It’s Audit Time!

When many people are enjoying the holiday season, this is usually a very busy time of the year for those working in accounting and finance. The end of the calendar year often means the end of a fiscal year, and for those involved in the fiscal year end activities, it’s usually a very stressful time, trying to balance work and play.

Over the years I’ve worked with many auditors: internal, external, government, tax, systems, you name it. In the last few years, though, one thing has really surprised me. Few, if any, of the auditors I’ve worked with used Monarch to assist in their tasks. In fact, most of them had never heard of it and those that had, and used it, relied on others to create their models for them.

I must say that I find that kind of amazing.

Here you’ve got the most flexible data acquisition software going available to you inexpensively, and large numbers of probable power users of large amounts of data either have no knowledge that it exists, or can’t use it effectively.

Now I’m not saying that there aren’t auditors who can and do use Monarch. There must be. I know that many of the accounting firms do use it; they’ve visited this site. I’m just saying that I have yet to meet them.

How to Simplify an Audit

If I were an auditor, I’d take comfort in knowing that I could visit most any client and be able to sample their data no matter what systems they use – data I’d likely never seen before – without custom programming or external IT support, in just a few minutes.

As well, I’d be pleased to know that my additional skills in all likelihood differentiated me positively and noticeably from many others within my industry.

If I were a client being audited, especially one who has been using Monarch, I would hope to work with an auditor that also used Monarch, because she’ll:
• be able to use models already prepared and tested,
• be able to quickly add custom calculations to the model to assist in auditing, and
• potentially be less costly than other auditors, in the end, due to her increased efficiency.

An audit can be a very demanding project for both the client and the auditor. Both parties can make the job a little easier. Each can excel with Monarch.