The Importance and Use of Continuous Assurance Services in Internal Auditing

As a result of the growing demand on the credibility of the financial information, the internal auditing has been to play an increasingly important organizational role. Currently, there is a need to guarantee the compliance of transactions in real time in order to increase the reliability of the information and decrease risks. In this context, the concept of Continuous Assurance has been gaining prominence, allowing to reduce potential errors and risks and get useful information in real time, supporting decision-making more effectively. This study aims to ascertain the importance and the use of the Continuous Assurance services from the perspective of the internal auditors in Portugal. The methodology used is of the exploratory-descriptive type and of qualitative nature and used a questionnaire survey. The main results show, among other aspects, that the Continuous Assurance services are considered by the respondents as very important and that its implementation in organizations does not follow the importance attributed to it.