A Review and Analysis of the Existing Research Streams in Continuous Auditing

A growing body of literature related to continuous auditing topics has developed. Advances in information technology and web‐based applications are making monitoring and control of operations through continuous auditing increasingly important. The objective of this paper is to describe, summarize, and provide a framework for classifying the contributions of the diverse literature addressing the topic of continuous auditing. This paper was intended to provide researchers and practitioners with a background in continuous auditing topics. Our broad view of the literature is also designed to discover areas holding the potential for future research. Research streams are divided into five major categories: demand factors, theory and guidance, enabling technologies, applications, and impacts. Over 80 papers have been identified that relate to these areas. Many more articles exist, especially in the area of enabling technologies. However, the focus of our paper is the literature most closely related to continuous...

[1]  Hui Du,et al.  Meeting Challenges and Expectations of Continuous Auditing in the Context of Independent Audits of Financial Statements , 2007 .

[2]  Marilyn M. Greenstein,et al.  Underlying principles of the electronization of business: a research agenda , 2003, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[3]  Roger S. Debreceny,et al.  Embedded Audit Modules in Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: Implementation and Functionality , 2005, J. Inf. Syst..

[4]  Carol E. Brown Expert systems in public accounting: Current practice and future directions , 1991 .

[5]  Stephen Flowerday,et al.  Continuous auditing: verifying information integrity and providing assurances for financial reports , 2005 .

[6]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  ASSURING HOMELAND SECURITY : CONTINUOUS MONITORING , CONTROL & ASSURANCE OF EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS , 2005 .

[7]  Rajendra P. Srivastava,et al.  Evidential reasoning for WebTrust assurance services , 1999 .

[8]  Stephen Flowerday,et al.  Continuous auditing technologies and models: A discussion , 2006, Comput. Secur..

[9]  Heather M. Hermanson COSO: More Relevant Now than Ever , 2003 .

[10]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Continuous Online Auditing: A Program of Research , 1999, J. Inf. Syst..

[11]  Eric L. Denna,et al.  Development and Application of Expert System in Audit Services , 1991, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng..

[12]  Mohammad J. Abdolmohammadi,et al.  Decision Support and Expert Systems in Auditing: A Review and Research Directions , 1987 .

[13]  Roger Debreceny,et al.  Firm-specific determinants of continuous corporate disclosures , 2005 .

[14]  Lee Nelson,et al.  Stepping into continuous audit: a health-care audit shop shares its strategy for making real-time auditing a success , 2004 .

[15]  Thomas G. Calderon,et al.  A roadmap for future neural networks research in auditing and risk assessment , 2002, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[16]  R. P. Srivastava,et al.  Attribute Sampling: A Belief‐Function Approach to Statistical Audit Evidence , 2000 .

[17]  James V. Hansen,et al.  Audit considerations in distributed processing systems , 1983, CACM.

[18]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Restoring auditor credibility: tertiary monitoring and logging of continuous assurance systems , 2004, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[19]  Carol E. Brown,et al.  Artificial neural networks applied to ratio analysis in the analytical review process , 1993 .

[20]  Alexander Kogan,et al.  Design and Applications of an Intelligent Financial Reporting and Auditing Agent with Net Knowledge (FRAANK) , 2002 .

[21]  Richard B. Dull,et al.  ACTVE: A Proposal for an Automated Continuous Transaction Verification Environment , 2006 .

[22]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Continuous monitoring of business process controls: A pilot implementation of a continuous auditing system at Siemens , 2006, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[23]  조기조 Continuous Online Auditing , 1999 .

[24]  Kurt Fanning,et al.  Neural Network Detection of Management Fraud Using Published Financial Data , 1998 .

[25]  Andrew D. Bailey,et al.  Risk assessment in internal auditing: a neural network approach , 1999 .

[26]  Eija Koskivaara,et al.  Artificial neural networks in analytical review procedures , 2004 .

[27]  Rick Elam,et al.  REAL-TIME ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS , 2000 .

[28]  Rajendra P. Srivastava,et al.  An Information Systems Security Risk Assessment Model Under the Dempster-Shafer Theory of Belief Functions , 2006, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[29]  Ronald J. Daigle,et al.  The level of assurance precision and associated cost demanded when providing continuous online assurance in an environment open to assurance competition , 2005, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[30]  R. Elliott,et al.  Twenty-First Century Assurance , 2002 .

[31]  Sally Wright,et al.  Continuous Reporting and Continuous Assurance: Opportunities for Behavioral Accounting Research , 2004 .

[32]  Uday S. Murthy An Analysis of the Effects of Continuous Monitoring Controls on e-Commerce System Performance , 2004, J. Inf. Syst..

[33]  Jean C. Bedard,et al.  KRiskSM: A Computerized Decision Aid for Client Acceptance and Continuance Risk Assessments , 2002 .

