To avoid the risk of corrupting a client’s account system, by processing test
data with the client’s other ‘live’ data, auditors may instigate special ‘test data
only’ processing runs for audit test data. The major disadvantage of this is that
the auditor does not have total assurance that the test data is being processed
in a similar fashion to the client’s live data. To address this issue, the auditor
may therefore seek permission from the client to establish an integrated test
facility within the accounting system. This entails the establishment of a
dummy unit, for example, a dummy supplier account against which the
auditor’s test data is processed during normal processing runs.