Research On Application Of Information Technology In Domestic Audit

It is difficult to imagine anything that is changing the shape of business more than the rapid advances in information technology. Audit, as the tool of supervising, estimating and inspecting commercial activities, is facing the challenges from information technology. Modern information technologies, such as computer, database and internet, are widely applied in governments, institutions and corporations. As a result, traditional audit, with the main purpose of checking account, can not meet the requirement of modern audit. Information technology should be employed in audit as well as traditional methods to inspect the commercial activities, in order to actualize the function of audit.Chapter 1 presents an overview of new audit environment and information technology audit(IT audit). Why should IT audit to be carried out? Because the audit environment is constantly changing, that information systems are gradually substituting traditional accountant systems in enterprises and information users need more timely and dependable information. Meanwhile, information technology makes IT audit possible. What is IT audit? It is gathering essential audit evidences and taking essential audit processes to appraise client's information system and account balances when financial data is processed by information technology.Chapter 2 discusses audit approaches of Computer Assisted Audit Technology(CAAT), which analyses the correctness of details contained in recorded account balances, and Information System Audit Technology(ISAT), which tests the effectiveness of computer processing and computer control. Each audit approach has advantages and disadvantages. When we understand their audit objectives, application and limitation, we can choose the right approaches.Chapter 3 analyses the application of information technology in domestic audit, and bring forward some measures to improve it.Relative data shows that hardware investment is beyond 70% of total inaudit. It indicates that domestic IT audit is on the stage of basal establishment investment. During the course of it, we should prohibit redundant projects.A batch of universal audit softwares, such as AO system of National Audit Office, Auditcn Software, Tonsin Software, Star of Audit, have improved the efficiency of auditing electronic financial data. However, comparing to international standard audit softwares, such as IDEA, domestic softwares have many disadvantages like deficiency of analyse ability, absence of data standard interface, scarcity of real-time audit function, etc. These problems can be solved by introducing advanced technology and independent research.Auditors' knowledge of computer can not meet the demand of IT audit, which restricts the development of IT audit. So the professional IT audit group shall be brought up by popularizing information technology.In addition, many problems have emerged in the process of IT audit, such as low extent of information share, imbalance among regions and attaching more importance to facilities than training auditors. We can continue to improve the Jinshen Project and carry on domestic IT audit.Chapter 4 explores the application of information technology in domestic audit in the future. Two new IT audit services, Electronic commerce audit and Webtrust, are discussed. The purpose of forecast is to identify the general development trend and turn changes into part of scheme.There is a brief summary at the end of the thesis.