A Day in the Life of an Auditor

Savvy businesses use a travel and expense management tool to ensure employees follow policy when submitting expense claims or invoices. This is the first line of defense, but it’s not enough - this is where an auditor steps in. Auditing expenses requires a two-pronged approach, namely the prevention and detection of discrepancies in the expense process. What does this look like day to day?

The “To Do” List

First, a quick review of the email inbox, before logging into Wiki, the internal website for our internal audit operational procedures. Next it’s time to check Service Workbench, where the auditor will find all pending reports they have been granted access too based on their level of skillset. Tasks generally involve three kinds of checks: ensuring receipts match expense claims, checking claims are within company policy and confirming that VAT information is correct – i.e. ensuring the selected ‘Receipt Status’ and ‘Tax Amount’ calculated by the system are supported by the information provided on the supporting receipt(s). specifically that the tax amount calculated by the system is what appears on the receipts provided and the selected ‘Receipt Status’. Extra checks are carried out for attendee information, itemized receipts or non-allowable items. An auditor might notice a report has been previously incorrectly audited. They can raise this to their senior/team builder for further investigation and coaching.

Triple Check

The auditor will check an expense more than once to ensure they are confident with their answers against the questions appearing (client rules designed as a series of audit questions). By selecting the most relevant option from a drop-down menu for each question, they can determine the outcome of the report. If there is something, they are not sure about, they will reach out to their team leader for help on how the claim should be audited.

Updated Stats

At some point during the day the auditor will receive updated stats for the previous day showing speed, accuracy and time spent on the system. Whilst this only happens once per day, the auditor will receive feedback on errors given to them throughout the day. This is because the team leader/senior will check every error that the review team has given for their team members.

Amendments

Auditors will always be mindful of how questions are written and what is appearing when auditing. If an auditor believes the question could be worded better or they notice a mistake within a question/set up during audit, then they can raise this to the client service specialist within an email. Auditors will also raise reports to a client service specialist to if they fail to reach out to a client via email.

Quality Measures

Even an auditor needs auditing. The system will choose reports at random from the auditor’s work queue. Once these reports have been reviewed, this data is then generated on the reporting system to work out an accuracy for the auditor, as well for the team leader/senior to check any errors given and challenge ones they believe have been given incorrectly.

All of the elements of SAP Concur solutions work to make the day to day job of an auditor a lot simpler and more effective. They do this by offering an unbiased audit approach that allows businesses to audit senior executives in the same way they would audit new starters.

For more information on how SAP Concur solutions could improve your audit process join our webinar, Closing the Gaps in Compliance - The Power of Concur taking place on the 28 April at 2pm. Or visit our website today.

NB The content is primarily designed for customers who are currently not using Concur Audit