Related papers: Auditing spreadsheets: With or without a tool?

Research on spreadsheet errors began over fifteen years ago. During that time, there has been ample evidence demonstrating that spreadsheet errors are common and nontrivial. Quite simply, spreadsheet error rates are comparable to error…

Accounting and Finance (A&F) Professionals are arguably the most loyal and concentrated population of spreadsheet users. The work that they perform in spreadsheets has the most significant impact on financial data and business processes…

Accuracy in spreadsheet modelling systems can be reduced due to difficulties with the inputs, the model itself, or the spreadsheet implementation of the model. When the "true" outputs from the system are unknowable, accuracy is evaluated…

While scientists increasingly recognize the importance of metadata in describing their data, spreadsheets remain the preferred tool for supplying this information despite their limitations in ensuring compliance and quality. Various tools…

The first fully-documented study into the quantitative impact of errors in operational spreadsheets identified an interesting anomaly. One of the five participating organisations involved in the study contributed a set of five 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…

Existing approaches for detecting anomalies in spreadsheets can help to discover faults, but they are often applied too late in the spreadsheet lifecycle. By contrast, our approach detects anomalies immediately whenever users change their…

A number of automated techniques and tools were proposed in the research literature over the years which aim to support the spreadsheet developer in the process of testing and debugging a faulty spreadsheet. One underlying assumption of…

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…

Spreadsheet audit and review procedures are an essential part of almost all City of London financial transactions. Structured processes are used to discover errors in large financial spreadsheets underpinning major transactions of all…

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…

Spreadsheets are end-user programs and domain models that are heavily employed in administration, financial forecasting, education, and science because of their intuitive, flexible, and direct approach to computation. As a result,…

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…

Most organizations use large and complex spreadsheets that are embedded in their mission-critical processes and are used for decision-making purposes. Identification of the various types of errors that can be present in these spreadsheets…

Most spreadsheet surveys both for reporting use and error focus on the practical application of the spreadsheet in a particular industry. Typically these studies will illustrate that a particular percentage of spreadsheets are used for…

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…

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,…

Since the inception of VisiCalc over four decades ago, spreadsheets have undergone a gradual transformation, evolving from simple ledger automation tools to the current state of Excel, which can be described as an Integrated Development…

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…

One of the most important assets of any company is being able to easily access information on itself and on its business. In this line, it has been observed that this important information is often stored in one of the millions of…