Business Process Mining and Reconstruction for Financial Audits

In modern companies business processes and information systems are highly integrated and transactions are executed system based and automated. The data generated in the course of processing transactions commonly provides the basis for internal and external financial reporting. The financial statements are subject to audits due to regulatory requirements. Contemporary audit approaches take into account internal control frameworks over relevant business processes and underlying information systems, but they lack adequate audit procedures needed to handle voluminous data flows when business processes are highly integrated and automated. We face a discrepancy between an integrated and automated transaction processing on the one side and manual audit procedures on the other. Financial audits would be more effective and efficient if an audit approach with system based and automated procedures would be applied. This article describes how business process mining and reconstruction of mined processes can be used to overcome this discrepancy.