Computer assisted audit tools and techniques in real world: CAATT's applications and approaches in context

Abstract

Nowadays, Computer Aided Audit Tools (and Techniques’) support almost all audit processes concerning data extraction and analysis. These tools were firstly aimed to support financial auditing processes. However, their scope is beyond this, therefore, we present case studies and good practices in an academic context. Although in large auditing companies Audit Tools to do data extraction and analysis are very common and applied in several contexts, we realized that is not easy to find practical examples to teach this subject. Computer Science students’ and teachers usually use application manuals’, which are adequate to explore the tools itself, but they are not enough to do real data analysis: a “hands-on” approach is essential. Despite that, our students didn’t belong to any Computer Science graduation. CAATTs are good examples of software aimed to help auditors to analyze data, to explore and study distinct data sets in auditing processes. CAATTs represent an innovative approach to do data analysis, mainly because they allow the manipulation of very large data records with no significant added costs. Frequently, users have another difficulty: they are not able to adequate their data sets or to prepare their data in order to create useful input data, to do their analysis. In this paper, we present a proposal of extraction and data analysis, based on data sets obtained from a LMS platform (Learning Management System), a real data set that can be used to support students learning about CAATTs topic. Fundamental procedures to reach specific answers using a CAATT as a main tool to do data extraction and analysis are also referred. The context for this case study was an Information Technologies applied to Auditing course in a Master Degree graduation.