Audit Data Analytics for Internal Auditors Training Course

Course overview

Internal audit teams are expected to provide assurance over complete populations, identify emerging exceptions quickly, and explain findings with evidence that business leaders can act on. Yet many audits still depend on small samples, manually reconciled spreadsheets, and reports that identify symptoms without isolating root causes. This course equips internal auditors to use data analytics as a repeatable audit method: defining risk-based questions, obtaining usable data, testing entire populations, and documenting results that withstand review.

Participants work through the audit analytics lifecycle from planning to reporting. They translate audit objectives into testable rules; profile data for completeness, duplicates, outliers and missing values; join and reconcile datasets; and build tests for duplicate payments, split transactions, unusual journal entries, inactive vendors, threshold breaches and segregation-of-duties indicators. Practical sessions use Microsoft Excel, Power Query, Power BI and ACL Analytics to develop reproducible analysis, visual exception reporting and evidence files. The course also covers data reliability, sampling decisions, documentation standards, access controls and how to challenge management explanations.

Teaching combines instructor-led demonstrations with guided labs based on realistic procure-to-pay, payroll and general ledger data. Participants progressively build an audit analytics workbook, test scripts, exception log and management-ready dashboard for a defined audit scenario. They leave with an Audit Analytics Workpaper Pack containing a risk-to-test matrix, data request specification, documented procedures, exception evaluation template and 90-day plan for applying analytics to a live audit. The course is designed for internal audit professionals who already understand audit objectives and want to make analytics a defensible part of fieldwork.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Translate audit risks and control objectives into population-based analytics test rules
• Profile audit datasets for completeness, validity, duplicates, missing values and outliers
• Build repeatable data preparation workflows using Excel Power Query
• Reconcile and join transactional datasets using common keys, control totals and match-rate checks
• Perform duplicate-payment, split-transaction and threshold-breach tests in ACL Analytics
• Design risk-based journal-entry and vendor exception tests using defined audit criteria
• Create a Power BI exception dashboard that supports audit findings and management discussion
• Produce an audit-ready analytics workpaper pack with procedures, evidence, results and conclusions

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Internal Auditors — who need to test full populations and support findings with stronger evidence
• Senior Internal Auditors — who lead fieldwork and want repeatable analytics procedures for recurring audits
• Internal Audit Managers — who need to improve audit coverage, consistency and reporting quality across the team
• IT Auditors — who assess system-generated data and need to analyse application transactions and access-related exceptions
• Fraud Risk Auditors — who need structured tests for suspicious payments, vendors, journals and employee transactions
• Compliance and Assurance Officers — who monitor control breaches and must convert operational data into defensible assurance evidence

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand the internal audit process, including audit objectives, risks, controls, evidence, sampling and workpaper documentation. They should be comfortable working with tabular data in Microsoft Excel, including filters, formulas and pivot tables, and should have experience reviewing transaction-level information such as invoices, purchase orders, payroll records or journal entries. No programming, SQL, statistics degree, prior Power BI experience or prior ACL Analytics experience is required. The course introduces the required features of Power Query, Power BI and ACL Analytics through guided exercises, but it is not intended for participants with no audit or assurance experience.

Training methodology

Each day combines short instructor-led explanations with live demonstrations and hands-on analysis of realistic procurement, payroll and general ledger extracts. Participants work individually and in small audit teams to frame risks, inspect data quality, build tests, investigate exceptions and challenge evidence. Facilitated case discussions focus on decisions auditors must make, including whether data is reliable, when an exception becomes a finding and how results should be documented. On the final day, participants assemble their analysis into a management-ready dashboard and a practical 90-day audit analytics application plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Planning analytics-led audit work

• Audit analytics lifecycle from planning through reporting
• Converting audit objectives into testable risk hypotheses
• Risk-to-test matrices for procure-to-pay and financial controls
• Population, sample and continuous-monitoring decisions
• Data request specifications and source-system identification
• Data lineage, ownership and audit trail requirements
• Analytics workpaper structure and evidence retention

Workshop: Participants create a risk-to-test matrix and data request specification for a duplicate-payment and vendor-risk audit case.

Day 2: Preparing reliable audit data

• Data profiling for record counts, nulls, formats and value ranges
• Control totals and completeness checks against source reports
• Excel Power Query import and transformation steps
• Standardising dates, text fields, identifiers and currency values
• Removing duplicates and identifying near-duplicate records
• Joining invoice, purchase order, vendor and payment tables
• Documenting transformation logic for audit reproducibility

Workshop: Participants prepare and reconcile a multi-table accounts-payable dataset, producing a documented data-quality and reconciliation log.

Day 3: Testing transactions and control exceptions

• ACL Analytics project structure and data import options
• Duplicate-payment tests using exact and fuzzy match criteria
• Split-purchase testing around approval thresholds
• Sequential invoice and payment-gap analysis
• Inactive vendor, duplicate bank account and address matching tests
• Journal-entry testing for unusual users, dates and descriptions
• Exception scoring and investigation prioritisation

Workshop: Participants build and run ACL Analytics tests on payment and journal populations, then produce a prioritised exception register.

Day 4: Interpreting results and communicating risk

• Validating exceptions against policy, source documents and business context
• Distinguishing data anomalies from control failures
• Root-cause analysis using process and control evidence
• Power BI data model relationships for audit reporting
• Exception dashboards with drill-through and risk segmentation
• Trend analysis by supplier, approver, business unit and period
• Writing quantified findings and actionable recommendations

Workshop: Participants investigate selected exceptions and create a Power BI dashboard and draft finding statement for an audit closing meeting.

Day 5: Embedding repeatable audit analytics

• Analytics procedure documentation and reviewer sign-off
• Data access, confidentiality and retention controls
• Version control for queries, scripts and output files
• Continuous auditing versus one-off audit testing
• Analytics quality assurance and false-positive management
• Building an audit analytics library for recurring engagements
• Ninety-day implementation planning and stakeholder engagement

Workshop: Participants assemble an Audit Analytics Workpaper Pack and present a 90-day implementation plan for a live or proposed audit engagement.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power Query, Microsoft Power BI, ACL Analytics

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions