Archive for the Data Classification Category

Planned charting software

Version 1.62 of Audit Commander will contain charting abilities for histograms, basic population statistics, Benford’s Law, round numbers, day of week statistics, holidays and more.  Details are available for viewing as a PDF document.

Version 1.56 released, as well as articles

Version 1.56 includes faster sorting speeds for files of up to 2 billion rows with sorting by up to 200 columns. Also included is the ability to run XL Audit Commander using either Excel macros or through the Windows Scripting Host. A paper on the topic is available which describes the process. An Excel macro workbook named Macros.xls is included with the installation software. Note that version 1.56 is required in order to run these macros or scripts. The setup program (11.9 MB) is available for download.

Hope to see you at the IIA Fraud Forum in Bonita Springs, FL on May 16th. Topic is the use of digital analysis for the detection of fraud patterns.

Release 1.52 of the XL Audit Commander is available

Support is now provided for both comma separated value format files (CSV), as well as “print” files through the use of file specifications. Further information is available. Also, there are now a variety of tutorials available in shockwave format to demonstrate the system in action. Information about system limitations is now available.

Version 1.42 released, handles CSV and print files, has help

The latest version, released 11/24/2007, includes support for CSV files and “print” files and also includes a “help” button on the forms screen. Further, there are several  examples demonstrating its use: 1) interval sampling, 2) testing Benford’s law in MS-Access database, 3) Data Stratification and 4) Date checking. Other examples and articles have been added.

A demo of the system is available for viewing.

Establishment of “Auditor’s Corner”

I have established a web page devoted to sharing articles and ideas on IT auditing. Part of it consists of tutorial modules as shown below. Some are VBA classes for use within Excel, others pertain to use of the XL Audit Commander.

General Audit Topics
Module Description Approx Length With Quiz? Last Update
Module-1 Obtaining Basic Population Statistics 15 minutes Yes 06-22-2007
Module-2 Audit uses for Benford’s Law 15 minutes Yes 06-22-2007
Module-3 Use of histograms in audits 15 minutes Yes 06-23-2007
Module-4 SQLite as an Audit Tool 30 min No 06-29-07
Module Description Approx Length With Quiz? Last Update
Module-5 Beyond the COUNTIF and SUMIF functions 20 min No 06-25-07
Module-6 A work-around for very large files 20 min No 06-29-07
Module-7 Identifying duplicates and gaps in large files 20 min No 06-29-07
Module-8 Sizing up the population - Going to Extremes 20 min No 06-29-07

Classifying data in Excel

Two common audit procedures are to classify data by their frequency of occurrence and to determine if there are any duplicate items. Often, this data may reside within an Excel spreadsheet. Both procedures can be done manually within Excel - for example by first sorting the data, doing subtotals, etc. However, this procedure can be both time consuming as well as error prone.

Here I discuss how this can be done very quickly, and I provide example procedure steps and screen shots of the results.

A simple procedure for stratifying data in Excel:

Select the menu item “data stratification” .

 

Select the Excel work book

 

Select the work sheet

 

Select the work sheet

 

Select the column of interest - i.e. data to be stratified.

Specify the stratification values to be used

 

Click the “Run” button to produce the chart.

Note there is also a text file produced that can be pasted into Excel to see the results as text. There is no charge for the software - it may be used for any purpose, including commercial and educational.

More info is available.

User manual.

 

 

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