Accounting

Audit and Financial Reporting: New Skills, New Challenges: Part 4

Developing a completely digitized audit workflow remains a challenge for many financial executives implementing an audit structure. A majority of those who responded to the survey that was conducted in 2019 said that they expect less than 50% of their financial statement workflow will be digitized in the next 18 months. Only 13% said they expect 76% - 100% of their workflow to be digital.

“One of the areas we see [many] companies looking at is their financial close process [because] it’s relatively time-consuming in nature and requires a [good amount] of manual effort. So they’re looking at ways in which they can use technologies such as robotics process to [automatically] journal the monthly accrual processes, using that technology to trigger activities in the close [process],” says Scott Szalony, audit & assurance partner with Deloitte & Touche LLP.

When it comes to actual technology being utilized in today’s audit and financial reporting processes, cloud-based systems represent the largest percentage, according to the FERF survey.

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