The Audit Pain We Solve
Internal audit and SOX programs run on manual data movement. An auditor emails a control owner for evidence. The owner exports a report and sends a screenshot. The auditor re-keys it into a work paper, pulls a sample of 25, re-performs the control by hand, and assembles tickmarks. Multiply that across hundreds of controls and a fixed year-end calendar, and most of the team's hours go to collecting and re-formatting data rather than evaluating risk.
The cost is more than hours. Sample-based testing of 25 items leaves the other thousands unexamined. Evidence requested by email arrives late and stalls the close of an audit. Exceptions surface at year-end, when they are most expensive to remediate. Work papers are inconsistent because every auditor formats them differently. And the senior people you hired for judgment spend their busy season doing data entry.
Audit automation done right pulls the full population, runs the control test, flags the exceptions, and assembles the evidence, on a schedule, into your GRC tooling. It does not replace your auditors' judgment or their independence. It removes the manual gathering and re-performance that keep them from the work only they can do. It requires a partner who understands both the controls and the systems they live in.
What We Automate
A working audit automation pipeline has six parts. We deliver them integrated, around your GRC tooling and your existing systems.
Evidence Collection
Reports, access lists, journal-entry populations, and reconciliations pulled directly from source systems on a schedule. No more emailing control owners for screenshots that arrive late and re-keying them by hand.
Control Testing
The test encoded as a rule and run against the full population, not a sample of 25. Three-way-match exceptions, journal-entry thresholds, approval-evidence checks. The control runs the same way every time, fully documented.
Segregation-of-Duties Testing
Actual role and access assignments read from your ERP and applications, then tested against your conflict matrix. Real SoD conflicts and toxic combinations surfaced with full supporting detail, not inferred from a spreadsheet.
Work Paper Assembly
Standardized work papers populated automatically: population, test steps, results, exceptions, and tickmarks. Consistent formatting across the whole program, with the source evidence linked, so review is faster and cleaner.
Continuous Monitoring
For controls that suit it, the test runs nightly, weekly, or monthly against the full population and surfaces exceptions as they arise, instead of at year-end. Audit shifts from backward-looking sample to early warning.
GRC and System Integration
Populated tests, collected evidence, and exception data fed into AuditBoard, Workiva, a SOX module, or your tracker. API-based where supported, RPA-based where it is not. Your GRC platform stays the system of record.
What Audit Automation Done Right Delivers
The outcomes below reflect what audit and compliance teams typically see in the first cycle after automating a control set. They are what we engineer toward, not a promise; your actuals depend on the controls you start with, your source-system access, and the state of the underlying data.
Full-population testing instead of small samples
Controls run against every transaction, not a sample of 25. Assurance gets stronger and exceptions that a sample would have missed become visible.
A much lighter evidence-gathering burden
Evidence is pulled from source systems automatically. The email-and-screenshot cycle largely disappears, and control owners get their time back too.
Exceptions caught early, not at year-end
Continuous monitoring surfaces control failures as they happen, so remediation starts months earlier and the year-end crunch shrinks.
Consistent, review-ready work papers
Standardized, auto-populated work papers with linked evidence make review faster, external-audit reliance easier, and the whole program more defensible.
How This Differs from a GRC Platform Alone
If you came here comparing GRC and audit-management platforms, you are weighing systems of record. They are valuable for organizing controls, tracking status, and storing evidence. But they do not pull the evidence from your source systems or run the control tests for you; that work still lands on the audit team. That gap is exactly what we build for: the automation that feeds the platform, not the platform itself. Here is the honest comparison.
| Approach | Best Fit | Cost Model | What It Does for Testing |
|---|---|---|---|
| GRC / Audit Platform | Organizing controls, tracking status, storing evidence | Annual license per module or seat | Holds the results. Your team still gathers evidence and runs the tests. |
| Big-4 / Co-Source | Enterprise programs, capacity gaps | Hourly or fixed engagement, often six figures | People do the testing manually. The cost recurs every cycle. |
| DIY Scripts and Macros | A motivated analyst on one or two controls | Internal time, hidden maintenance cost | Works until it breaks or its author leaves. Rarely documented or tested. |
| Forge RPA Services | Internal audit and SOX teams with high-volume, repeatable control testing | Fixed-fee project, scoped by control set | Automates collection and full-population testing, fed into your platform. You own it. |
GRC / Audit Platform
- Best Fit
- Organizing controls, storing evidence
- Cost Model
- Annual license per module or seat
- Testing
- Holds results; your team still tests
Big-4 / Co-Source
- Best Fit
- Enterprise programs, capacity gaps
- Cost Model
- Hourly or fixed, often six figures
- Testing
- Manual, and the cost recurs each cycle
DIY Scripts and Macros
- Best Fit
- A motivated analyst on a few controls
- Cost Model
- Internal time, hidden maintenance
- Testing
- Breaks when its author leaves
Forge RPA Services
- Best Fit
- Internal audit and SOX teams with repeatable testing
- Cost Model
- Fixed-fee project, scoped by control set
- Testing
- Automated full-population, fed to your platform. You own it.
How the Engagement Runs
Discovery and Walkthroughs
Two-to-three-week pass. Walk through the target controls, document the test logic and evidence sources, inventory the systems and access required, and confirm GRC-tooling fit. Output is a fixed-scope SOW with a control-by-control plan.
