Course Description

Course Level:  Advanced

CPE Credits:  8 (1 day)

Course Description:

This 1.0-day customized edition of our Advanced ACL Scripting course builds upon the material and subject
matter presented in the Intermediate ACL training class.  The primary focus of this course will be on techniques,
methods, and best practices utilized to successfully develop complex, modular script programs in ACL.  Simple
and effective ways to program potentially complex ACL commands into scripts will be explained and
demonstrated.  The Set, Execute, and other commands will also be presented and explained.  The second half
of the course (approximately 4 hours) will be devoted to a “workshop” type exercise that will challenge even the
most experienced ACL user.  One or more relatively large real-world data files will be used in this class.  
Participants must have at least 2 gigabytes of free hard-drive space on their laptops and/or bring a USB drive
with equivalent free space.


Course Objectives:

At the conclusion of this course, each participant will be able to:

  • Understand the role ACL scripts play in developing continuous audit, continuous monitoring, and repeat
    analysis routines.
  • Utilize the techniques, methods, and best practice associated with the successful development and
    operation of moderately to significantly complex ACL scripts.
  • Develop scripts that import, process, and analyze data that spans multiple data files.
  • Develop modular scripts to process large volumes of data, requiring complex, multi-step analysis.
  • Develop and utilize a front-end processing routine to adjust script parameters related to exception
    identification and reporting.

Course Balance:

  • Lecture / discussion:   50%
  • In-class applications:   20%
  • Section exercises:       30%

Course Prerequisites:

Participants must have completed either the “Intermediate ACL” and/or the “ACL Scripts and Functions” training
course or have similar experience using ACL.

Who Should Attend:

IS and IT Auditors, Financial and Operational Auditors, Internal Auditors, Analysts, Accounting Professionals,
Investigators or anyone interested in enhancing their understanding and use of the ACL for Windows software
system.

Other Information:

PIA Consulting will provide comprehensive course manuals containing presentation material, command, function
and other ACL reference material, class exercises, and glossary sections.

Course Outline:
PIA Consulting is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA)  as a
sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors.  State boards of
accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit.  Complaints
regarding registered sponsors may be addressed to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors, 150 Fourth
Avenue North, Nashville, TN, 37219-2417.  Web site: www.nasba.org.
This course is offered as an open-enrollment class and as an on-site class.  For more information or to register
for this course, please email us at info@pia-consulting.com or phone us at (512) 343-2866.
Morning
Afternoon

A.  Brief Review of Scripting
  • Limited review of the core concepts of ACL scripts.

B.  ACL Variables
  • ACL variables defined.
  • User-defined variables.
  • Temporary variables.
  • Underscore variables.
  • System variables.

C.  Strategies for Programming Complex Commands
and Functions into Scripts.
  • Join, Relation, & Cross-tab commands.
  • RecOffSet() function.

D.  Using the Set command in Scripts
E.  Modular Programming Concepts

F.  Workshop Exercise
  • Team assignments.
  • Discussion of the data.

G.  Presentation of Results

H.  Course Wrap-up & Discussion
Advanced ACL Scripting