Overview

CaseWare, the global leader in audit analytics software, brings you IDEA Version Nine, the most user-friendly, high-performance audit analytics software available. By simplifying your workflow, IDEA increases the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of the audit process and makes sense of it all for consistent, high-performance audits.

IDEA makes light work of data import, analysis, and reporting.

IDEA provides a structured framework for performing organized, efficient, and reliable audits that meet or exceed professional standards. Its simple yet comprehensive methodology accommodates every aspect of data analysis, from importing raw data to reporting actionable results. Import, analyze, and report in a breeze. A simplified workflow refines your focus for a response time as impressive as your insight.

Import Effortlessly import an infinite number of records from virtually any source with step-by-step assistance.	Analyze Analyze every transaction. Run powerful queries and sophisticated calculations while maintaining data integrity.	Review and Report Review and communicate your results with reports, charts, pivot tables, and Project Overview graphics.
Organize Your Work Keep your work organized and easy to find in the Library.	Automate Your Tasks Automate your tasks for gains in productivity with IDEAScript and Visual Script.	Validate Your Activity Audit steps are automatically documented with Project Overview.

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Product Profile

Highlights

IDEA is a feature-rich analytics experience.

Smart look. Brilliant analytics.

Focused, integrated design pairs a fresh new look with great features for an audit analytics solution that's as easy to use as it is powerful. IDEA's user interface is designed specifically for data analytics. On the surface, better design brings improved usability for new and current users. Under the hood is a feature-rich audit experience built for optimum performance. IDEA's new ribbon interface is fast and straight-forward for maximum proficiency. It consolidates outstanding functionality, streamlining navigation, so you can discover over 100 tools and tasks easily. Everything you need to conduct an audit is organized logically in tabs for immediate productivity.

Universal file import that's down-to-earth.

When your data comes from different sources and in a variety of formats, data conversion can sometimes be a challenge. IDEA's Import Assistant, while easy to use, is powerful enough to handle countless transactions from a multitude of sources, including leading spreadsheet and database software, mid-range accounting programs, ERP systems, and legacy mainframes. Convert PDF, plain text (.txt), and print-report (.prn) files into databases with Report Reader. Select only the fields you need and preview before you convert for a fine-tuned result.

Analyze every transaction.

When your job is to identify and analyze risk, 100% data coverage makes all the difference. Whether you're assessing internal controls, conducting operational audits, or spotting potential fraud, IDEA ensures complete visibility of and timely access to every transaction that affects the business. Minimize risk and maximize your peace of mind. With a holistic view of data sets, you can quickly see the big picture, identify relationships and patterns, and explore transactional data in depth.

Get organized.

In any business environment, being organized and having well managed data means less distraction from the real work of analysis. IDEA's Library helps you quickly get what you need so you can focus on what's important, because the more time you spend looking for files, the less time you spend spotting patterns and anomalies. It provides convenient data access while keeping all your assets in order, including equations, import definitions, source files, macros, project summaries, and custom functions. Easily browse project files and view their properties, including status, size, and last modified date.

Stretched thin? Extend your expertise instead.

Delays can cost you money, so finding cost-efficient ways to conduct audits is critical. You've got what it takes, but how do you add value to the business when you're under constant pressure to do more with less? More isn't about working harder; it's about working smarter with the right tool designed specifically for the work you do and focusing on what matters most. A tool that streamlines your workflow so you have more time to add value to your audit. IDEA is the smart solution for auditors that need to analyze, detect, and deliver. It's designed to maximize your audit and revamps traditional techniques for a more sophisticated and forward-looking audit approach.

Communicate your results.

Reporting and presenting your findings is one of the most important steps in your workflow. Flawless analytics are of little use if you can't communicate the results. IDEA meets your data sharing and interoperability needs with a variety of file export options, including Microsoft® Access®, XML, Text, RTF (Microsoft® Word), PDF, and Microsoft® Excel®. IDEA's Report Assistant walks you through simple customization steps so you can set up, view, and print tabular reports and share the results with others. Project Overview, IDEA's interactive audit trail, provides a graphical or tabular history of your database actions that you can export, print, and share with management and other stakeholders.

Analysis

IDEA is simplified, streamlined analysis.

