Our year in review

Our top blog posts, top templates, and other small wins

2021 was a year that gave us everything, but through all of it, we were still here, and we hope that we were able to offer you some support throughout the many challenges we faced.

So as a recap, here are our top stories and events from the year.

Top 5 Blog Posts

Below are our top 5 blog posts for the year:

1 - 2021 Internal Audit Hot Topics and Focus Areas

Our Hot Topics and Focus Area blog post summarises the work of KPMG, Deloitte, IIA and Gartner on what they consider to be the Hot Topics for the coming year.

This post is a valuable resource for anyone preparing the annual plan for 2021 (or doing their mid year update). Whilst not all of these topics may be relevant to you, they may point you in the right direction.

You can view the full post here.

---

2 - Covid-19 and a resilient audit function

As Covid hit the world, many audit departments were immediately flipped upside down and faced with a huge number of challenges.

In this post, we explained how your audit function can remain resilient during these testing times. With Covid still well and truly a part of our lives, this post may still be relevant for some audit functions.

You can view the full post here.

---

3 - Managing your Internal Audit Plan in light of Covid

Continuing with the Covid theme, we pulled together some handy tips to help audit teams manage their audit plans.

As audit teams were pulled in different directions, components of the annual plan were dropped to make way for new and arising issues. In this post we explained ways which you can still effectively manage risk and deliver against the plan.

You can view the full post here.

---

4 - Applying Agile to your Annual Planning Process

In what seems like a buzz word at the moment, the new 'Agile' way of working is becoming more common in many work places. As such, its only appropriate the Audit moves with the times and also begins applying agile methodologies.

This blog post demonstrates practical ways in which Agile ways of working can be applied to the annual planning process.

You can view the full post here.

---

5 - Three Lines Model

This year, the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) released the updated Three Lines Model.

The new model is an adaption from the former Three Lines of Defence Model and demonstrates the new ways in which audit teams, the business, and audit committees all work together.

If you have not already, this is something you should catch up on.

You can view the full post here.

---

Top 5 Templates

Below are our top 5 templates for the year. To view the template, simply click on the icon below.

1 - Internal Audit Self Assessments

2 - Internal Audit KPIs

3 - Internal Audit Manual Template

4 - Internal Audit Charter

5 - Internal Audit Strategic Plan

Other wins

Did you know, that for the past 5 months, we have been planting trees? Each month, we make a contribution to Ecologi wo, in turn, plant trees in many reforestation projects around the world.

To date, we have currently planted 60 trees.

Despite being an online only business with no carbon footprint, we still consider it our responsibility to play our part in helping the environment. We have some plans next year to further our environmental contribution and hope you will join us on our journey.

To help contribute to our forest, please click here to make a donation. Any donation is greatly appreciated!

It has been another great (and busy) year, but we would like to thank everyone for their continued support this year, and look forward to helping us auditors even more next year!