taking into consideration all the stages that an audit has – planning, preparation, scheduling, checklists, recording of results, issuance of reports and subsequent follow-up – software operates to automate these stages and update them in real time.
Software for audits and internal control, not only offers adaptability for different spheres and areas of work, but it also is flexible. Therefore, it can be directed to survey what each user seeks to audit, since it can be programmable and editable by the user through a predictive and simple to use application.
In some cases the steps for data collection are as simple as generating a QR code and letting the collaborators start loading the data so that later, the audit can be executed automatically and generate a report or situation report.
The data is processed by the software, considering the variables indicated above in the programming stage, avoiding biases typical of human processing that can happen at this phase. This guarantees the quality, efficiency and automation of the process.
📌 Audit management
Good audit software should ensure the execution of good practices under international auditing standards and, in turn, give users the ability to manage assessments efficiently. One way to do this is through a simple and friendly interface.
Proper audit management also implies the possibility of being reviewed by users. This is how valuable findings are made, which contribute to the design of subsequent actions to correct errors, prevent issues and identify and enhance those activities that are showing a good performance.
This is possible by reading the audit report generated by the software. And, in addition, it ensures greater adherence of the collaborators to the proposed actions, since the particularities of each area have been carefully considered, because of the level of accuracy of the reports.
As we have already said, audits are fundamental for the stability and projection of a company. The sustained growth of a corporation can only be assured by a constant and careful review of its performance and status. That’s why software that facilitates the audit process is a valuable asset.
The Best Audit Software💡
Good audit software, as we have already established, has to respond to the needs of each company – it must serve the particularities of each institution and automate the tasks, to save the time that was previously invested in a manual audit, without digital support. Therefore, we are talking about quite sophisticated software.
When choosing one, then, you have to choose the one that provides options to configure the entire audit scenario. A good way to generate this adaptability is through audit checklists, which allow you to generate sections, to create relations between processes, risks, controls; establish hierarchies; compare areas; etc.
Another valuable feature that the best audit software you hire should have is the possibility to make comparisons. Both in large companies and in small companies with growth ambitions, contrasting the performance of a section between a productive period to another one can be the key to developing actions that enhance productivity.
Even this possibility of contrasting results from one year to the next, can be the starting point for discovering issues, failures or losses that are not perceived quantitatively. Timestamps will also allow reports to be read with a contextual perspective, which would explain certain behaviors.
A must-have feature of a good audit software is the possibility to enter data offline. The lack of network access should not be a problem if the software allows you to update the data when such a connection exists. This is particularly important for large companies that have more than one location or that operate in remote areas.
The Control of Your Audits
The control of audits is one of the most important stages in these processes. An efficient data collection by the auditor or collaborators or an automatically generated report is not enough.
There must be a guarantee that audits are controlled. That is, to walk all the way again in search of possible errors. Good audit control consists of inspection procedures. In other words, it is a review of the data and the report that the software itself made from human work.
We are talking about a double check that gives the possibility to reduce the margin of error in the face of possible deficiencies, errors or breaches of the standards established in any of the previous stages – resulting in more accurate reports and in better opportunities for improvement actions and the correction of issues.
Related Questions
What is an Audit Program? Examples
An audit program is the planning realized by the company’s auditor or person in charge to determine the audit or audits that will be conducted in an organization in a given period. It is an agenda of topics or sections that will be audited in the aforementioned period, and it includes the programming of internal and external audits.
Audits can be carried out at any time; usually internal audits take place first (there will be one or more depending on the size of the company). Then, the external ones follow. The audit program serves to determine some aspects that must be taken into account when conducting the audit:
- Which processes will be audited and the estimated time that will take to do each one of them.
- In what order the audit will be conducted.
- How often audits will be carried out.
- The type of audit to be conducted – internal or external.
- Scheduling of audits.
- Audits review.
What is Audit Implementation?
Once the audits of the audit plan took place, we move on to the next step: The audit plan. This plan is elaborated with the actions to follow that are proposed based on the results of the audits carried out.
Therefore, once the state of the company has been analyzed, actions are suggested to improve the current state of certain processes, correct failures, prevent issues, and improve those activities that are showing a good performance.
Which are the Three Stages of the Audit?
The stages of audits can be summarized in three main moments:
- Programming: The first stage of the audit is the moment to determine what will be audited. Which will be the areas to be reviewed, the resources to be surveyed, the priorities in terms of times and costs, the reviews of persistent failures that have been recently detected in previous surveys, the problems that have been reported within the company and performance in order to project comparisons with previous audit reports.
- Execution: Nowadays, considering the dimensions and complexities that companies are involved in, beyond their size with respect to their employees or productivity, it is necessary to have software to help in the process. Data production currently exceeds human capacity to gather information and needs support. Therefore, an audit and control software is ideal for surveying and processing information from all the areas and aspects previously determined.
- Report and action plan: Current audit and control software usually generates automatic reports with high levels of accuracy and detail and a low margin of error. Once the report is analyzed by the auditor and presented to the management of the company, it is time for planning. In other words, the mapping of the strategy for the improvement of the things that were observed through concrete actions.
What is the Purpose of Audit Procedures?
The main function of an internal audit is to analyze the correct operation of a company according to internal and external regulations. Thus, it prepares the company for external audits.
In addition, internal audits help companies to add value through the evaluation of the effectiveness of their processes, notice signs of low compliance of employees and customers, opportunities for improvement and to project actions for compliance with quality standards.
If you want to implement audit software in your company and still do not know which one to choose, try the Full Audits demo. Take advantage of our free trial for 7 days and decide on the best audit and control software on the market.