IDEA is a comprehensive file interrogation tool for auditors, accountants, financial managers and investigators. Anyone who has a need to examine data and produce tailored reports quickly and easily will find IDEA an extremely useful tool. With IDEA, complex analyses of data, extractions of unusual items, audit samples, searches for duplicate transactions and many more functions are easy to carry out using a 'Windows' style interface. IDEA has been designed with considerable attention to the ease and intuitiveness of the user interface. It has a range of functions to:

• Import data from a wide range of file types
• Perform analyses of data including comprehensive statistics, profiles, summaries, ageing and Benford's Law
• Conduct exception tests of unusual or strange items using simple or complex criteria. IDEA has 103 built-in special functions as well as normal arithmetic capabilities
• Perform calculations
• Test for missing or duplicate items
• Select samples using systematic, random or monetary unit techniques
• Match or compare data from different sources