Validating Process Mining: A Framework Integrating Auditor’s Risk Assessment

Process mining examines event logs to analyze business processes. Previous literature has shown that process mining can add value to auditing and internal control evaluation, but most existing studies do not link event log information with transaction value. This study aims to build a framework for how auditors can utilize event logs and transaction value information while using process mining to provide audit evidence. Based on the auditor's risk assessment, the proposed framework comprises four steps: (1) identifying and classifying variants into standard and nonstandard categories, (2) sending nonstandard variants to auditors for risk assessment, (3) applying the materiality threshold, and (4) prioritizing process instances based on risk scores and thresholds. The proposed framework is applied to data from a not-for-profit organization. The results show that auditors can benefit from prioritized transactions by focusing on high-risk process instances with material transaction values.