Auditing spreadsheets: With or without a tool?

TL;DR

This study evaluates the effectiveness of the PerfectXL spreadsheet tool, which visualizes dependencies and identifies errors, showing that visualization significantly aids auditors in conducting more effective and efficient spreadsheet audits.

Contribution

It provides an empirical assessment of PerfectXL's visualization and risk features, highlighting the tool's impact on audit efficiency and effectiveness.

Findings

Visualization is highly supportive for auditors.

Risk features are of lesser perceived value.

Spreadsheet tools improve audit efficiency.

Abstract

Spreadsheets are known to be error-prone. Over the last decade, research has been done to determine the causes of the high rate of errors in spreadsheets. This paper examines the added value of a spreadsheet tool (PerfectXL) that visualizes spreadsheet dependencies and determines possible errors in spreadsheets by defining risk areas based on previous work. This paper will firstly discuss the most common mistakes in spreadsheets. Then we will summarize research on spreadsheet tools, focussing on the PerfectXL tool. To determine the perceptions of the usefulness of a spreadsheet tool in general and the PerfectXL tool in particular, we have shown the functionality of PerfectXL to several auditors and have also interviewed them. The results of these interviews indicate that spreadsheet tools support a more effective and efficient audit of spreadsheets; the visualization feature in particular is mentioned by the auditors as being highly supportive for their audit task, whereas the risk feature was deemed of lesser value.