Overview

An external audit is an examination that is conducted by an independent accountant. This type of audit is most commonly intended to result in a certification of the financial statements of an entity. This certification is required by certain investors and lenders, and for all publicly-held businesses.

The objectives of an external audit are to determine:The accuracy and completeness of the client’s financial records;Whether the client’s financial records have been prepared in accordance with the applicable financial framework; andWhether the client’s financial statements present fairly its results and financial position.

There are other types of external audits that may be targeted at specific issues concerning a client’s accounting records, such as an examination that searches for the existence of fraud.

External Audits are investigations which primarily evaluate the processes for fulfilling requirements and guidelines. They are conducted by external auditors and take place in irregularly planned intervals or in a case of doubt. After an External Audit has been completed, an periodic and scheduled audit planning takes place in which the discoveries are recorded and processed to ensure an optimal follow-up process.

Challenges

Organizations today are required to comply with an increasing number of regulations, policies and procedures. This drives the need for ongoing auditing in organizations. The traditional regulation/policy/procedure-specific audit software solutions have become less effective, as they are not integrative and hence can create inconsistencies and even contradictory audit processes. Compliance assurance officers are specifically required to demonstrate effective external audit practices, and to ensure corporate transparency and visibility into the business. The external audit process is continuous and needs to be repeated periodically and closely monitored. Management is personally responsible for an adequate level of external audit, and this responsibility requires significant management attention and allocation of time and effort.

GOLDENHORN eGRC EAM

The GOLDENHORN eGRC External Audit software is one of reliable solutions in the GRC market that provides a comprehensive, integrated and consilience framework for managing external audits in a multi-subsidiary environment. The External Audit Management enables enterprises to define audit plans, assign audits to designated auditors, schedule audits, collect audit results, document recommendations, manage remediation plans, and present summarizing dashboards of audit outcomes.

The GOLDENHORN eGRC EAM is aimed at efficient audit execution and ensures integration of the audit process with the risk and compliance management system.

You can use External Audit Management as a standalone GRC solution or integrate it in GOLDENHORN eGRC with existing submodules for e.g. Operational Risk Management, Internal Control Management, Compliance Management etc. Since the methodology is aligned, data from cyclical external audits and acyclic ones are seamlessly integrated. This generates a greater scope of information and a better foundation for making decisions regarding changes.

Creating custom reports is considerably simplified with GOLDENHORN eGRC.

Benefits

Support of the complete external audit management processFlexible external audit planning and schedulingImplement complex approval processes with dynamic cases and workflowsRemind contributors to complete measuresUse vast capabilities to present insights gained through external audit managementVisualize extracts from current external audit data graphically at any timeGenerate individual reports for different target stakeholders

Features

GOLDENHORN BPM process workflow-driven dashboards with information on current external audits and tasks 

External Audit authoritative requirements register 

External Audit planning

Flexible authorization system based on roles and groups

Tracking for measures, external audit findings, reviews and action requests

Collection of various information such as external audit company, external auditor, costs, time spent, responsibilities or criticality

Flexible reporting

 Solutions

Thanks to the modular configurations of GOLDENHORN eGRC EAM with different submodules and features:

> External Audit Management – Planning Management

> External Audit Management – Finding Management

> External Audit Analytics and Reporting