Best Audit Software

Audit Software Reviews

After starting with an initial list of more than 90 audit management tools, we thoroughly evaluated the auditing features, pricing details, and customer support options for 15 well-known vendors. We then narrowed it down to our top five picks.

In our review, we also differentiate which auditing software might work best for different situations, making it easy to see which is best for your industry or specific auditing needs. For more details, check out our methodology section, which expands on our selection process.

Qualtrax – Best Audit Software for Any Size Company

Qualtrax compliance software has an excellent reputation with its customers. It’s earned that reputation by offering practical compliance management tools that automate best practices for companies of all sizes.

Qualtrax helps you build a system of documents and processes that keep your teams audit-ready. And it does it all without being limited to any one industry, being an option whether you’re in manufacturing, aerospace, or even food production.

If you run a business that requires accreditation, Qualtrax accreditation management features help you stay compliant on a nearly automatic level by keeping documents handy for the next audit.

Here’s what else we liked about Qualtrax.

Qualtrax features:

• Alerts/Notifications: Qualtrax lets you automate several data integration processes, alerting you when there are issues like duplicate entries—which can help reduce your dependence on manual work.
• Dashboard: Simplified document management creates a visual “map” of all you’re auditing, giving you an easy-to-understand, bird’s-eye view of your business while ensuring compliance with every regulation and internal rule you have.
• Risk Assessment: Qualtrax tends to emphasize data security, but there’s plenty of risk assessment in terms of ensuring employees are up to date with their onboarding, which can enhance overall operational security and efficiency.
• Archiving: Quickly organize your data. Qualtrax’s document management features include fast document updating so your organization can keep records up to date.
• Task Management: Qualtrax offers a variety of integrations with other features and software, allowing you to create a task management system that will help your internal auditing process go smoothly.

What markets does Qualtrax serve?

Because this was one of the most wide-ranging audit software on this list, we couldn’t limit it to one niche or industry. However, we will note that any company with a lot of confidential data to sort through—think financial, banking, and accounting firms—might find Qualtrax to be one of the best auditing software solutions for a wide range of business needs.

iAuditor – Best Internal Audit Software for Industrial Operations

SafetyCulture’s iAuditor is an audit software offering that focuses on the operational side of things. It’s especially useful for inspecting your internal industrial processes, helping to diagnose issues, and even recommending corrective actions.

That may be why it’s used in over 85 countries, with iAuditor’s own data suggesting that teams will use it over 50,000 times per day worldwide.

iAuditor features:

• Alerts/Notifications: Users especially like how adept iAuditor is at examining your operational processes and turning it into raw data you can sort through easily. We also like its document management software that allows you to print out or electronically share files and PDFs.
• Dashboard: iAuditor builds a nice workflow that lets you view your systems and processes—and gauge how well they’re going. Some users report having problems with how much data a report might generate, but in our experience, the dashboard does an effective job of translation by showing you an overview of potential problem areas.
• Risk Assessment: One of the features we really like is how risk assessment is tied-in with adding new to-do items. This ensures everything you’re doing is assessed in real-time and doesn’t end up buried in a report somewhere.
• Task Management: Tied into the above, iAuditor’s task management system connects to its team communication features, like its “Heads Up” feature, which lets you send a text alert to your team that raises an issue as a priority. You can use this to manage tasks and keep employees in the loop about what needs to happen next.

What markets does iAuditor serve?

Think industry and large-scale operations. iAuditor isn’t the best audit software for CPA firms, but it is one of the best ways you can take a complicated, large-scale operation (like one in retail or manufacturing) and start to make sense of the myriad processes you have in place. It helps you untangle the webs that having a large, complex business can create.

Intelex – Best Software for Health & Safety Audits

Managing ESG compliance can be a challenge, but audit software like Intelex helps you keep a hold on all of the health and safety concerns that might arise in the course of doing business.

Intelex also ties into product quality and supplier concerns, offers solutions for risk management, and helps especially with preventing work hazards, which can be ideal for any company that works outdoors, including large-scale construction and contractor work.

