Access Unleashed:
Powerful Data Analysis, Benford’s Law,
Database Functions, & Statistical Sampling

Access Unleashed: Use the powerful Data Analysis and Database functions of Microsoft Access to add value to your audits and audit administration

Do you want:

• State-of-the-art data analysis technologies in your audit reviews?
• Value-added activities that management will rave about?
• To easily review large size data sets for unusual activity?
• To know how a mathematical phenomenon can help you uncover fraud and other irregularities?
• To have a formal database system for documenting audit issues and other items related to the audit function?

Here is your opportunity to learn more about:

• Benford’s Law (It’s a secret law of numbers)
• Innovative data analysis techniques for both revenues and payments
• How Microsoft Access can be used as a rigorous data analysis tool
• The state of the art related to data analysis and the auditing profession

Do you need to buy software to do all of the above?

• No! If you have Microsoft Access then your software is just a double-click away.

Outline:

• Describe Benford’s Law and how it can be used by auditors as a powerful analytical procedures test
• Review of the architecture of MS Access and the elements of good database design
• Review the elements of Access designed specifically for data analysis
• Discuss the use of Tables, Forms, Reports, and Queries in accounting systems
• Discussion of fourteen data analysis tests with tips, hints, and notes for auditors, with demonstrations of at least eight of the tests in MS Access
• Demo showing how to do statistical sampling tests in Microsoft Access
• Demo showing how the database functions of Access can be used in an audit environment to manage the audit function (this session will be led by Bryon K. Chesser, CISA, Senior IT Auditor, Americredit, Fort Worth)
• Demo showing proactive fraud detection techniques in practice (at the time of writing this DFW-based speaker has not yet been able to confirm the date)
• Contemporary issues such as interrogating large data sets, continuous monitoring, Sarbanes-Oxley section 404, and the new versions of Monarch and Crystal Reports

Note: You don’t need Access experience! Each student in the technical session will be given as a handout a copy of Mark’s book: “Using Microsoft® Access for Data Analysis and Interrogation”. The book includes data sets and Excel templates so that the tests in the book can be practiced on your own computer. (The retail-selling price for this book is $70! To learn more for this book, please visit http://www.nigrini.com/data_analysis_books/
data_analysis_using_access.htm.)

Other Handouts: One copy of Using Microsoft Access in the Audit Function, 20 page handout on using database functions of Access. This handout might be posted on the Chapter’s website to control costs. Our goal is to also provide some files related to actual Access-based systems used at a major DFW area audit department. The files could be used as a template for your organization. If the department agrees to this then the files will be posted to a website for download.

About the Seminar leader

Mark J. Nigrini, Ph.D. was formerly on the faculty at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. He is a Research Fellow at the Ernst & Young Center for Auditing Research and Advanced Technology at the University of Kansas. His current line of research addresses continuous audit and the detection of earnings manipulation.

In 1995 his data analysis work was publicized in The Wall Street Journal, Canadian Business, Technology in Government, Contingencies, The Globe and Mail, and CA Magazine, among others. His work has also been written about in publications such as The Financial Times, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Business Week, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Journal of Accountancy, and USA Today. He has presented numerous academic seminars and professional seminars for accountants in North America and abroad. He has published papers on Digital Analysis in academic journals such as The Journal of the American Taxation Association, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, and The Journal of Accounting Education, and in practitioner journals such as Internal Auditor, Journal of Accountancy, IT Audit Forum, The White Paper, and IEEE Potentials. Mark has also written four web-based seminars for the IIA’s web-based seminars at www.auditlearning.org. At the time of writing, two of the seminars are up and running.

Mark J. Nigrini is the author of “Digital Analysis Using Benford’s Law: Tests and Statistics for Auditors” and “Using Microsoft Access for Data Analysis and Interrogation”. To learn more about Mark and his books, visit his website at http://www.nigrini.com.