ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use of ACL Analytics, which is one of the most commonly used generalized audit software applications presently in use and is a powerful tool for a nontechnical auditor to examine data in detail from a variety of sources with a variety of standard audit tests and present the results in a range of high-impact presentation formats. ACL is a prime example of generalized audit software facilitating the extract and analysis of data independent of IT. Now that the data has been successfully imported into ACL, the temptation is to immediately start analyzing and drawing conclusions from the results. If unchecked, this can lead to considerable amounts of wasted time and the arrival at erroneous audit conclusions because the analysis methodology remains untested at this point. Data can be stratified over a number of intervals with variable interval start points and end points.