Intelex features:

• Dashboard: Online reviews about Intelex mention how easy it is to view everything you’re collecting from disparate teams in multiple locations. This provides you with a bird’s-eye view of projects taking place in various places or at separate business locations.
• Risk Assessment: With a keen eye on environmental and sustainability concerns, using Intelex can be a great way to bring in a more objective approach to how your business handles ESG by creating standardized documents, even in difficult circumstances like construction processes.
• Archiving: Streamlining data collection through Intelex by creating standardized forms means having a great way to save and store essential data, which is especially important when you need to prove adherence to environmental and sustainability regulations.
• Task Management: Although some users say it is sometimes hard to follow up on needed tasks, we think Intelex software does an effective job of outlining the various tasks that happen in your business as part of disparate workflows.

What markets does Intelex serve?

Both “indoor” and “outdoor” enterprises can function well with Intelex, thanks to its operational features and ability to integrate various aspects of different industries and help you audit your internal safety compliance. Companies with complicated processes—such as petrochemical businesses, manufacturers, retail, and construction—will benefit from Intelex’s ability to make the complex seem simple.

Netwrix Auditor – Best for IT Companies

Auditing the internal processes of an IT company can feel like an auditor’s worse nightmare. Netwrix Auditor helps wrangle the confusing, data-heavy world of IT and information service companies. It’s a great internal audit software program that effectively assesses your risk and provides clear maps of data to show you where the most potent risks may be.

It’s a tall ask, but we found Netwrix Auditor’s ability to handle loads of information and translate it into simple, digestible takeaways deserved mention on this list.

Netwrix Auditor features:

• Alerts/Notifications: If there’s suspicious activity centered around your data, the alert features within Netwrix Auditor can easily watch those trends and send you an update so that you stay in the loop.
• Dashboard: The risk assessment dashboard is one of the features that really stands out, providing “traffic light” (red, yellow, green) risk assessments that help you view where the problem areas in your company may be.
• Risk Assessment: Although configuring their systems to onboard properly with Netwrix Auditor was a bit of a headache for some users, we find that once it’s set up, people enjoy the quick-view risk assessment features. The complicated part is configuring the software, but Netwrix does offer onboarding assistance.
• Task Management: The change, asset, and configuration reports that arise once you have the software set up make it easy to build a plan of attack if you find yourself in need of an audit. It can be difficult to highlight these issues without an effective auditor in place, but Netwrix simplifies this information rather than burning it in data sheets.

What markets does Netwrix Auditor serve?

You don’t have to be an IT company to get a lot out of Netwrix Auditor. But you do have to have a lot of information to sort through. It helps if you have a larger team to help configure Netwrix into your systems, as this likely won’t be a small business operation—and if it is, you can expect some time with their responsive customer support team. But otherwise, Netwrix Auditor does a great job of keeping large sets of data organized and coherent.

AuditMiner – Best Audit Software for CPA Firms

AuditMiner isn’t like the other options on this list. It’s instead the best audit software for CPA firms that want to improve the quality and efficiency of the employee benefit plan audit process. The software offers standardized workpapers that can save auditors as much as 10-20 hours per employee benefit plan audit.

This is especially key for determining whether a benefit plan’s audit package and its reports look the same. By helping save time and reduce errors, we thought it deserved special mention on this list.

AuditMiner features:

• Workpapers: AuditMiner will produce “workpapers,” such as plan analytics and investment disclosure reports, which makes it easier for auditors to review key financial information at a glance.
• SOC toolkits:: AuditMiner will pre-load workbooks with information that service auditors can use. These “toolkits” are designed to meet audit standards to ensure a thorough, comprehensive review of a Service Organization Control report.
• Contribution timelines: AuditMiner can create a schedule of everything from paydays to calculations of remittance days, giving auditors a thorough understanding of what money moves where—and when.

What markets does AuditMiner serve?

AuditMiner is best for CPA firms conducting audits on specific employee benefit package plans, and that’s what it’s good at—reducing time, improving accuracy, and making firms more effective at what they do.

Compare the best audit management software side-by-side

What is audit software?

An audit is an inspection or examination of a process or system to ensure compliance with requirements. Audit software is any program you can incorporate into your business to check up on financial records, company data, and business operations. Audit software is there to document and verify everything that happens in your business so you can reduce human error and streamline the auditing process.

Done well, good audit software will alert you of potential issues and have a thing or two to say about your potential next steps. At a minimum, audit management software should at least provide your company with the outlet for identifying those next steps.

In our research, we found auditing software, like iAuditor, that identifies common business operations and helps you see where the bottlenecks might be. What qualifies as “audit software” can come in many forms and can usually be customized to specific industries or business uses.

