The BarnOwl audit module is a highly configurable audit management solution that supports the full internal audit life cycle of planning, execution, reporting, monitoring, and follow-ups enabling an organisation to streamline and standardise its internal audit processes. The audit module caters for true risk and control based auditing ensuring that the risks that matter to the organisation are audited and the results are updated back into risk management. The audit module provides many standard reports, flexible extracts and final Word audit reports automatically. Advanced business intelligence dashboard reporting enables you to gain insight into ongoing audit findings, root cause analysis, risk analysis, trends, benchmarking etc. The BarnOwl audit module supports and embeds best practices frameworks such as International Professional Practice Framework (IPPF).
The BarnOwl audit module provides:
BarnOwl’s built-in methodology supports best practice audit frameworks such as the International Professional Practice Framework (IPPF).
Simplifies the embedding of the best practice audit framework in your organisation.
Configurable audit parameters.Setup your categories and sub-categories for audit procedures, findings and expenses.Define your ratings and colour thresholds for projects, audit objectives and findings.Specify your various resource types (auditor, manager, etc.)
Enables you to configure BarnOwl according to your audit methodology.
Create templates for your various project types (e.g. risk & control based, process based, compliance, forensic, ad-hoc, etc.) using BarnOwl’s flexible project file organiser (PFO).Predefine the tasks, audit steps, project documents, processes, required findings fields, etc.
Provides a standardised step-by-step audit approach for all types of audit project to facilitate planning, fieldwork, execution, reporting, follow-up and monitoring.
The definition of Internal Auditing as per the IPPF framework is: “Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization’s operations.”
It aids an organisation in achieving its goals by adopting an organised, disciplined approach to examining and improving the efficiency of the risk management, control, and governance processes.
Principle 15 of the King IV code (copyright Institute of Directors Southern Africa) states that the governing body should ensure that the assurance services and functions enable an effective control environment, and that these support the integrity of information for internal decision-making and of the organisation’s external reports.
The value of the Internal Audit function is becoming increasingly critical to the strong corporate governance, risk management, effective internal control, and efficient operations of any organisation. Internal audit provides several important services to company management, including managing risk, detecting and preventing fraud, testing internal control, and monitoring compliance with company policy and government regulation.
Effective internal audit activities:
Assess the effectiveness of the design and execution of the system of internal control and risk management,
Assist management in the effective discharge of their duties,
Evaluate compliance with laws and regulations,
Evaluate the reliability and integrity of financial and operational information,
Provide recommendations for the improvement of operations,
Help safeguard company assets, including reputation and the utilisation of its resources,
Reduce the exposure to unpleasant surprises,
Save money as the cost of preventive actions is far less than those of corrective actions.
Play a leading role in facilitating combined assurance, eliminating silos across lines of defence, and ensuring that organisations communicate risk in a consistent voice.
Modern audit departments no longer carry out their audits using manual processes. Auditors carry out their audits using electronic systems, enabling results from audits to be analysed, transforming data into valuable business insights.
The BarnOwl audit module is a highly configurable audit management solution that supports the entire internal audit life cycle of planning, execution, reporting, monitoring, and follow-ups enabling an organisation to simplify, streamline and standardise its internal audit processes. The BarnOwl audit module:
Incorporates built-in best practices and supports the adoption of the IIA standards,
Enables audit to increase audit coverage while reducing audit time and cost,
Facilitates risk & control-based auditing, ensuring that risks that matter to the organisation are audited and aligned back to the business,
Simplifies and standardises audit processes with centralised ‘working-paper’ library for all types of audit: risk & control, ad hoc, forensic, compliance, etc.,
Eliminates audit errors and inconsistencies by standardising the audit process and enabling centralised library look up,
Generates final and audit committee audit reports as well as advanced business intelligence dashboard reporting providing business insight,
Allows for online tracking and follow-up of audit findings via web-based action plans,
Supports working online and offline with advanced synchronisation ensuring 100% accessibility of the system.
Is fully integrated with risk management and compliance, providing enterprise-wide visibility of risk and combined assurance reporting.
Pros
Allows businesses to:
Streamline your audit process, save time, achieve better results, integrate audit requirements all in one place
Dramatically reduce the amount of time and effort required in the planning, execution and reporting phases of your audits
Support true risk an control based auditing and combined assurance integration
Maintain standardised audit programmes in a central repository
Automate the monitoring and tracking of findings
Automate all audit-related tasks
Fly through quality assurance reviews by demonstrating a structured, systematic, audit approach in an audit management software solution
Drive process improvement
Generate reports and dashboards effortlessly
Transform your audit data into valuable business insight and foresight facilitating improved business decision making
Cons
Some of the barriers to using audit software include:
Excel is easy to use and provides flexibility for users to capture data in almost any format they wish. No need to conform to a standard methodology, data validation, drop down boxes etc.
Many audit programmes are complicated and can only be done in Excel, however, these should all be attached to the relevant control and / or finding in a centralised audit management software solution
Keeping audit programmes up to date in a central library on a system is the best approach, however can be onerous and requires time and effort
No one likes completing timesheets, however, this is the only way to compare planned hours with actual hours.
Reports / dashboards generated by the software do not always meet business requirements and auditors often have to do much or their final audit reporting manually
Learning new software requires time and effort
Cost of software and ongoing support
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BarnOwl Audit Management Datasheet
Download ↓BarnOwl Mapping to the IPPF
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