Auditing and Attestation (AUD)
The blueprint added detail regarding audit data analytics. Per the AICPA, “The audit data analytics concepts addressed in the revisions are covered by the existing AUD Blueprint and are currently eligible for testing.”
Organizations are capturing more data than ever before due to the rise of multimedia, social media, and the growing popularity of internet-enabled devices. This exponential growth leaves many organizational leaders wondering how to manage big data and enable data-driven business decisions. The shortage of qualified and experienced professionals is also creating a unique opportunity for accounting and finance professionals, who are at a distinct advantage to play a leading role in creating a strategic competitive advantage and driving business value.
In general, data analytics is defined as the process of examining data sets in order to draw conclusions about the information they contain. Accountants already work with data and data analytic outputs to assess business performance within the framework of accounting principles and methods and to identify trends and unusual items requiring further investigation.
With the advances in technology, the audit is poised for rapid change – beyond the traditional financial statement audit. What must auditors do to ensure they are prepared to meet the demands of audit in the future?
The AI is pushing people towards performing work that is more interesting, Baccala said. For a long time, one of the more tedious tasks for accountants and auditors has been the process of taking data and organising it before it is analysed and audited. This data could take the shape of a bunch of receipts and invoices in a shoebox, or the form of various ledgers and spreadsheets.
AI can replace humans at the dull task of extracting, organising, and structuring the data. But those same accountants and auditors working with AI perform different tasks. First, they teach the AI what data to look for and how to organise it. Then they investigate anomalies. And because the AI is working with all data rather than just a sampling (in the case of audits), there may be more anomalies to investigate.
There is no shortage of dramatically negative headlines about the impact of artificial intelligence on nearly every industry, every career path and potentially, every aspect of our personal lives. The promise of technology like AI has almost always been about efficiency — with AI, we can have computers do in seconds what would take us hours. Despite the rising interest in artificial intelligence since 2014, automation and the push to do more work with fewer resources is nothing new for accounting.
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