Businesses that have already shifted from manual financial statement reviews to automated platforms have not only seen huge time savings – they’ve also reduced risk, improved accuracy and staff engagement, and allowed their teams to work more strategically. 

It’s a smart move, considering financial statements have become increasingly complex and expanded by 46% in length in the past five years; time spent on manual reviews is no longer efficient or sustainable.

Cutting reviewing time in half

Accounting firm HLB Mann Judd Perth reviews more than 300 sets of financial statements annually, including many half-yearly reports, says audit manager Noah Syed CA. It’s a huge workload for the team, which spends up to 1200 hours a year reviewing first drafts.

Since switching to Caseware Validate, they have slashed that time by 50%, with the AI-driven platform performing thousands of accuracy checks in seconds, cross-referencing data points for consistency, accuracy and compliance. It has brought significant time savings on first drafts and 40–50% efficiencies on subsequent drafts.

It is a vast improvement on the first steps the team took towards automation – a tool developed as an Excel add-in, which occasionally crashed and caused data loss. It also lacked functionality to perform half-yearly reviews and had optical character recognition (OCR) inconsistencies, which required manual corrections.

“You’d spend significant time doing all the checks and suddenly Excel would freeze,” Syed recalls. “And then you’d have to force close it, reopen it and all your work would be gone.” 

Versions are automatically updated

Another challenge that has been addressed is the need to bring forward checks and references manually, allowing auditors to maintain consistency across different versions of financial statements. 

“If you check one set of financials, then all of your casting and references move on to the next set, which means that with any subsequent versions it’s very quick because Caseware Validate picks up everything and rolls it forward,” Syed explains.

Not only that, but any team member can monitor or review the data. 

“I think the beauty of Caseware Validate is in the first statement version as all the casting and referencing and prior-year references are handled by the software,” Syed says. “A manager and senior can focus on the key risk areas, as well as the compliance and completeness of disclosures. This really improves both the quality and efficiency of our financial statement reviews.”

But, best of all, he says, switching to an AI platform means skilled professionals no longer need to spend their time rechecking numbers, rather than focusing on more strategic tasks such as analysis and decision making.

“Caseware Validate makes the process of checking the accuracy of financial statements more efficient and of higher quality, which in turn allows the user to focus on the higher-level issues in their review,” says Syed. 

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As a CA ANZ member, you can access exclusive benefits on Caseware Validate, including a 14-day free trial and 10% discount on your first year. Learn more about Caseware Validate and this special offer by visiting: insights.caseware.com/caseware-validate-ai-powered-financial-statement-validation