How Much Are Your Spreadsheets Costing You?

How Much Are Your Spreadsheets Costing You?

Picture your team during busy season. Everyone is working late into the evenings, making updates to status trackers and spreadsheets. Any audit staff will attest to the monotony of this exercise.

Each time a control description gets changed, a new control is discovered, or a narrative is updated, significant resource hours are spent updating reports and spreadsheets. The simple act of updating a document can take time away from the team’s testing and fieldwork, while disrupting the team’s momentum during peak testing phases.

In another scenario, your team is building a status report for an upcoming audit committee presentation, only to find the testing status details to be inconsistent or out of date. Going into an important meeting with incomplete data can be a frightening experience, especially when there are issues to discuss.

Average Amount of Hours Spent Updating Spreadsheets

Below is an illustration of the average amount of hours spent on updating these various spreadsheets.

Average Administrative Hours Spent on SOX Documentation

Say Goodbye to Updating Spreadsheets and Status Trackers Manually

Don’t resign yourself to the stress of updating spreadsheets and status trackers manually. SOXHUB’s audit workflow automation tool, WorkStream, provides the most intuitive and seamless audit workflow. By having all testing information centralized and updated, there will be less data integrity issues to manage, and less concern about reporting to your stakeholders. Some benefits of WorkStream include:

  • Working directly in the same platform with no additional status updates to track or record.
  • Accessing real-time status updates, allowing the testers to go right back into testing and analyzing risks.
  • Eliminating the administrative burden of manually tracking PBCs via email by leveraging automated notifications and built-in Project Dashboards.
  • Saving time – resulting in overall cost savings.

Interested in learning how WorkStream can help you save time and resource hours?

Peter

Peter Yi was the Senior Manager of Product Solutions at AuditBoard, where he helps organizations identify efficiencies and manage complex audit programs. Peter brings over 15 years of consulting and advisory experience from PwC and Grant Thornton to the AuditBoard team.