Last April 3 and 4, I attended this so-called refresher course in Hyperion Financial Management System. It was actually a beginner’s course for me as I do not have any background knowledge of this application system. We were asked to attend this seminar because definitely it is part of the audit universe. Testing the effectiveness of this system is critical because being employed in a business of acquiring, developing, managing and operating container ports and terminals worldwide, consolidation of financial information is vital.

The first few hours of the seminar made me realize how powerful the system is. Imagine, the unadjusted trial balance can easily be uploaded from SAP to Hyperion (that is if accounts have been matched) and the consolidated report can be generated anytime at any form management would prefer. If you would ask me why not use SAP for consolidation, the answer is simple, other subsidiaries do not have SAP. The seminar was going smoothly not until the subject-matter expert started explaining the system in detail. No problem with access, integration and other IT issues, it was the financial terms that made the blood as if drip from my nose. (nose bleed! Haha!). I was the only non-CPA in the list of attendees. This scenario reminds me again what the heck am I doing in audit? I barely passed my Accounting 1 & 2 in college. Yes I love math and I am good at it. But Accounting is something else. It is not really much on mathematics because all you have to deal with is plus/minus (debit/credit). The problem is what you put as debit may not necessarily be, given the accounting standards. I think this is the competency that I will never be (and never want to be) proficient with. The irony of it is that if I continue being an auditor, even IT auditor for that matter, I know that accounting will bug me for the rest of my life.