Build
Evidence collection, test logic, and work paper assembly built and tested against a known period. Weekly demo cadence. We write tests as we build, not at the end. You see working pieces every Friday.
Validation and Cutover
Run the automation against a closed period and reconcile to the manual results, then parallel-run for a cycle. Cutover is gated on your audit team signing off, not on a project calendar. Independence and review stay with your team.
Warranty and Hypercare
30-day defect warranty after cutover. Hourly support after that as you need it. We do not require a retainer to take a support ticket.
Who You're Working With
Three decades in financial operations and controllership stand behind this work: the close, reconciliations, internal controls, and the audits, internal and external, that test them. We have sat on both sides of the evidence request, we know which controls are genuinely automatable and which need judgment, and we know which "audit automation" promises survive contact with a real SOX program and a real external auditor.
The build itself uses Python, API-based integration to your ERP and applications where supported, RPA bots that drive existing screens where it is not, and feeds into your GRC tooling. The work is led by a CPA-trained finance veteran, documented to support auditor reliance, and handed over with the code. You own everything we build.
Common Audit Automation Questions
What is audit automation? +
Audit automation replaces the manual evidence-gathering and sample-testing that consume an internal audit or SOX program with software and bots that pull populations, run the test logic, and assemble work papers. Instead of an auditor emailing for screenshots and re-performing a control on a 25-item sample, the automation extracts the full population from the source system, applies the control test, flags the exceptions, and packages the evidence. The auditor spends time on judgment and exceptions, not on collecting and re-keying data.
What audit and SOX work can actually be automated? +
The high-volume, rules-based parts. Evidence collection (pulling reports, access lists, journal-entry populations, reconciliations). Control testing where the test is a defined rule (three-way-match exceptions, segregation-of-duties conflicts, journal-entry thresholds, terminated-user access). Work paper assembly and tickmark population. Status tracking across the audit calendar. What stays human is the judgment: scoping, risk assessment, evaluating a control's design, and concluding. We automate the data movement so the judgment gets more attention, not less.
How does control testing automation work? +
We encode the control test as a rule and run it against the full population from the source system rather than a manual sample. A segregation-of-duties test reads the actual role assignments and flags real conflicts. A journal-entry control tests every entry against your thresholds and approval criteria, not a sample of 25. The output is an exception list with full supporting detail, plus the assembled evidence. You move from sample-based assurance toward full-population testing, which is both stronger and faster once it is built.
Does this replace our GRC platform or our auditors? +
Neither. If you run a GRC platform such as AuditBoard, Workiva, or a SOX module, we automate the feeds into it: populated tests, collected evidence, and exception data, so the platform stays the system of record and your team stops hand-loading it. And we do not replace auditors; we remove the data-gathering and re-performance that keep them from the judgment work. The control conclusion stays with your audit team. Independence and review responsibilities are unchanged.
What is continuous monitoring, and how is it different from periodic testing? +
Periodic testing checks a control once a quarter or once a year on a sample. Continuous monitoring runs the same control test automatically on a schedule (nightly, weekly, monthly) against the full population, and surfaces exceptions as they arise instead of at year-end. For the controls that suit it, continuous monitoring turns audit from a backward-looking sample into an early-warning system, and dramatically reduces the year-end crunch. We build it for the controls where it adds value and leave the rest on a periodic cadence.
How long does an audit automation engagement take? +
We scope it by control set, not as an open-ended program. A focused first-pass automating evidence collection and testing for a defined group of controls typically delivers a working pipeline in 8 to 12 weeks: discovery and control walkthroughs up front, test-logic build and source-system integration in the middle, then validation against a known period, parallel running, and a 30-day defect warranty. We start with the highest-volume, most repeatable controls and expand from there.
Related Services
Audit automation draws on the same engagements below. Strong controls testing depends on understanding how the underlying processes really run, and on the evidence those processes produce.
Process Mining
See how a controlled process actually executes, including the workarounds and exceptions that controls testing needs to account for. Real event data, not the documented ideal.
Learn More →Accounts Payable Automation
A well-controlled AP pipeline produces clean, structured approval and match evidence, which makes the related controls far easier to test automatically.
Learn More →Automation Assessment
Data-driven scoring across the finance and compliance surface. Where you want a ranked, defensible view of which controls and processes to automate first.
Learn More →Industries We Serve for Audit Automation
Control environments look different in every industry. The regulatory regime, the control density, and the systems vary by sector. Here is how we approach audit automation in each.
Healthcare Finance
Multi-entity control environments with high transaction volume and access-governance complexity.
Oil and Gas
JIB and AFE controls, revenue and joint-interest testing, and operator and non-operator evidence.
Utilities
Regulated controls with project-coded testing and rate-case-supporting evidence requirements.
Insurance
Statutory-reporting controls, reserve testing, and claims-process control evidence.
Small and Growing Businesses
Right-sized control testing for teams facing their first SOX readiness or audit without a large internal audit function.
More Industries
Manufacturing, transportation, restaurants and multi-unit, professional services. See the full overview.
Ready to Automate Evidence Collection and Control Testing?
Book a free 30-minute discovery call. We will walk through your control set, where the manual testing hours go, and which controls are the fastest wins to automate. You leave with a clear picture even if we never work together.