Continuous Audits Using Decision Support Systems

Purpose - This article's aim is to examine how the utilization of existing and future decision-support systems will lead to a change in the auditing process. Research design, data, and methodology - An information system is a special decision-support system that combines information obtained from various sources and communicates among them to help in assessing appropriate complex financial decisions. This paper analyzes techniques such as data and text mining as components of decision-support systems to be used in the auditing process. Results - We present views about how existing decision-support systems will lead to a change in audits. Auditors, who currently collect significant data manually, will in the future move towards management through complex decision-support systems. Conclusions - Although some internal audit functions are integrated into systems of continuous monitoring, the use of such systems remains limited. Thus, instead of multiple decision-support systems, a unified decision-support system can be deployed for this that includes sensors integrated within a company in different contexts (e.g., production, sales, and accounting) that continually monitors violations of controls, unusual patterns, and unusual transactions.