Adjust influencers

Influencers are accounts that you want to emphasize as part of your risk analysis. They capture macroeconomic and organizational risk and highlight transactions that may be of interest in light of those risks.

For example, if you suspect that there are control weaknesses over cash accounts, you might set the influencer for any cash accounts to raise the score by a specific percentage. You could set the influencer for cash accounts to, say 50%, and the risk scores of any transactions which contain cash accounts will be automatically increased by 50%. Transactions with zero risk will not be adjusted, and therefore will remain at zero risk.

In a less trivial example, suppose an auditor was auditing a mature organization, whose motivation was to reduce paid tax. The auditor could set an influencer for any discretionary revenue accrual accounts so that any risk scores on transactions containing those accounts are automatically increased.

To adjust Influencers:

  1. Select 2-1 Influencers (Organizational Risk) from the Documents page.
  2. Select the Summary tab.
  3. Click the Influence % field for the desired Account and enter a new value.
  4. Document the reason for increasing the Influence % in the Note box.
  5. Summary tab of the 2-1 Influencers document

Influence %

The values in the Influence % column are applied as a fraction of the transaction’s risk.

Low-risk transactions aren’t greatly affected by higher Influence % values, whereas transactions that already appear questionable could be bumped up significantly higher.

For example, a transaction with five risk points, which is affected by an Influence % set to 20, will increase to six risk points, which is not a significant difference.

However, a transaction that’s already risky, for example, one that failed the complex accounts test, and has a risk score of 50 points, will be moved up to 60 points.

If the Influence % is set to 60%, the lower risk transaction would only move to eight points. However, the higher risk transaction would move to 80 — a large jump that could significantly affect a transaction’s position in the list.