We express the word remote auditing to mean: the process by which auditors pair information and communication technology ICT with facts and figures to evaluate the report on the precision of financial data and internal controls, collect electronic evidence, and interconnect with the auditee, liberated of the physical presence of the auditor.

During the remote audit, auditors can approve standard auditing methodology they use during on-site audits, including being open-minded, political, listening, and being humble to the auditee.  Auditors will continue to ask important and related questions to the scope of the audit, and more importantly, make quality use of two essential skills that are magnified during a remote audit –being flexible and adaptive. 

Key Takeaways.

• Remote auditing minimizes the location condition for auditors, authorizing them to split the audit  tasks between on-site and remote audit teams.
• While continuous auditing expands the worth of an audit.
• The inclusion of a remote internal and it is not simply a side and extra benefit of audit automation; it is an operator for technology use and offers an opportunity to replan how an audit is performed.
• The auditors also use robotic tools to draw out and investigate data from the auditee’s  systems to test internal controls and transactions.

What are the benefits of Remote Audit?

Remote audits can have different advantages in terms of coherence, access to expertise, improving reach, and minimizing the risks. The excellent approach starts with what your organization has objectives to meet? Then, what is your overall planning? Studying all this will support us in identifying the process to help you in reaching the planned goals.

Remote audit advantages range from:

•   Improve the efficiency of the audit.
•   Reduced travel time and travel cost.
•   Presence of audit team with required capability, tie up and include them in the audit where required.
•   Opening new areas, e.g., number of sites and geographies, to be included, thus increasing your insight, control, and      worth automatically financial conditions.
•   Auditors’ can be added to any audit team in cost-effective ways.
•   Improve access to the auditor(s) with high-quality work, including across the borders.
•   Increase your reach  & minimize the risk.
•   Limited traveling to dangerous areas, making more sites reachable, and improving control.
•   Continue business activities under severe conditions and circumstances.

 How does it work?

Remote audits are not that dissimilar from physical audits. Except the delivery model preferred, ensuring that the proper audit proof is collected, confirmable, and stored according to the activity’s requirements. However, the nature of remote audit, especially fully remote, does require that some things are managed or executed a little bit differently.  For example:

• Choose & set up the tools to connect.
• Get ready for the audit.
• Plan of action for the audit meetings.
• Analyzing physical and electronic papers.

The Future of Remote Auditing

Remote auditing is becoming very popular nowadays. On-site audit activity, pre or after a remote audit, improves communication regarding essential topics and areas to investigate, strengthening the overall audit process and helping to build a friendly relationship between auditor and auditee. 

For those familiar with ISO 19011:2018 – Guidelines for Auditing Management Systems, you will now remind them this includes new descriptions for conducting remote audits. This is a lucid indication that we are going towards a more virtual auditing approach.  According to my view, in three to five years, every ISO lead auditor course will have at least 30 percent of the curriculum focused entirely on remote auditing.

The Disadvantages of Remote Audit

A key thing to keep in mind is the audit objectives, the available resources, and the type of audit evidence that needs to be collected to decide if a remote audit is acceptable in the conditions and aligned to the scope of the audit. For example, an audit of the physical work environment, such as the workshop or warehouse for a construction company, or an audit of a welding company for a steel fabricator, may not be suitable and possible to be finished remotely. However, the auditor presence at the site is significant to collect all the analyzing data for the final audit report.

Remote audits should also not be used as a cost-effective measure or because they are less of a logistical headache for the company being audited. They should only be acceptable when you are completely satisfied, beyond any doubts, that audit objectives can be met precisely.

Another area of consideration is technology. If network connections are not very authentic, interviews and meetings can be heckled, and it may take some time to resume, then it causes problems. During remote audits, direct access with the auditee is vanished due to poor network connections. The ability to read body language can be compromised, which should be crucial to explore the issues and audit objectives.

Conclusion

In WBS, We have been working on remote delivery options and applications. By allowing audit flexibility and frequency to make audits more interactive, we ensure that our audit delivery methods via remote meet the specifications of accreditation authorities, scheme owners, and other regulatory organizations. We aim to create auditing methods that allow you to maximize the value of every interaction each time.

Audit professionals have successfully acquired communications and systematic technology to expand the scope,change timing and cost effectiveness. These attempts have been mainly ad hoc, lacking an integrable theoretical positioning.

This paper reformulates the idea of the “remote audit” as the way through which internal auditors collect information and communication technology ICT with methodical procedures to congregate electronic evidence, interrelate with the auditee, and report on the correctness of financial data and internal controls, liberated of the physical location of the auditor.

WBS presents a research framework recognizing areas where ICT and robotic audit analytics authorize auditors to work remotely, reducing the cost of travel, discontinuation, and increasing effectiveness and analysis.