IDEA, Interactive Data Extraction and Analysis, is a Generalized Audit Software.
According to Caseware IDEA Inc's homepage
IDEA is used in 13 languages in over 90 countries,
by major accounting firms, federal, state, provincial and local government,
corporations in all industry sectors and by universities as a teaching tool.
History
IDEA has a long history.
The software originates with the Office of the Auditor General of Canada,
which developed a prototype in 1986.
The software was developed further by
Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants
and finally by Caseware IDEA Inc [1].
There were several IDEA DOS versions, last of which (5.0) was released in 1994.
They were popular e.g. among Supreme Audit Institutions [2],
many of which are using IDEA.
IDEA’s first Windows version (Interactive Data Extraction and Analysis for Windows)
was released in 1995.
It was not able to compete effectively with ACL for Windows,
which at that point of time had already its 3rd version for Windows.
Among other things IDEA was not so fast as ACL.
In addition, ACL was marketed aggressively, with the support of
the Institute of Internal Auditors.
However, IDEA was developed vigorously, and by 2002 the situation had changed.
In a survey of Internal Auditor Magazine (August 2002)
IDEA enjoyed highest overall satisfaction among users as regards CAATs software [3].
Development of IDEA remained strong after that, too,
and today IDEA has a lot of useful features that can't be found e.g. in ACL.
Functionality
IDEA is able to import different types of data files, including print files.
IDEA databases are created in import:
data of the original file is put in various types of fields.
User can browse through databases, search for desired records,
sort and index the records, extract records fulfilling certain criteria,
search for duplicates and gaps, summarize and stratify records and export files (e.g. to MS Excel).
These measures are supported by functions. Functions are also used
in making virtual fields, the contents of which are typically determined from other fields.
IDEA’s other functionality includes among other things pivot tables,
age analyses, Benford analyses, sampling, joining, appending databases, comparing databases,
and drilling down statistics and other results.
Information about processing by IDEA is logged securely, and it can be used e.g. in repeating runs.
IDEA's strenghts
In my mind IDEA’s strenghts are its great degree of compatibility with Windows standards and MS Office,
especially with MS Excel, and user friendliness.
IDEA's clarity is a big contribution to its overall user friendliness.
IDEA’s functions resemble those of Excel.
IDEA’s scripting language, IDEAScript, is compatible with Visual Basic, just as MS Excel’s.
Work that can be automated in this kind of software has been automated totally.
IDEA's Help functionality helps also others than technicians to be excellent in using IDEA.
More about IDEA
Read more about IDEA on
Caseware IDEA Inc's homepage.
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