ROLE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE INTERNAL AUDIT FUNCTION. IT TOOLS FOR INTERNAL AUDIT FUNCTION SUPPORT

Management performance relies on successfully accomplishing the stated objectives. Internal audit has to examine management's efficiency in implementing business policies and to assess operations' rentability and efficiency, as well as the results in achieving the objectives. Its task is to inspect internal systems' compliance with relevant legislation and regulations. Management team has to identify the significant risks and to implement adequate controls for all identified risks and the internal audit team evaluates the quality of risk management and suggests the ways to improve it. Even if fraud prevention is management team's responsibility, internal audit has to identify existing frauds and to suggest means of fraud prevention. Moreover, internal audit evaluates the efficiency of the internal control system and suggests ways to improve control. Internal audit must also evaluate all the organizations' policies and strategies consistency with the business environment. An internal auditor is not asked to assess the strategies and policies, but to identify the inconsistencies. His conclusions can determine the management to widely change the strategies and policies so as to establish the needed global coherence. In order to achieve is goals, internal audit needs software instruments. International audit practice standards advise the use of such instruments (called Computer Assisted Audit Tools or CAA TS) to sustain and empower auditor's work. The Romanian software market has a poor offer for such instruments. This research proposes to design and build a software tool aimed at assisting audit activities. The requests were identified through a long process of observing and taking part in audit missions, quizzes and interviews of auditors and audit, team members. The research included web sites of important professional audit organizations and their recommendations regarding the audit tools used