Timothy Smith with LPL Financial Receives 2014 IDEA User of Excellence Award

Houston – April 22, 2014 – Audimation Services, Inc. has selected Timothy (Tim) Smith, Assistant Vice President of Internal Audit with LPL Financial, as the recipient of the 2014 IDEA User of Excellence Award. He is being recognized for using IDEA® Data Analysis software in innovative ways to streamline procedures, decipher large and complex data sets, and apply analytics to improve financial reporting.
 

Tim Smith, CPA/CITP, CISA, CISSP, began using IDEA more than 15 years ago while working at KPMG. Smith was a member of the KPMG team that rolled out IDEA data analysis software firm-wide in 2004, and was instrumental in developing the scripts for SmartAnalyzer, and contributing to product improvements.
 

While at KPMG, Smith worked with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to identify internal control weaknesses in Federal grant and loan areas. IDEA was used to analyze nearly 25-30 million records to uncover fraud, pervasive control breakdowns and improper payments. As a result, disbursement policies and procedures were changed to improve internal controls and millions were returned to the U.S. Treasury.
 

“Tim Smith brings a mix of experience as an IT professional and an accountant to his approach in problem solving,” said Carolyn Newman, President of Audimation Services, Inc. “He has been a tremendous resource in offering his “Tim-grams” with ideas to improve new releases, and has helped others embrace data analytics to expand their reach.”
 

His creative use of IDEA began during an audit of a federal agency, which was being performed by the GAO. Due to problems with accounting system configuration and access, the GAO found it “inauditable” and had to issue a disclaimer of opinion. Smith used IDEA to drill down into the accounting system and find the root cause of the errors, clean up the sub-ledgers and provide information to the GAO. He started the process with the accounts payable, and together with other KPMG team members, expanded the process to other accounting system modules. This use of IDEA allowed the agency to go from a disclaimer of opinion, to a qualified balance sheet opinion in year two, and finally a clean opinion on all statements in year three.
 

“When I’ve encountered challenges, but knew what needed to be done to solve them, IDEA became my go-to solution for problem solving,” said Smith. “IDEA has the unique ability to garner information from both a broad and detailed perspective to add value. We can provide beneficial suggestions to clients, with assurance that the data will not be altered in the process. IDEA has proven useful in countless ways, and it has helped me expand my career. I’ve enjoyed exploring who IDEA can be used to help organizations of all types and sizes – and I will continue to share what I’ve learned to build more opportunities for others.”
 

During his career, Smith has expanded his use of IDEA into areas of IT auditing, such as logical access, change management, data integrity, and segregation of duties. He has also had success in applying IDEA to streamline the process of reconciling and reporting Oracle financial information from a manual to an automatic process.