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Accounting Analytics for Inventory Integrity and Working Capital Control: Continuous Auditing Approaches for ERP-Enabled Supply Chains
Subject area: Science,Engineering and Technology · Area of research: Accounting & Auditing
DOI: https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV10I1-1719387
Abstract
This study develops an accounting-analytics framework for continuous auditing of inventory integrity and working capital control in ERP-enabled supply chains. The empirical analysis uses the DataCo SMART SUPPLY CHAIN FOR BIG DATA ANALYSIS dataset, a public transaction-level dataset distributed through Mendeley Data and mirrored on Kaggle, containing 180,519 records and 53 variables spanning 2015 to 2018. The paper operationalizes inventory-integrity stress through a set of ERP-visible exception signals: delay variance, severe delay, negative-profit orders, high discounting, workflow-status anomalies and fraud labels. Descriptive analytics, cross-segment heat maps, Pareto concentration analysis and logistic regression are used to identify where risk is concentrated and how a continuous-auditing rule library can be designed. The results show that 54.83% of observations carry late-delivery risk, 18.71% are negative-profit orders, 11.11% involve high discounting and 2.25% are fraud-labelled orders. Positive shipping slippage averages 1.62 days and generates 34.01 million sales-days of working-capital drag, equivalent to 0.92 extra cycle days across the portfolio. Shipping mode, rather than broad market geography, explains most late-delivery variation: relative to First Class, the odds of late-delivery risk are materially lower for Same Day, Second Class and Standard Class channels. Exposure concentration is also non-trivial: a small set of product categories, led by Fishing, Cleats and Camping & Hiking, accounts for a disproportionate share of negative-profit sales exposure. On the basis of these findings, the paper proposes a six-rule continuous-auditing architecture for ERP-enabled supply chains, combining transaction screening, exception scoring, root-cause triage, remediation ownership and working-capital escalation. The contribution of the study lies in translating continuous-auditing theory into a practical control design that links transaction analytics with inventory integrity, margin protection and liquidity discipline.
Keywords
Continuous Auditing, Inventory Integrity, Working Capital Control, ERP Analytics, Supply Chain Accounting, Internal Audit
How to cite this paper
@article{1719387,
author = {Evans Chingezi, Last Chingezi, Lucy Ganyani, Pascal Gbang Yelduora, Munashe Naphtali Mupa},
title = {Accounting Analytics for Inventory Integrity and Working Capital Control: Continuous Auditing Approaches for ERP-Enabled Supply Chains},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {1},
pages = {48-58},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1719387.pdf},
abstract = {This study develops an accounting-analytics framework for continuous auditing of inventory integrity and working capital control in ERP-enabled supply chains. The empirical analysis uses the DataCo SMART SUPPLY CHAIN FOR BIG DATA ANALYSIS dataset, a public transaction-level dataset distributed through Mendeley Data and mirrored on Kaggle, containing 180,519 records and 53 variables spanning 2015 to 2018. The paper operationalizes inventory-integrity stress through a set of ERP-visible exception signals: delay variance, severe delay, negative-profit orders, high discounting, workflow-status anomalies and fraud labels. Descriptive analytics, cross-segment heat maps, Pareto concentration analysis and logistic regression are used to identify where risk is concentrated and how a continuous-auditing rule library can be designed. The results show that 54.83% of observations carry late-delivery risk, 18.71% are negative-profit orders, 11.11% involve high discounting and 2.25% are fraud-labelled orders. Positive shipping slippage averages 1.62 days and generates 34.01 million sales-days of working-capital drag, equivalent to 0.92 extra cycle days across the portfolio. Shipping mode, rather than broad market geography, explains most late-delivery variation: relative to First Class, the odds of late-delivery risk are materially lower for Same Day, Second Class and Standard Class channels. Exposure concentration is also non-trivial: a small set of product categories, led by Fishing, Cleats and Camping & Hiking, accounts for a disproportionate share of negative-profit sales exposure. On the basis of these findings, the paper proposes a six-rule continuous-auditing architecture for ERP-enabled supply chains, combining transaction screening, exception scoring, root-cause triage, remediation ownership and working-capital escalation. The contribution of the study lies in translating continuous-auditing theory into a practical control design that links transaction analytics with inventory integrity, margin protection and liquidity discipline.},
keywords = {Continuous Auditing, Inventory Integrity, Working Capital Control, ERP Analytics, Supply Chain Accounting, Internal Audit},
month = {July},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV10I1-1719387}
}