Related papers: Controlling the Information Flow in Spreadsheets
The use of uncontrolled financial spreadsheets can expose organizations to unacceptable business and compliance risks, including errors in the financial reporting process, spreadsheet misuse and fraud, or even significant operational…
Spreadsheets provide many of the key links between information systems, closing the gap between business needs and the capability of central systems. Recent regulations have brought these vulnerable parts of information supply chains into…
Past studies show that only a small percent of organizations implement and enforce formal rules or informal guidelines for the designing, testing, documenting, using, modifying, sharing and archiving of spreadsheet models. Due to lack of…
There have been many articles and mishaps published about the risks of uncontrolled spreadsheets in today's business environment, including non-compliance, operational risk, errors, and fraud all leading to significant loss events.…
Most organizations today use spreadsheets in some form or another to support critical business processes. However the financial resources, and developmental rigor dedicated to them are often minor in comparison to other enterprise…
The wealth of functionality in the Excel software package means it can go beyond use as a static evaluator of predefined cell formulae, to be used actively in manipulating and transforming data. Due to human error it is impossible to ensure…
Few major commercial or economic decisions are made today which are not underpinned by analysis using spreadsheets. It is virtually impossible to avoid making mistakes during their drafting and some of these errors remain, unseen and…
A huge amount of data is everyday managed in large organizations in many critical business sectors with the support of spreadsheet applications. The process of elaborating spreadsheet data is often performed in a distributed, collaborative…
Spreadsheets in financial markets are frequently used as database, calculator and reporting application combined. This paper describes an alternative approach in which spreadsheet design and database technology have been brought together in…
Because spreadsheets have a large and growing importance in real-world work, their contents need to be controlled and validated. Generally spreadsheets have been difficult to verify, since data and executable information are stored…
Spreadsheets are ubiquitous, heavily relied on throughout vast swathes of finance, commerce, industry, academia and Government. They are also acknowledged to be extraordinarily and unacceptably prone to error. If these two points are…
We present a pragmatic method for management of risks that arise due to spreadsheet use in large organizations. We combine peer-review, tool-assisted evaluation and other pre-existing approaches into a single organization-wide approach that…
This paper maintains that archiving has been overlooked as a key spreadsheet internal control. The case of failed Jamaican commercial banks demonstrates how poor archiving can lead to weaknesses in spreadsheet control that contribute to…
This paper discusses spreadsheets documentation and new means to achieve this end by using Excel's built-in "Comment" function. By structuring comments, they can be used as an essential tool to fully explain spreadsheet. This will greatly…
The frequency with which spreadsheets are used and the associated risk is well known. Many tools and techniques have been developed which help reduce risks associate with creating and maintaining spreadsheet. However, little consideration…
Spreadsheets are used to develop application software that is distributed to users. Unfortunately, the users often have the ability to change the programming statements ("source code") of the spreadsheet application. This causes a host of…
Spreadsheets offer a supremely successful democratisation platform, placing the manipulation and presentation of numbers within the grasp of users that have little or no mathematical expertise or IT experience. What appears to be almost…
Over the last decades, the amount of data of all kinds available electronically has increased dramatically. Data are accessible through a range of interfaces including Web browsers, database query languages, application-specific interfaces,…
Heavy use of spreadsheets by organisations bears many potential risks such as errors, ambiguity, data loss, duplication, and fraud. In this paper these risks are briefly outlined along with their available mitigation methods such as:…
Spreadsheets that are informally created are harder to test than they should be. Simple cross-foot checks or being easily readable are modest but attainable goals for every spreadsheet developer. This paper lists some tips on building…