The analysis tab integrates the most commonly used tasks in data compilation, assembly and analysis for a streamlined experience that outperforms spreadsheets and other audit software.

Tasks.

The convenient Re-run task saves you time and effort in a click. Repeat the most recent action, change parameters to correct errors, or rerun a task with slight changes each time to explore what-if scenarios and optimize decision making.

Extract.

Extract tasks help you narrow down your analysis and retrieve data that satisfies specific criteria. Reveal risky transactions and spot big spenders (Top Records). Extract multiple databases from one large database based on a key value such as branch number (Key Value). Identify transactions that occurred after the year end cutoff date (Direct Extraction).

Explore.

Explore tasks help you delve into your data to spot oddities and outliers. Forecast and extrapolate with predictive analysis tasks, including Correlation, Trend Analysis, and Time Series. Detect gaps and duplicates in sequenced data such as invoice numbers. Test digits for deviance with a series of fraud detecting tasks based on Benford's Law.

The Analysis tab of the IDEA ribbon

Categorize.

Categorize tasks help you uncover meaning in seemingly disparate data elements. Discover commonalities and anomalies by aging Accounts Receivable data. Stratify your data to create profiles and investigate deviations from expected trends. Summarize payments by supplier to view total payment amounts.

Relate.

Relate tasks help you join, append, and compare databases. Match databases with one or more common fields such as purchase order number. Combine separate vendor and customer tables to check for errant accounts. Match payroll and employee tables to reveal unmatched records and ghost employees.

Sample.

When testing an entire population is impractical or uneconomical, Sample tasks help you estimate characteristics of the whole based on a subset. Save time and effort in calculating sample size, evaluating results, and drawing statistically valid conclusions.

Time-Savers

IDEA is time-saving technology.

Time is money. These features save you both.

Validate and automate with Project Overview.

In highly-regulated and data-intensive environments, good record keeping is critical. But with so much to do and little time to do it, validating your audit activity can be a daunting task.

 

Project Overview, IDEA's interactive audit trail, provides a graphical or tabular history of the actions you perform on databases within a project. The process is automatic, so there's no need to laboriously reconstruct chains of steps for documents and records. Simply export or print overviews to make your audit process more visible to management and other stakeholders.

 

But there's more to Project Overview than meets the eye. It's also a time-saving automation engine that lets you save ad-hoc tasks and complex repetitions as IDEAScript macros that you can tweak and reuse.

 

Project Overview depicting a typical process pathway in Graphic mode.

 

Macros made easy.

Macros are used in a variety of applications to automate tasks performed frequently, but the scripting effort and programming knowledge required can deter many users from experiencing their full potential.

 

With Visual Script, you can save valuable time by automating tasks with minimal effort and without programming expertise. In the Visual Script Editor, IDEA's macro builder, tasks are represented by icons and organized by type. To build a macro, you simply drag one or more icons into the Step Process window in the desired order.

 

When you're ready to program more sophisticated macros, there's IDEAScript, an advanced scripting language for more innovative endeavours like integrating IDEA with other OLE-enabled programs and creating interactive audit systems with custom dialog and message boxes.

 

Find the needle with Field Statistics.

IDEA's Field Statistics property provides a summary of the statistical values and distribution characteristics for each numeric, date, and time data field in a database. Both a statistical snapshot and a data reconciliation tool, it instantly shrinks the data haystack, making it easier to reconcile totals, inspect value ranges, and identify errors.

 

• At a glance, spot anomalies such as negative-value inventory items, zero-value payments, and after-date transactions.
• In a click, reveal records behind any suspicious value.
• With ease, isolate and save questionable records to a separate database for later inspection.

Solutions

IDEA is built for audit, but versatile.

Probably the best kept secret is IDEA's application across a variety of disciplines and industries,
including Internal and External Audit, Finance, Sales, and Information Technology.

• Auditing Statements with IDEA
• Fraud
• Internal Auditing with IDEA
• Government Auditing with IDEA
• Litigation
• Tax Compliance

Success Stories

IDEA inspires success.

Below is a sampling of IDEA success stories. To view all stories, click Open All on the right. Click the title to see a particular story.

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Research Reports