By Bruce H. Nearon

In today’s environment, critical business records, including those used to provide support for audit procedures, usually are stored in digital media. By leveraging audit analysis packages such as ACL (audit command language) to perform CAAT (computer-assisted audit techniques), practitioners can realize a great opportunity to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of financial statement audits.

These tools provide the ability to test mathematical accuracies and identify anomalies such as transactions recorded in the wrong accounting period, negative debits and positive credits. Through CAAT, the auditor can perform an “audit smarter,” which quickly identifies these transactions and enables analysis over the entire population rather than just a sample. Many of these tools, including ACL, provide statistical features that further enhance the ability to deliver value to clients as well as improve fraud detection.

Learn to use CAATs such as those provided by ACL for financial statement audit testing purposes by attending the March 4 continuing professional education (CPE) morning presentation organized by the New York State Society of CPAs’ Technology Assurance (TA) Committee.

The topics covered will include:

• How to identify accounting data files
• Extracting accounting data files
• Joining accounting data files
• Statistical testing for substantive audit procedures
• Statistical sampling procedures.

Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Time: 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.: registration, networking, free continental breakfast; 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.: CPE session
Presenter: Tom McDermott
Location: NYSSCPA headquarters, 530 Fifth Ave. (between 44th and 45th streets), fifth floor, New York City

About the Presenter

Thomas McDermott is a consultant for The Cohn Consulting Group, a division of J. H. Cohn LLP, in Roseland, N.J. His experience includes financial auditing, e-commerce (WebtrustTM), information technology auditing and audit technical support, network security and general and application controls. He holds a bachelor’s in accounting from Rutgers University School of Business in New Brunswick, N.J. Mr. McDermott can be reached at tmcdermott@jhcohn.com.

Additional Information

This NYSSCPA/Foundation for Accounting Education (FAE) CPE morning presentation is free to NYSSCPA members and $15.00 for nonmembers to qualify for one hour of CPE credit.

At the session you will get the chance to network with the profession’s and the industry’s IT leaders.

Advance registration is encouraged, because seating is limited.

For additional information, contact Gary E. Carpenter at (315) 487-4567 or gcarpenter-cit@worldnet.att.net or Bruce H. Nearon at (973) 403-6955 or bnearon@jhcohn.com.

For more information on the Technology Assurance Committee, visit www.nysscpa.org, click on the Find Committees tab on the left-hand side of the page and then scroll down to the Technology Assurance Committee link.

Registration

To register: contact FAE at (212) 719-8383 or (800) 537-3635 or visit the Society’s website at www.nysscpa.org (you will need your Society member number to register). Go to the Technology Assurance Committee homepage and select “03/04/03-Using ACL in a Financial Statement Audit” located under the Free IT CPE banner.

Acknowledgments

J.H. Cohn LLP and Carpenter Information Technologies, Inc., helped provide the funding and resources for the continental breakfast, marketing and publicity, and administration of this event.