Success story

Save up to 50% time on Test of Details and Financial Statement Reviews with DataSnipper

Company
Baker Tilly Netherlands
Employees
970
Industry
External Audit

With more than 37,000 team members in 148 territories, Baker Tilly provides a broad range of innovative and individual advisory services in the areas of Audit & Assurance, Tax, Legal and Consulting worldwide.​

This success story has been created in collaboration with Baker Tilly Netherlands. Baker Tilly Netherlands employs 970 specialists in twelve different locations and is one of the largest partner-managed advisory firms in the country.

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Challenge

The specialists at Baker Tilly Netherlands face a high volume of repetitive tasks and manual checks while conducting extensive annual audit procedures. Their work involved the tedious process of opening, extracting, and reconciling data from approximately 200 documents on dual screens or even hard copies. Additionally, manual Tick and Tie tasks for Financial Statement reviews, requiring line-by-line verification for accuracy and consistency, were particularly time-consuming. DataSnipper was a pivotal solution in streamlining these audit processes for efficiency and simplicity.​

It's amazing to see how quickly DataSnipper has become a part of our everyday work. Auditors can be conservative; Despite this, the fact that it's so widely embraced, and its effectiveness recognized really shows how good DataSnipper is. It's embraced by everyone from assistants to partners, and there are really few applications we can say that about.​

Leon Dieleman, Audit Supervisor at Baker Tilly

Solution

The implementation of DataSnipper at Baker Tilly Netherlands in February 2022 marked a move towards enhanced efficiency in workpaper preparation and audit processes. The tool quickly became an integral part of daily procedures, with features like Document Matching and Version Comparison proving especially beneficial.​

Key features of the DataSnipper Platform like Document Matching, Text Snip, Validation Snip and Exception Snip have been instrumental improving workflow efficiencies. DataSnipper extracts data from source documents and automatically reconciles it with sample data within the Excel workbook. This as result cuts down time and effort needed to conduct audit procedures like Test of Details. The platform’s ability to create a robust audit trail with cross-referencing is particularly beneficial as it eliminates the need for extensive searches for supporting evidence and reduces the time spent on communication loops between reviewers and preparers.​

The Financial Statement Suite (FSS) has also played a critical role in improving efficiencies and creating time-savings during Financial Statement Reviews for audit professionals at Baker Tilly Netherlands. The FSS has automated previously manual processes of spotting and verifying version changes in Financial Reports. Verifying Mathematical Accuracy automatically analyzes the document and adds suggestions of valid totals and errors. The auditor then simply must go through the document to review and validate by placing tick marks. With Version Comparison, DataSnipper highlights every change between two financial statements. Users can simply export the findings to an Excel workbook as Snips and easily investigate what was removed or included in the new version.​

​Measurable Impact​

The introduction of DataSnipper to Baker Tilly NL has yielded incredible benefits in terms of time savings and efficiencies.​

  • Team members have observed 40-50% time savings while conducting a regular Test of Details using Document Matching and Snips on DataSnipper.​
  • The Financial Statement Suite has reduced Tick and Tie procedures from 8 hours to 2, achieving 75%-time savings per review by automating verification of accuracy and consistency.​
  • Reviewing Financial Statements for version changes has also become an effortless process with the Version Comparison feature. Manual verification of changes that once took a full day is now automated with the Financial Statement Suite, achieving a 60-70% time savings while ensuring consistent quality and accuracy.
Baker Tilly Netherlands

Time saved

Regularly conducted procedures like Test of Details is now conducted 50% faster. Time is saved on repetitive audit tasks with intelligent automation.

Simplified reviews​

Powerful document trails with cross-referencing in Excel simplifies the review process for Supervisors and Partners.

Improved quality​

Automating tedious tasks frees up time to spend on analyzing high-risk areas, leading to overall higher audit quality.

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