3-day Virtual Seminar

Prove the Number: Build a Lightweight Audit Trail in Excel

Overview

This session adds a defensible evidence layer to an ordinary reporting workbook without turning it into a compliance project. Attendees learn to capture source identification and refresh timestamps, build control totals and reasonableness checks that fire on their own, record preparer and approver sign-off, and document data lineage in a form a reviewer can follow. The whole layer takes minutes to maintain and answers the question before it is asked.

Why you should Attend

The moment a figure is challenged, the burden of proof lands on you - and reconstructing a number after the fact is far harder than recording it as you go. Analysts who cannot show their work lose credibility even when their numbers are correct, and organizations that cannot evidence their reporting face real consequences in audit, regulatory review, and due diligence. This session is about defensibility, not about locking cells.

Areas Covered in the Session

• The P.R.O.O.F. framework: Provenance, Reconcile to control totals, Observe with self-firing checks, Own it with named accountability, File the lineage note
• Provenance: recording the source system, extract parameters, report run date, and who pulled it
• Refresh timestamps that update themselves, so nobody has to remember whether the data is current
• Control totals that tie the report back to the source - row counts, sum checks, and two-sided reconciliation
• Reasonableness and invariant checks: tests that turn a silent wrong answer into a visible flag
• Building a check panel that states plainly whether the workbook currently passes or fails
• Named accountability: preparer, reviewer, approver, and date - and why initials in a cell beat a locked worksheet
• Writing a data lineage note a reviewer can follow without calling you
• The manual-adjustment log: capturing the overrides that would otherwise be invisible
• Why worksheet protection is not an audit trail, and what it is actually good for
  

Who Will Benefit

• Financial Analysts, Controllers, and Accountants
  
• Business Intelligence and Reporting Analysts
  
• Internal Auditors and Compliance Analysts
  
• Risk and Governance Professionals
  
• FP&A Managers preparing board and investor reporting
  
• Data Governance and Data Quality Leads
  
• Anyone whose reported figures are subject to review or challenge