According to the series of SAP purchase to pay, order to cash and fixed asset and inventory, cross process weaknesses are following. This time no particular process is focused because, while developing my data indicators, I found out that several audit questions can not directly be assigned to purchase to pay or order to cash. These types of process weaknesses can therefore be put into any kind of process. In the following I will present these data indicators.
Part 1 of the series: “The digital Audit for Cross Process Weaknesses”
1. How the digital audit for cross process weaknesses works
2. Smart strategies to automatically audit master data and payments
3. Quick Guide: Auditing principles of orderly bookkeeping
4. What no one tells you about automatic analytics of SAP access protection
5. 3 top indicators for auditing process plausibility
6. A complete guide to Professional Judgement…
Processes First!
Before starting comprehensive SAP process analytics, extensive analytics of actual processes should be carried out first to ensure knowledge about how the processes are working out. In my methodology, first of all, the SAP processes implemented in the SAP System will be determined empirically in the SAP database. Following data analytics are carried out on the basis of the known processes. The determination and reconstruction of all processes is carried out by the Financial Process Mining Algorithm I developed. Here you can find out how the reconstruction of the business processes works methodically.
Why are there cross process analytics?
“Cross Process Analytics” – sounds unspecific! Why is it not possible to classify every data indicator into a purchase to pay or order to cash process? The answer simply is: There are audit questions that focus on finding “superficially” weaknesses. For example it’s a general questions, if your booking material is timely captured, so your accounting is accordingly. It’s completly irrelevant, if the documents source is purchase to pay, order to cash or fixed asset and inventory. The timely collection of documents is certainly an always relevant “secondary virtue”. In the end there are many of these kind of audit questions…
Data Analytics Second!
Once all processes have been reconstructed by the Financial Process Minin Algorithm, the data analytics are carried out in the form of various data indicators. An indicator always represents a relevant audit question. As a result, a document may or may not be affected by an indicator. It records some kind of a “black-and-white image” and divides all the documents into a set of documents affected by the indicator and into a set of documents that are not affected. Examples of cross process indicators are:
- FI documents with a long interval between posting and processing date
- FI documents posted during weekend
- Documents posted by users with high reversal rates
- Operations done by super users
- Document with rare account assignment
Overall I have developed and implemented 20 indicators for cross process weaknesses in SAP.
In this series, a selection of the 20 cross process indicators will be explained and will be available for download here:
