To audit and reconcile to a high level of accuracy you need to collect the data associated with the thing you want to audit, verify the data collected (so you are sure it is what it purports to be) and then transform that data into something that you can easily work with, or that will provide insights that the original data would not readily provide. In a sense this is the other half of Salitix’s USP, our skill and experience in identifying, extracting (and verifying) and then transforming data for reconciliation, the other being our commercial audit experience, i.e. our ability to understand what the trade is supposed to achieve…
The glory goes to the audit teams who find the money, or defend the high-profile claim. But the real work begins long before there is any glory in sight. It starts with an experienced team of computer scientists, data analysts, SQL engineers and software developers who really understand how an accounting system works, both legacy and new, who write the code to get a required extract, who develop the routines to enable seamless ETL’s and create interfaces that allow an auditor to interrogate data to deliver the reconciled output.
When a supplier agrees to work with Salitix, they are also obtaining a health check on their systems, their data and way of working – which often reveals useful insights that can be of value to the business in real time. Not only this, but the supplier is also creating a high quality repository for specific kinds of data that can and normally are, lost to the business, but which are crucial for defending the claims they might receive, or for conducting their own sales audit reconciliation.
Nobody wants to dwell on the past but having your past under your control and at your fingertips is certainly good business practice when you’re serious about the future.