SmartSuite for the Audit Analyst

Internal audit. Holds extracts and analysis results from ERP and financial systems beside the testing procedures they support, and builds dashboards showing high-risk areas, exceptions and control performance.

Issues and actions. Logs the exceptions that continuous auditing routines flag as tracked items with owners and due dates.

Reporting. Delivers analytics-driven insight to the audit function and leadership.

What does an Audit Analyst do for the internal audit function?

The Audit Analyst provides the data behind the audit function: extracting and preparing data from ERP and financial systems for testing, designing analytics and continuous auditing routines, monitoring transactions for anomalies and building dashboards of high-risk areas and control performance. They support engagement teams with sampling and trend analysis and maintain the function's data and reporting tools. In SmartSuite that work sits in Internal Audit Management, where the data, dashboards and exceptions live beside the engagements that use them.

How does SmartSuite help an Audit Analyst with data analysis and dashboards?

Data from ERP and financial systems can be brought into SmartSuite through its REST API, webhooks and iPaaS connectors, and the analyst attaches extracts and results to the testing procedures in Internal Audit Management and builds dashboards on them showing high-risk areas, exceptions and control performance. Because the dashboards read from the same records the engagement teams work in, an audit manager can move from a flagged area straight to the engagement that covers it, and the analyst does not rebuild the same view for every request.

How does continuous auditing raise exceptions as tracked items?

When a continuous auditing routine in the analyst's analytics tools flags an anomaly in transactional data, the exception is logged in Issues Management as a tracked item rather than a row in a spreadsheet. Each item has an owner and a status, so the analyst can see which exceptions the engagement team has reviewed, which were confirmed as findings and which were explained. Over time that history shows which routines produce useful signal and which need tuning.

How does the analyst's work reach the Audit Director and engagement teams?

The analyst delivers analytics-driven insight to the audit function and leadership through SmartSuite reporting, so the Audit Director sees the same dashboards of risk areas and control performance that the analyst maintains. Engagement teams led by the Audit Manager draw on the analyst's sampling and trend analysis within their engagements, and the Risk Analyst and Controls Testing Lead can use the same control performance data, which keeps the audit, risk and controls views consistent.

What data sources does an audit analytics program need to start with?

Start with the ERP and financial system extracts the function already tests, since they can be brought into SmartSuite through its REST API, webhooks or iPaaS connectors, and add transaction monitoring routines as they are designed. SOX Compliance holds the financial reporting control status the analyst's dashboards can draw on, so control performance is reported without a separate pull. New customers can start with SmartSuite Onboarding, a guided four-week program around one or two priority workflows, and widen data coverage as routines prove useful.