Substantive Testing
Designs and runs substantive procedures over an account balance — tests of details and analytical procedures — and documents them as an Excel workpaper and Word testing memo a reviewer can sign off, starting from proof that the population itself is complete and accurate.
- Plugin
- audit-fieldwork-toolkit
- Version
- v1.0.8
- Impact
- High
- Complexity
- Medium
How it works
- Input
- The balance and period under test, the assertions at risk, performance materiality and the testing threshold, and the supporting population — a GL detail, subledger, aging, or schedule
- What it does
- Identifies the assertions at risk → chooses tests of details, an analytical procedure, or both → proves the population is complete and accurate before testing it → draws a seeded, reproducible sample with large items tested in full → executes and documents the procedure
- What has to hold true
- The workpaper is incomplete until every system-extracted population has its own completeness-and-accuracy block — tied to an independent control total, with a genuine system screenshot or the item flagged open with an owner. Every step in the execution log is tagged by how a reviewer verifies it: re-run, evaluate, or confirm who did it.
- Output
- An Excel workpaper with the sample selection, test results, and execution log, plus a Word testing memo
The part that makes it reproducible
What you'll need to change for your firm
This runs as published, but every audit function documents things its own way. These are the places it assumes a house format:
- Your workpaper template and tick-mark legend
- Your sampling policy — method, confidence level, and the testing threshold for individually significant items
- Which systems your populations come from, and how extracts are evidenced
- Your memo format and sign-off conventions
Built for Claude
Install it into Claude Cowork and point it at your files.
- 1Download the skill bundle — everything it needs, including the shared building blocks, is inside.
- 2Add it to Claude Cowork as a plugin (audit-fieldwork-toolkit).
- 3Point it at your own files and run it against one period you already know the answer to.
Free. We'll send the bundle and the setup notes.
Running on ChatGPT Enterprise or Copilot? We port these into your environment.
Want Substantive Testing fitted to your methodology?
We adapt it to your control matrix, your workpaper template, and your thresholds — then hand it over so your team can run it themselves.