SmartAuditTM is an auditing solution that helps an organization assess its state of compliance. SmartAuditTM provides all the tools you need to benchmark the organization’s performance against internal, industry and regulatory requirements. With SmartAuditTM, organizations can gain clear visibility into the effectiveness of organizational control mechanisms, and to take fast, decisive action to reduce risk and ensure global compliance.
In SmartAuditTM, audits are derived from criteria and auditee lists attached to an audit program and can be initiated once an audit schedule has been activated. Audits can also be created independent of audit programs. These audits are called Ad Hoc audits.
Ad Hoc Audits are one time audits that follow the same audit process as an audit created from an audit program. Ad hoc audits are initiated without being associated with an audit program. Typically, the lead auditor creates ad hoc audits to conduct audits outside a program.
Audit teams perform audits and are comprised of team members including a lead auditor. The lead auditor can modify the audit team members to include or exclude team members as necessary.
Follow up audits can be generated from responses given to sections and questions in an audit record when the Include in Follow up check box is checked in the audit record.
Findings are established through observations and evidence recorded while performing an audit. A finding is the note type selected during an audit when an observation is recorded. Findings that require action plans result in audit exceptions. Audit findings which require action plans automatically become Audit Exceptions in the system.
Findings may need to first be approved, before further action can be taken. This is an optional feature in the system.
Exceptions are deviations from the auditor's criteria and may include any defects found during the course of an audit. Audit exceptions are auto-generated from findings that require an action plan.
As exceptions are essentially defects found during an audit, the findings recorded in an audit may be known if a similar or the same audit exception has been recorded in the past.
When all parties (auditors and auditees) have approved the findings from an audit, any findings that require action plans auto-generate audit exceptions.
Action plans addressing how to correct/prevent the exception from recurring are then created within the audit exception by the Auditee contact who owns exception investigations.
If action plans exist within the audit exception, they must first be approved before the audit exception can be closed. This is a required feature in the system.
Audits can be performed remotely and checked in later using audit offline. Microsoft© InfoPath© works in conjunction with SmartSolve© to convert checked out (offline) audits to online forms. The audits can then be edited and saved independent of the SmartSolve© application.