Build Custom AI for Audit and Compliance

Most firms use platforms like CCH ProSystem fx or AuditBoard. These tools are excellent for managing engagement letters and checklists but treat data gathering as a manual upload step. They lack direct, real-time API connections to the diverse systems your clients use, forcing auditors back into spreadsheets to reconcile data from multiple sources.

Consider auditing a small e-commerce client that uses Shopify, Stripe, and a custom ledger. To test revenue recognition, an auditor must manually export CSVs from all three systems. They then spend over 8 hours in Excel using VLOOKUPs to trace a sample of 60 transactions from the initial sale to the payment processor to the final ledger entry. This process is slow, prone to human error, and only tests a small, static sample.

Newer platforms like FloQast are designed for the month-end close, not substantive audit testing. They can reconcile accounts but cannot execute custom audit procedures, like verifying that every new user added to a client's AWS account has completed security training for a SOC 2 audit. The tools are not designed for programmable evidence gathering.

The structural problem is that these platforms are closed systems designed for file uploads, not live APIs. Their business model is based on selling a monolithic platform, not on providing flexible tools that connect to a client's unique tech stack. This forces your highest-value staff to spend non-billable hours on low-value data manipulation instead of exercising professional judgment.

Syntora begins with a discovery process to map your most time-consuming audit procedures and the client systems involved. We identify the top 3-5 tests that can be fully automated via API. You receive a technical specification outlining the data sources, the logic for each test, and how the evidence will be stored and presented before any build work begins.

We would build a central service using Python and FastAPI to connect to client systems. The choice of Python allows for robust data handling with libraries like Pandas, while FastAPI provides a secure API for your team to trigger tests. For each test, the system would use `httpx` for efficient, asynchronous calls to client APIs. All evidence and test results would be stored in a Supabase (PostgreSQL) database, creating a permanent, auditable record you control. This approach turns a manual, multi-hour process into a single-click action.

We deployed our own internal accounting system on DigitalOcean, featuring an admin dashboard with 12 tabs for managing everything from bank syncs to tax estimates. For your firm, the delivered system would be a similar secure, internal web application. Your audit team would log in, select a client and an audit procedure, and see the results in seconds. The system provides not just a pass or fail, but the complete data trail to support the conclusion, which can be exported for your workpapers.