Information Technology and Internal Controls over Financial Reporting: the audit cycle
The Information Technology Controls (ITC) have a great influence on the reliability of financial reporting. They are part of Internal Controls over Financial Reporting (ICFR) but the area of Information Technology is often not well integrated and coordinated with the traditional Internal Controls, in absence of a compulsory Framework. A survey was conducted on a sample of companies listed on the Italian Stock Exchange. The results of this research offer an improvement of the Internal Control over Financial Reporting framework that consider the Information Technology peculiarities and specifies some conditions for their utility in relation to the main phases the audit cycle (scoping, planning, risk assessment, documentation, evaluation, reporting).
Azzali S., Mazza T. (2011), La valutazione degli Information Technology Controls nell’ambito di sistemi di controllo interno: I risultati di una ricerca empirica, Management Control, 3, pp. 91-118, Doi: 10.3280/MACO2011-003005
