Introduction
1.1 Background Of The Study
Auditing through the computer can be described as accessing, analyzing and reporting the electronic data file in its electronic state with the objective of ensuring that it conforms to operational control requirement according to Joshua Onukagha
The culmination of the effort of the environment, hardware, software security etc according to Nancy Joy (1977) is the electronic data file and it is this data file that answers important questions (like how is the business faring)?
Ability to manipulate the data file will obviously mean having the ability to manipulate the gains or losses of the business. Therefore, it is important that the Auditor should get very conversant with auditing through the computer.
Early computer were the gigantic and complex mainframes, which require programs being vigorously written to interrogate the data files on those mainframe which were only required to prepare the computer use. This proved enough frustration for the Auditor and so the trend was to contact the service of a computer professional to ease the process. This problem continued even in the time of mini-computers,
When the micro-computers were developed, there was hope for an automated computer audit took because of the simple features of the micro-computers. This equally met with a lot of frustrations. The major reason for this was the difference in data platforms. There were many programming languages (COBOL, FORTRAN, PASCAL, BASIC etc) used in creating data files and each programming languages has its own data platform. To audit the data files made in any of these languages required writing the interrogation tool (i.e. software) in the programming language of the data files. So there were compilation and so it seem as if the Auditor should become a computer professional in order to do the job.
These were problems facing the Auditor while facing the hassles of understanding file creation and access format which is necessary for reading and analyzing any data file even with a matching tool. Also affecting traditional audit requirement like ensuring competences and verifying the integrity of the data file which are essential for accepting the data file for audit placing between choices of audit samples and reaching out for a wide number of automated and it functions like stratification histogram, etc.
These problems have been tackled by developing some tools for auditing through the computer.
There are four main sources of the computer aided auditing techniques and tools (CAATS) that have been developed for the auditors. They are:
- Applications (computer program) that creates the data file
- Utility programs
- Auditor development program
- Dedicated CAATS
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