Do accounts auditors need to have technical programming skills and if so, which ones?
Author: Sheo Shankar Jha Post Date: 20 Jul 2024 Accounts auditors need to have different skill sets related to accounting, finance and above all the critical thinking ability to arrive at the right solution in the hours of need. While technical programming skills are not desirable for discharging their roles, exposure to such skill sets could strengthen their working abilities.
However, there are a lot of skills that need to be mastered to be ahead of others while doing the role of an auditor. The following points will make them competent as an efficient editor - 1) Effective Communication Skills - This attribute is important for explaining technical aspects to non-technical stakeholders, summarising reports and presenting findings to the core issues. 2) Well-versed in Project Management - The auditors must be able to handle multi-tasking projects simultaneously to enhance their skill sets. Regular interaction with their bosses and subordinates can lead to the development of a strong team. 3) An appetite for learning the tools of Information Technology - Keeping oneself updated in the Information system will further improve the auditor's skill sets. 4) An ability to analyse the issues rationally - This is an important attribute to reach the core issue. If the auditors can review complex systems, identify potential risks and implement the right suggestions to the management, they can themselves prove to be the blue-eyed boys before the management.
Author: DR.N.V. Srinivasa Rao Post Date: 06 Nov 2023 Even though I am not an accounts professional, I have experience in auditing account books in our organisation as a part of my duty. I have a friend who is an account professional and conducted many audits for various organisations. We interact very often and discuss various issues.
In my opinion, technical programming skills are not essential for accounts and finance auditors. Visual Basic Applications ( VBA), and Structured Query Language (SQL) are the two programs that are very remotely useful for an account auditor.
These auditors should have some working knowledge of computers. Excel, Word, and PPT are handy for reporting and managing their work. These can be learned easily and many professionals know these. ERP and SAP are required for professionals and can be learned easily while carrying out their jobs. MATLAB may be useful for carrying out various complex numeric calculations. One can learn this object-oriented programming language for fast numeric calculations during the audit.
Any person who wants to go for an accounting auditor job should have a basic qualification in accounts and should have some work experience in accounts and finance fields. Working knowledge of computers and laptops is essential. Advanced technical knowledge is not a must, I feel.
Author: Ajay Gupta Post Date: 26 Nov 2023 There is no such requirement of having programming skills for accounts auditor jobs but in the age of technical advancement people with such skills will always have an advantage. Knowing programming like Python can help auditors in analyzing data more efficiently which helps in giving better insights to the auditor. Hence, if you can learn programming skills related to Python and SQL then it will surely benefit you in this area of expertise.