We highlight five of the best audit software companies for internal audits, accreditation management, employee benefit plan audits, and more in our review.

What is the purpose of audit software?

Audit software helps manage the process of conducting financial, information security, and regulatory compliance audits.

For example, if you run a tool and dye shop, your auditing software will likely emphasize OSHA regulations and keep you updated about the processes each employee is undertaking to ensure compliance.

But that’s just one example of the type of audit your business might conduct.

Audit software can look at financial information, information security, and a wide range of business processes to ensure everything is going as reported in your internal systems.

Types of audit software

Audits can include a wide range of activities, from IRS audits that check up on an individual taxpayer or corporate entity to internal audits manufacturers and businesses use to improve safety and security.

Even information security audits probe into whether your data is secure and if not, where the potential risks might be within your organization.

On this list, we highlighted some of the best audit software programs for

• Accounting and CPA firms
• Industrial, manufacturing, and construction businesses
• IT-focused and software-heavy businesses

Your business doesn’t have to operate in these specific categories to make use of auditing software, but these are some of the many fields that can get value from scrutinizing their internal processes.

Benefits of using audit software

Auditing software does more than give you peace of mind. Done right, it can identify unknown problem areas and points of friction to help your business operate at peak efficiency.

Let’s look at some of the auditing software features we tackled in our review:

• IT and information security benefits. Is any information in your organization at risk? An internal audit can help highlight where those risks are. This is especially important in sectors where information security and confidentiality are paramount, such as in health and medicine.
• Smoothing out operational procedures. Making sure each employee sticks with your operational procedures to ensure smooth processes will help simplify everything you do in your business.
• Regulation and safety compliance. Are you sticking to the bounds of regulations and safety requirements? An internal audit is a great way to get a hold of your own processes, so a third party doesn’t come in and shut your business down. You need to keep employees safe, and internal audits are a great way to ensure that happens.
• Double-checking financial records. Financial audit software can keep tabs on the green in your business. Is money going to the right places? Are you losing money due to unforeseen issues? Double-checking your financial records will help keep your business compliant and all of its relevant information accurate.

How much does audit software cost?

Audits come in all shapes and sizes, and so does pricing for audit management software. Some options are priced-per-audit, as in the case of AuditMiner. Other vendors, such as Netwrix Auditor, work on a “licensing” basis, which may require you to license the software to monitor a certain amount of employees, for example.

The good news is that many of the options on this list offer free audit software trials. This gives you a chance to poke around the usefulness and potential money-saving benefits of the software, which can clue you into how much you might be willing to pay.

Auditing Software FAQ

Which software do auditors use?
We found options like Qualtrax, AuditMiner, and iAuditor are popular options based on both reputation and the suite of features each provider had to offer. However, there’s a wide range of auditing software available on the market. In fact, our methodology process started with an audit software list of more than 90 vendors. The type of audit software you use will ultimately depend on the specific criteria and regulations around your audit.

What is the most common audit type?
Financial audits are at the top of the list because they’re so integral to business, as are safety and compliance audits. Without those two, it can be difficult to run a business effectively.

What are the advantages of audit software?
Audit software can potentially pay for itself by identifying risks that, when prevented, ultimately help you avoid costly issues in your business. Audit software also helps promote peace of mind by putting a system of warning in place in case there are ever any issues with safety, compliance, or financial transactions.

How we chose the best audit software

Our methodology worked from an audit software list of nearly 100 vendors. From there, we whittled it down to 15 popular finalists. Using interviews, web information, video and live demos, online testimonials, and vendor websites, we sought out the information you see in our review.

We divided our evaluations of each vendor into four categories, ranking them each on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). The overall score helped inform our basic “read” of the software and who it might best suit.

Here are the categories:

• Variety of features. We explored features like platform alerts, notification capabilities, dashboard use experiences, and risk assessment features to understand whether the audit software had a lot to offer.
• Pricing and transparency. Did the company offer a free trial? Pricing details on its website? Both pricing and the transparency of how that pricing is disseminated had an impact on our list.
• Onboarding/support. This is a particularly tricky issue in the world of auditing software, which can be complicated, so it played a key factor on our list.
• Brand reputation. Using online reviews from the world’s most trusted sites, we were able to glean a sense of the brand reputation of the audit software you found on this list.