Continuous Monitoring Resources for Internal Audit

Continuous monitoring turns point-in-time audit tests into routines that run monthly, weekly or close to real time. It helps internal audit and management detect issues earlier and provides assurance between audits — but only when the right tests are chosen and someone acts on the results.

Building a monitoring routine involves selecting risks where repeated testing adds value, confirming that reliable data is available, defining clear logic and thresholds, assigning owners to investigate exceptions, and documenting how alerts are escalated and closed.

Common pitfalls include monitoring tests that add little value, data feeds that break silently, thresholds that generate too many alerts, exceptions with no owner, and routines that continue running long after anyone reviews them.

The resources below help you decide what to monitor, design robust tests and document them properly. Use the opportunity selector and analytics test selector to choose candidates, the guide to design each test step by step, and the template to record logic, thresholds, owners and escalation.