Frequently Asked Questions
Can I see a demo of TeamMate Analytics in action? |
| Yes – click here to view a demo, and we’ll show you what TeamMate Analytics can do for your department. |
How is TeamMate Analytics going to save me time and money? |
| Data analytics tools, also known as Computer Aided Audit Tools or “CAATs”, are software tools that help Auditors to carry out their work. It is becoming near impossible to gain sufficient audit evidence and risk coverage using traditional manual audit methods such as sampling alone. Data analytics allow Auditors to carry out more work, in less time, with greater coverage, and with a whole host of other benefits. |
We already use data analysis software ‘XYZ’, why would we need TeamMate Analytics? |
| You might be surprised at how many of our customers already use (or used) another data analysis software package. They realized that the software they purchased was designed more for auditors that can also write code and be a DBA, not most auditors. The software they have isn’t right for their needs or is too complex for more than a few highly-trained specialists to use. As a result, their staff don’t use it or it is used only on a few audits, and they don’t get the benefits they expected. Often these organizations find they have too many licenses of the other software package. If you think that TeamMate Analytics might be better for your team, or TeamMate Analytics would complement and supplement your other tool, contact us. |
Will TeamMate Analytics make the audit team more effective? |
| Auditor input is essential to select which tests are appropriate for a given situation, define critical variables (e.g. materiality) and to interpret and further investigate the outputs of the tools. By testing 100% of the data population, your risk is reduced. TeamMate Analytics allows your entire staff to apply this to analytics on nearly all your audits. Furthermore, ‘the data guy’ can spend more time auditing and less time programming and more time on more involved data analysis projects. |
How much time will TeamMate Analytics save me? |
| Typically, we expect TeamMate Analytics to save an auditor 10-20 hours each month. Of course, this varies widely, depending on several factors. For example, in one location you could find that just one test using TeamMate Analytics takes 5 minutes, and eliminates 3 days of manual work. In another location, you may find that they simply can’t get the data you need electronically, so there would be less scope for TeamMate Analytics to save you time. |
I can’t get my data in Excel format; how can I use TeamMate Analytics? |
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While simply opening an Excel file is the easiest way to get your data, TeamMate Analytics has lots of different options for obtaining your data. Excel files, csv files – these can simply be opened in Excel Text files, print reports, PDFs – the Import Wizard tool in TeamMate Analytics allows you to easily convert these files into Excel format, even capturing data in headers, footers, totals, etc. Use your existing tools to extract data from system databases. Most organizations have many tools from SQL scripting tools to reporting tools that allow users to export data into Excel where TeamMate Analytics can be used without fear of corrupting production data or writing queries that will bring the system to its knees. If these tools are not available Excel’s native tools allow you to connect into various databases to pull data into Excel. For more advanced database access, including connectors to common systems, we recommend the use of Microsoft’s free Power Query add-in for Excel 2010/2013. This is already built into Excel 2016. TeamMate Analytics also includes a variety of data cleansing tools for tidying up your data, ready for analysis. |
Does TeamMate Analytics have an audit trail? |
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Yes, each tool stores a log of the tool that has been run, the date and time and the parameters selected. You can also optionally add a screenshot of the inputs to the log. Custom Modules, and a few of the other tools, will create a summary worksheet with the audit trail information, also with a screenshot of the inputs. |
How much data can TeamMate Analytics handle? |
| Excel worksheets are limited to 1,048,576 rows of data. While this is adequate for most data sets auditors analyze, TeamMate Analytics can process tens of millions of rows of data. Custom Modules can read data in from a spreadsheet or delimited files such as CSV files that could contain much more than one million rows of data. These large data sets are put into a database for processing. All of this occurs within the easy to use interface of TeamMate Analytics, so DBA and programming skills are still not required. |
We’re still using an old version of Excel/Windows, can I use TeamMate Analytics? |
| TeamMate Analytics supports all the versions of Excel and Windows that are still supported by Microsoft. |
Do I need the 32-bit or 64-bit version? |
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TeamMate Analytics has 2 versions, one for 32-bit and one for 64-bit. These are identical except for the versions of Excel they support. If you use the .exe installer for TeamMate Analytics, it will automatically install the correct version for your version of Excel. If you use a .msi installer, you will need to choose the correct version for your version of Excel (not Windows). For example, if you have 64-bit Windows but 32-bit Excel, you need 32-bit TeamMate Analytics. If you have 64-bit Windows and 64-bit Excel, you need 64-bit TeamMate Analytics. The advantages of using 64-bit over 32-bit Excel is the amount of data that can be processed, as 64-bit Excel can use all the memory on your PC, while 32-bit Excel is limited to 4GB (for Excel 2013/2016 from June 2016) or 2GB (for Excel 2010). This is still normally more than enough for most users. |
Do I need TeamMate+ Audit or TeamMate+ Controls software to be able to use TeamMate Analytics? |
| No, TeamMate Analytics can be used completely independently of TeamMate+ Audit or TeamMate+ Controls. Even if you have TeamMate+, you can still use TeamMate Analytics separately if you wish. |
Does TeamMate Analytics work with the TeamMate+? |
| TeamMate Analytics integrates with TeamMate+ and its Excel add-in and is compatible with all currently supported versions. |