Sep 26, 2024 | AI
Thomson Reuters Audit Intelligence: Harnessing AI to improve audit quality and efficiency
Dave Wyle, general manager of Audit, Thomson Reuters, explores AI-driven auditing and the importance of using technology to modernize audit practices to stay competitive
The future of audit technology is here. Thomson Reuters Audit Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered audit solutions, is here to transform audit practices by reducing errors and enabling auditors to realize efficiency gains.
Audit Intelligence Analyze, the first tool in the suite, uses AI and machine learning to ingest and analyze large volumes of data, automating and enhancing risk analysis, ultimately reducing sample sizes by about half. This not only cuts substantive testing time in half, but also the time clients spend gathering audit evidence for the testing samples. It integrates directly within existing workflows, identifying unusual items often overlooked by humans and automatically generating all necessary audit documentation.
“When using Analyze, I would say time savings was probably the number one thing,” said Austin Seale, CPA, RBSK Partners PC, an Indiana-based firm that participated in the Audit Intelligence beta program.
“Not only did we save 20-30 minutes just selecting the sample, but the sample size was cut in half, which reduced testing time, and client data gathering time, by half as well. And this is just for receivables,” Seale said. “Our firm can definitely see how AI will increase our efficiency.”
Using AI to spot anomalies that traditional methods may miss
Auditing standards prescribe multiple risk-identification techniques, such as examining transactions posted on non-working days, outside normal working hours, or more than 30 days before or after their effective date. A common challenge auditors face is lacking the necessary information to evaluate transactions based on these standards.
Most audit platforms only analyze general ledger transactions, which don’t contain the details required to automate these risk-identification techniques. The Audit Intelligence suite is unique in that it ingests both general ledger and subledger details.
This capability allows the Audit Intelligence suite to automate standards-based risk identification techniques as well as to apply AI to identify anomalies that standard methods might miss. Together, these features enable auditors to perform the most comprehensive and automated risk analysis possible.
Further strengthening the suite is our partnership with Validis to provide best-of-breed data ingestion capabilities. Our partnership enables auditors to easily ingest data from the broadest selection of accounting packages available in the market. (Once customers purchase Audit Intelligence, they do not need a separate license for Validis’ capabilities within the suite.)
Upcoming enhancements
Analyze is just the beginning of our commitment to providing customers with AI-powered, data-driven auditing. Two upcoming additions to the suite include Audit Intelligence Test, which automates substantive testing and verification by dynamically tracing accounting transactions to banking activity and supporting documentation, and Audit Intelligence Plan, which merges full data populations with technology-driven analytics to empower auditors’ planning and risk assessment processes.
Also, starting next year, the Audit Intelligence suite will integrate with CoCounsel, providing auditors with a professional-grade GenAI assistant to further augment their work.
Check out Accountancy Age and Accounting Today (subscription required) reporting for more on Audit Intelligence.
This is a guest post from Dave Wyle, general manager of Audit, Thomson Reuters.
