Designing Continuous Auditing for a Highly Automated Procure-to-Pay Process - Article Example

Designing Continuous Auditing for a Highly Automated Procure-to-Pay Process The article “Designing continuous auditing for a highly automated procure to pay process” by Faye Borthick explains on the importance of continuous auditing as it helps auditors to provide real tike assurance to their clients. Designing continuous auditing has its share of advantages and disadvantages/challenges. Highly automated procure to pay process is very complex and requires the use of digital and electronic evidence in order for the auditors to carry out the auditing process in an effective and efficient way (Borthick, 2012).

Implementation of a continuous monitoring system also helps auditors to carry out an independent monitoring and enables them to carry out audit tasks on a continuous basis. There have been changes in business and auditing, which prompts auditors to make use of continuous monitoring system and continuous auditing. The changes in auditing environment have made auditors make use of graphic modeling in auditing financial statements, and this calls for the implementation of continuous auditing and monitoring system (Borthick, 2012).

The procure to pay process is a very complex automated process which requires a continuous automated monitoring in order to effectively audit the process, the internal and external control, as well as all other financial records of any company that uses this process. However, it is not certain that the implementation of continuous monitoring system will help the auditors to effectively and efficiently carry out their auditing tasks. This is because implementing a continuous monitoring system on the procure-to pay process presents some impediments to the auditors (Borthick, 2012).

Divergence by business practices where they divert from the original system as employees devise workarounds in order to meet exigencies may become an obstruction to the auditors. When employees diverge from the original system, companies end up changing the entire system in order to enable the system to support the employees work. This means that the auditing process will always be subject to continuing system enhancement and this can be a huge challenge for the auditors (Borthick, 2012). It is also true that the reliance on the system development life cycle that is warranted for the operation of system controls can create huge problems to the auditors.

In some companies, the continuous monitoring is always based on the assumption that price looks up for pallets by each day are correct in all aspects (Borthick, 2012). This assumption is tenuous given the interaction of changes and a combination of price volatility in the procure-to pay system. The advantages of implementing a monitoring system outweigh its disadvantages and this why many auditors have implemented it in their auditing practice. Regardless of the challenges that implementation of a monitoring system poses to auditors, auditors feel that the monitoring system is efficient in evaluating internal control since it is systematic, rigorous and can be tracked (Borthick, 2012).

The monitoring system is also not cumbersome and involving the Internal Control Model (TICOM) which required coding tasks and agents and also made use of a query processor in analyzing the model. ReferencesBorthick F, (2012). Designing continuous auditing for a highly automated procure to pay process. Journal of information systems, Vol. 26, No. 2: 153-166