Class Overview
Why is this important?
Through practical exercises, students will gain hands-on experience in extracting, transforming, and analyzing P-card transaction data, applying forensic audit techniques, and interpreting the results to assess compliance with internal controls. The case study also emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions and applying appropriate data analytics techniques, which are crucial skills for internal auditors.
What will we do?
This class provides an in-depth exploration of auditing purchasing card (P-card) transactions at Oklahoma State University (OSU) with a focus on developing an analytical mindset. Students will work through a series of tasks that emphasize critical aspects of data analysis, including understanding P-card guidelines, preparing data for analysis, and using analytical tools to detect potential internal control violations or fraudulent transactions.
How this relates to other classes:
Building on the prior class's introduction to the F-score for assessing the risk of material misstatements, this class takes a more focused approach by applying data analytics techniques to a specific audit scenario: auditing P-card transactions at Oklahoma State University. While the F-score helped students understand how to quantify misstatement risk using financial data, this class extends those analytical skills to the operational side, where students will evaluate internal controls and identify potential fraudulent or non-compliant transactions. Both classes emphasize the importance of using structured data and analytics to inform auditing decisions, but here students gain practical experience in transforming raw transaction data and applying forensic techniques to real-world cases.
Materials and Preparation
Class Materials
- Case: Analytics_mindset_case_studies_PCard
- Slides: PowerPoint or PDF
- Data:
- Analytics Tools: Alteryx, Git and GitHub
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Suggested Pre-Class Preparation
- In the last class, we discussed the PCard Case, so the case should be familiar, and be used as a reference in this class.
- In this class we will discuss the ETL, and undertake the first two analyses using Alteryx (Tasks 4 and 5).
- Task 4 (starting page 15) is pre-configured in the workflow and helps us gain an understanding of the data on 24 different dimensions.
- Task 5 (starting page 19) is the internal control tests, and is not configured in the workflow, students will need to configure this part of the workflow.
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Class Plan
- This will be the first of a two-part class undertaking and examining transaction analytics. In this particular case we will examine links between credit card expenditures and various internal controls.
- The class is heavily labs orientated with tasks to be performed which will largely be performed and then discussed in discussion Teams ending in a brief presentation of findings.