The Covid-19 pandemic has forced companies to make significant changes to their internal audit processes and how they prepare for external auditors to review their financial statements. The biggest difference that has occurred from approximately March 2020 to now is that remote audit work has largely replaced in-person teams. Almost extinct are groups of auditors taking over conference rooms for days on end to review paper financial statements, spreadsheets, and documentation.
This dramatic and sudden change in the way internal audit worked also highlighted a problem with many of its manual processes. Labor-intensive tasks that were previously chalked up as necessary inefficiencies were now impossible to complete remotely. What was needed was a rethinking of the way financial records were developed, entered, stored, and verified, so accountants and auditors with the proper authorizations could access, build, analyze, and draw conclusions from them.
