Question

1. Give and explain 3 example of financial instrument

2. Give and explain 3 example of Generalized Audit Software

3. Why it called Generalized Audit Software?

4. Give 1 of the most famous GAS

Answer 1

Answer 1. Examples of Financial Instruments:

• Loans and Bonds. A lender gives money to a borrower in exchange for regular payments of interest and principal.
• Asset-Backed Securities. Lenders pool their loans together and sell them to investors. The lenders receive an immediate lump-sum payment and the investors receive the payments of interest and principal from the underlying loan pool.
• Stocks. A company sells ownership interests in the form of stock to buyers of the stock.

2. Examples of GAS:

a. Audit Command Language (ACL): ACL offers data analytics solution, developed to control audit, risk, compliance, IT and financial control. Its integrated platform standardizes and streamlines key functions, which results with as much as 50% in productivity and efficiency improvement.
This way, users can enhance their audit coverage, clearly focus on risks and segments with maximum room for improvements. They can also view, manage, and observe all compliance responsibilities and get full risk monitoring for accounting and finance departments.

b. Interactive Data Extraction and Analysis (IDEA):

IDEA® is a powerful and user-friendly data analysis tool designed to help auditors, accountants and other finance professionals perform data analysis quickly to help improve audits and identify control breakdowns. IDEA allows you to analyze 100% of your data, guarantees data integrity and provides easy analysis with over 100 audit-relevant tasks.
When your data comes from different sources and in a variety of formats, data analysis can sometimes be a challenge. The ability to import multiple data sets and view them as though they were one lets you to see the big picture. You are able to identify relationships, patterns and anomalies as well as conduct a comprehensive analysis of transactional data.
IDEA allows you to quickly import an infinite amount of records from practically any source, including spreadsheet and database software, mid-range accounting programs, ERP systems, legacy mainframes, telecom switches, travel and expenses applications, flat and printed files such as PDFs, plain text (.txt), and print-report (.prn) files.

c. Statistical Analysis System (SAS): SAS software is far more than just a programming language – it is a complete end-to-end analytics platform that leverages the expertise and collaboration of experienced partners around the world who provide a variety of services, including installation, administration, hosting, and support. As a result of this, organisations and businesses don’t just have a piece of standalone software, they have a network of experts ready to help them make the most of their data – no matter where they are in the world. Thus, everything a company needs for a data analytics model comes from a single framework and one vendor

3. Why GAS?

GAS performs routines on files, uses various calculations and prints reports based on the information used. Standard audits are performed by analyzing sample information from a company’s records. Random information is chosen and analyzed since investigating all information is too time-consuming.

Purpose

This software allows auditors the ability to sort through large amounts of data in a rapid manner. GAS can scan and test all data within a computer system, allowing for a more accurate audit of the books. Instead of random sampling, 100 percent of the company’s data is examined.

Functions

GAS software is designed to examine financial information for quality, completeness, correctness and consistency. It verifies all calculations, compares data and prints audit samples.

4.

One of the most common GAS is -  Computer-Assisted Audit Tool (CAAT).
It is used to mine and analyse data (often in vast quantities) to identify anomalies, errors and omissions and is used in gathering audit evidence rather than documenting.