The application of continuous audit and monitoring methodology: A government medication procurement case

• This study applies the continuous monitoring and audit methodology to government medication procurement data. • The proposed methodology helps internal auditors identify exceptions and anomalies in government procurement . • This study further adopts exogenous data resources to reduce the likelihood of procurement abuse or waste. In the government procurement process, waste and abuses are hard to avoid, and there are usually latencies between the event occurrence and detection works. The continuous audit methodology has been adopted by many public and private firms to actively monitor transactions and detect possible anomalies. Compared to the adoptions in the private sector, implementations of continuous audit and monitoring of government procurement analyses are limited. This study applies the continuous monitoring and audit methodology to the medication procurement data of a Brazilian city government, and it aims to help internal auditors identify exceptions and anomalies in procurements for further investigation. By introducing the comparison of exogenous data, this study further provides cost management opportunities.