AppZen vs. AuditBoard

AppZen is fantastic software with many features that help control finances and effectively manage company resources; it generates excellent reports. It is well worth it.

Auditboard is especially useful for SOX control testing. It is very convenient having all our information on a single platform. It is easy to communicate PBC requests to clients, store control testing working papers for review, communicate deficiencies and build dashboards to provide visual statistics. Situations where it might not be useful are for organizations that are smaller in size where the templates don't fit well with their internal audit/controls program. There is a significant amount of testing required before using the platform, and adapting working papers to fit in well with AuditBoard

Incentivized

• AuditBoard allows real-time collaboration between control and business owners and auditors.
• AuditBoard has a lot of fantastic training sessions and office hours to help users make the most of the product.
• AuditBoard has great customer service personnel to answer questions and troubleshoot any issues.

Incentivized

• We used to perform our Risk Control Analysis (RCA) for each audit's planning in an Excel spreadsheet. Once we purchased the Risk Oversight module, AuditBoard helped us convert the RCA to a system function rather than a spreadsheet. At first, we lost some of the functionality the spreadsheet provided, but AuditBoard did continue to help us build and work towards a solution more similar to what we previously had. Though happy with it, it's still not perfect. As one example, I'd like to be able to link actual Ops Audit work steps that cover the risk and controls being outlined in the RCA, rather than just adding a comment to state which steps cover them. More of a preference, I suppose.
• I also had demoed their beta Resources and Scheduling module, but it didn't have enough functionality at the time to work for how we put the quarterly Internal Audit schedule together (using Excel). One thing I recall was that you couldn't pull in SOX controls or non-chargeable work (such as education or administration) to auditor's schedules; it was meant to schedule the Ops Audits only. It is possible they have already fixed or improved this; I just haven't seen the updated version.

Incentivized

It works very quickly and by analyzing databases through a quantitative understanding of financial processes.

I remember there were a lot of sync issues when I used the internally developed software, but that's probably because a few people were working on the same project at the same time. I have not come across this issue in AuditBoard

Incentivized

• Hard to quantify. It was cheaper than the tool we had and we were able to get rid of standalone tool for surveys. overall, just better user experience for all.

Incentivized