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Auditing Oracle eBusiness Suite Financials
Oracle Auditing Tips
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Auditing Oracle eBusiness suite
applications is a challenge from both a technical and
operational perspective.
The Oracle E-Business Suite is one
of the most complete, integrated business intelligence systems
in the world. It provides an end-to-end view across all lines
of business and drive performance with consistent financial and
operational information. This suite of applications provides
every employee with relevant, complete information tailored to
their role. E-Business Suite is a highly adaptable global
business platform, that operates globally while complying
locally.
This great depth and breadth of capability also results in a
system that is very large and complex. Each of the over 70
module within the E-Business Suite can have hundreds of
different settings and thousands of different ways to configure.
No part of the design, implementation, or use of the system
should be taken lightly.
The goal of ERP solutions is to
provide an off-the-shelf solution to manage all aspects of a
business, everything from manufacturing and inventory to complex
financial reporting.
As such, these ERP packages are
extremely sophisticated, consisting of millions of lines of
computer code and tens of thousands of online screens and
reports. When an organization makes a commitment to move their
business processes into an ERP package they make a conscious
decision to change the way that they do business to accommodate
the software.
Hence, no two implementations of
Oracle Financials will be exactly alike, and it is the challenge
of the Oracle forensics auditor to fully understand the
interface between the functional operations and their customized
online application.
Inside Oracle eBusiness Suite
financial auditing
Auditing Oracle Financials
requires an intimate knowledge of Oracle at several levels:
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The database layer - An auditor must
understand the Oracle schema tables where the relevant financial data is
stored, and be able to track changes over time using tools such as Oracle
LogMiner.
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The applications layer - The auditor
must be familiar with the functional inputs within all modules of Oracle
Financials (e.g. AR, AP. GL), and well as external modules that feed data to
the Financials component (e.g. INV, MFG). To effectively track the
evolution of financial statements, the auditor must know the specific screen
names and their interfaces to the underlying database structure.
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The functional layer - It is not
uncommon to have external systems which utilize data from Oracle Financials,
and the auditor must be able to track-backwards from the audited financial
statements, reconstituting the evolution of the document over time.
To understand the forensics
involved in a financials audit, it's due diligence to engage
professional auditors with qualifications in accounting
(normally a licensed CPA) who are vendor certified in Oracle
eBusiness suite.
Management due diligence for any
Oracle eBusiness Suite implementation audits in the proper
allocation of qualified outside experts. It can be considered
misfeasance not to carefully vet all outside auditors, and may
corporations avoid risk by using companies that publish
verifiable resumes.
| If you need professional Oracle
Financials audits by independent professions, BC offers a full range of
Oracle certified experts. |
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Sample credentials and qualifications:
Donald K. Burleson has a Masters Degree in Business Administration
with a concentration in Information Systems from the University of New Mexico.
He has been a full-time database administrator since 1983, serving as a database
architect, database administrator and management consultant for many Fortune 50
corporations. He is a Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) and a Certified
Systems Professional (CSP), with a Certificate in Data Processing (CDP) issued
by the Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals (ICCP).
He is also am the author of more than 30 books on database technology and
was chosen by Oracle Press to write five of their "officially authorized"
books on Oracle technology, including the Oracle 10g Application Server
Administration Handbook.
He has also served as adjunct professor of Information Systems,
teaching more than 50 courses in database and project management in MBA programs
for several major universities. He has also published more than 100
articles for academic journals and mainstream technology magazines including
Computerworld, Software magazine the the Journal of Information & Management.
John Hays
is an MBA, an Oracle Certified Master in Oracle Applications 11i and a licensed
Certified Public Accountant (CPA) with over a decade working for Oracle
corporation in Oracle Applications, working with documentation, training and
Oracle eBusiness Suite best practices.
John is an Oracle Certified Professional
(OCP) with a concentration in Oracle 11i. John authored components of the
official Oracle Applications documentation and specializes in Oracle
Applications training and financials consulting for Oracle eBusiness suite.
