About this template
Audit teams typically have a range of KPI’s attached to them. These KPI’s often focus on either the timeliness of audit delivery or the quality of the audit based on stakeholder feedback.
This template has been designed to help audit teams keep track of their audit deliverables. Team members will only need to use the tab KPI Tracker when updating the document, with the results being fed through to the Dashboard tab. The significant amount of information contained in this KPI tracker will also help teams with future audit budgeting.
Why use this template
Monitoring audit timeliness is important to ensure the efficiency of an audit team. Whilst it is important to make sure that team members do not jeopardise audit quality in order to meet key targets, it is important that we get the most out of our audit teams and that work is performed as efficiently as possible.
Such KPI trackers are transparent, meaning all team members can see how long audits have taken. This can drive positive behaviours where team members aim to complete audits within timeframes. Additionally, this tracker can help identify problem areas within the team (i.e. we regularly take too long to finalise fieldwork), or business areas which are consistently late (i.e. management comments are never received from a particular business area within the required timeframe.
By knowing this key information, action can be taken to address known issues. For instance, where an audit team member regularly misses target dates, strategies can be put in place to help the team member become more efficient and aware of their audit timeframes. Alternatively, where particular business areas have repeated delays, discussions can be held between senior management to understand why delays regularly occur and what can be done to address this.
When to use this template
This template should form part of weekly admin activities. For instance, as part of the Weekly Status Update, KPI monitoring should be included and discussed.
Things to be careful about
Whilst target dates are important, we should never sacrifice the quality of an audit simply to meet a deadline. Quality should be the main focus of every audit team and as such, it is important to reiterate this to team.