[34]  Mark I. Hwang,et al.  A fuzzy neural network for assessing the risk of fraudulent financial reporting , 2003 .

[35]  Glenn Shafer,et al.  Belief-Function Formulas for Audit Risk , 2008, Classic Works of the Dempster-Shafer Theory of Belief Functions.

[36]  Anne P. Massey,et al.  Supporting a complex audit judgment task: An expert network approach , 1997 .

[37]  J. Donald Warren,et al.  Continuous Auditing: Potential for Internal Auditors , 2003 .

[38]  Richard B. Dull,et al.  Using control charts to monitor financial reporting of public companies , 2004, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[39]  Eija Koskivaara Artificial neural network models for predicting patterns in auditing monthly balances , 1997, ECIS.

[40]  Amelia Annette Baldwin-Morgan The impact of expert system audit tools on auditing firms in the year 2001: A Delphi investigation , 1993 .

[41]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Virtual auditing agents: the EDGAR Agent challenge , 2000, Decis. Support Syst..

[42]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Financial Reporting and Auditing Agent with Net Knowledge (FRAANK) and eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) , 2005, J. Inf. Syst..

[43]  Rajendra P. Srivastava,et al.  Detection of Management Fraud: A Neural Network Approach , 1995 .

[44]  D. Hamilton,et al.  The Social and Academic Standing of the Information Systems Discipline: General Theory Considered as Cultural Capital , 2004 .

[45]  Uday S. Murthy,et al.  Monitoring High Volume On‐line Transaction Processing Systems Using a Continuous Sampling Approach , 2003 .

[46]  Roger Debreceny,et al.  The production and use of semantically rich accounting reports on the Internet: XML and XBRL , 2001, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[47]  Ben A. Chaouch,et al.  Minimizing Cost of Continuous Audit: Counting and Time Dependent Strategies , 2003 .

[48]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Virtual auditing agents: the Edgar Agent example , 1998, Proceedings of the Thirty-First Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[49]  Jon B. Woodroof,et al.  Continuous audit: Model development and implementation within a debt covenant compliance domain , 2001, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[50]  Adam Fadlalla,et al.  An Analysis of the Applications of Neural Networks in Finance , 2001, Interfaces.

[51]  Robert L. Braun,et al.  Computer‐assisted audit tools and techniques: analysis and perspectives , 2003 .

[52]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Feasibility and Economics of Continuous Assurance , 2002 .

[53]  Uday S. Murthy,et al.  A continuous auditing web services model for XML-based accounting systems , 2004, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[54]  Eija Koskivaara Integrating Analytical Procedures Into the Continuous Audit Environment , 2006 .

[55]  Sherry D. Ryan,et al.  Considering Social Subsystem Costs and Benefits in Information Technology Investment Decisions: A View from the Field on Anticipated Payoffs , 2000, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[56]  James R. Coakley,et al.  Using pattern analysis methods to supplement attention directing analytical procedures , 1995 .

[57]  Vincent S. Lai,et al.  Continuous auditing with a multi-agent system , 2007, Decis. Support Syst..

[58]  Marilyn M. Greenstein,et al.  Holistic, Continuous Assurance Integration: e-Business Opportunities and Challenges , 2002, J. Inf. Syst..

[59]  R. P. Srivastava,et al.  The Bayesian and belief-function formalisms a general perspective for auditing , 1990 .

[60]  Guido Dedene,et al.  A Comparison of State-of-The-Art Classification Techniques for Expert Automobile Insurance Claim Fraud Detection , 2002 .

[61]  Donald R. Jones,et al.  Developing Database Query Proficiency: Assuring Compliance for Responses to Web Site Referrals , 2001, J. Inf. Syst..

[62]  David C. Yen,et al.  Auditing in the e-commerce era , 2004, Inf. Manag. Comput. Secur..

[63]  Roger Debreceny,et al.  The Development of Embedded Audit Modules to Support Continuous Monitoring in the Electronic Commerce Environment , 2003 .

[64]  Carol E. Brown,et al.  XBRL: An Impacts Framework and Research Challenge , 2006 .

[65]  Tommie Singleton,et al.  Auditing headaches? Relieve them with CAR , 2005 .

[66]  Jon B. Woodroof,et al.  Continuous audit: the motivations, benefits, problems, and challenges identified by partners of a Big 4 accounting firm , 2003, 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the.

[67]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Principles of Analytic Monitoring for Continuous Assurance , 2004 .

[68]  S. Palvia Global Outsourcing of IT and IT Enabled Services: A Framework for Choosing an (Outsourcee) Country , 2004 .

[69]  Jon B. Woodroof,et al.  Continuous audit implications of Internet technology: triggering agents over the Web in the domain of debt covenant compliance , 2001, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[70]  Rick Elam,et al.  Continuous Auditing: Building Automated Auditing Capability , 2002 .