Related papers: Reducing Spreadsheet Risk with FormulaDataSleuth

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.…

Spreadsheets provide a flexible and easy to use software development environment, but that leads to error proneness. Work has been done to prevent errors in spreadsheets, including using models to specify distinct parts of a spreadsheet as…

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…

Despite strong evidence of widespread errors, spreadsheet developers rarely subject their spreadsheets to post-development testing to reduce errors. This may be because spreadsheet developers are overconfident in the accuracy of their…

The traditional approach to spreadsheet auditing generally consists of auditing every distinct formula within a spreadsheet. Although tools are developed to support auditors during this process, the approach is still very time consuming and…

In traditional usability studies, researchers talk to users of tools to understand their needs and challenges. Insights gained via such interviews offer context, detail, and background. Due to costs in time and money, we are beginning to…

Spreadsheets are powerful tools which play a business-critical role in many organizations. However, many bad decisions taken due to faulty spreadsheets show that these tools need serious quality assurance. Furthermore, while collaboration…

This paper outlines an approach to manage and quantify the risks associated with changes made to spreadsheets. The methodology focuses on structural differences between spreadsheets and suggests a technique by which a risk analysis can be…

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…

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has finally forced corporations to examine the validity of their spreadsheets. They are beginning to understand the spreadsheet error literature, including what it tells them about the need for comprehensive…

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…

Thanks to their flexibility and capability to perform different tasks and organize data in the best form and format, spreadsheets are widely used in different organizations and by different end users. Many business organizations rely on…

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…

A business case study on how three simple guidelines: 1. Make it easy to check (and maintain) 2. Make it safe to use 3. Keep business logic out of code changed user attitudes and improved spreadsheet quality in a financial services…

Spreadsheets are software programs which are typically created by end-users and often used for business-critical tasks. Many studies indicate that errors in spreadsheets are very common. Thus, a number of vendors offer auditing tools which…

As the need for advanced, interactive mathematical models has increased, user/programmers are increasingly choosing the MatLab scripting language over spreadsheets. However, applications developed in these tools have high error risk, and no…

Spreadsheet programs, artifacts developed by non-programmers, are used for a variety of important tasks and decisions. Yet a significant proportion of them have severe quality problems. To address this issue, our previous work presented an…

The paper examines in the context of financial reporting, the controls that organisations have in place to manage spreadsheet risk and errors. There has been widespread research conducted in this area, both in Ireland and internationally.…

This paper presents the authors recommended practices for spreadsheet testing. Documented spreadsheet error rates are unacceptable in corporations today. Although improvements are needed throughout the systems development life cycle,…

Fifteen years of research studies have concluded unanimously that spreadsheet errors are both common and non-trivial. Now we must seek ways to reduce spreadsheet errors. Several approaches have been suggested, some of which are promising…