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AuditNet Book Review
Spreadsheet Check and Control: 47 Key Practices to Detect and Prevent Errors
By Patrick O’Beirne
How important are spreadsheets to your organization? What would be the impact of errors in your organization’s spreadsheets? Is anyone employing techniques to detect and prevent errors in those spreadsheets? This book provides best practices for spreadsheet users based on a proposed European Computer Driving License Foundation syllabus. The first chapter covers spreadsheet specification and documentation standards. Auditors are always concerned about developing working papers that someone else can follow. The same holds true for designing spreadsheets. There must be some guide that others can follow describing the purpose, author version history etc. The next section highlights input practices including formulas and ranges. These are important to ensure the accuracy of the spreadsheet. The section dealing with calculation covers skill sets for the fundamentals, error identification and error correction. Outputs include skill sets on appropriate display as well as charts. The review category includes both testing and data integrity, two areas that auditors will want to pay close attention to.
Spreadsheet Check and Control does what no other book before has attempted to do; provide standards for designing spreadsheets that lend themselves to a logical review by management and internal auditors. Spreadsheet users must be familiar with both risk and control during the development process. According to E.H. Spencer Pickett, author of Internal Control: A manager's journey, knowing the right thing to do results in "internalized control" Internalized control translates to the empowerment of spreadsheet users that occurs when they know how to protect themselves and reduce risk to their organization (and their career!).With spreadsheets playing such an important role in management and financial decision making, it is critical that an authentication process be in place. Spreadsheet review is also a key component of meeting the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley. Following this author’s guide and insight can help your organization minimize spreadsheet errors and facilitate audit review to prevent and detect those errors. The key will be establishing policies and procedures designed around the recommended best practices and making sure that all departments follow the standards.