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An AI knowledge base for audit methodology
Short answer
An AI knowledge base in an audit team finds the approved version of the methodology together with the record of which engagements the change covers, and names the missing information when the announcement leaves it out. At Syntalith an AI app on company documents costs from €3,000 net. At 250 methodology questions a month with 15 minutes of searching each, it pays back in 1.6 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per application, fixed price before contract
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 4–10 weeks
- free prototype on your documents
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
AI knowledge bases: statistics 2026
1.6 mo.
payback of a €3,000 app at 250 methodology questions a month: €2,181 of searching today, €331 with the app. Scenario.
40.4%
According to Eurostat (2025), 40.4% of EU enterprises in professional, scientific and technical activities used AI.
49%
According to Anthropic (2024), combining contextual embeddings with BM25 search cut failed retrievals by 49%, and by 67% with reranking.
90%
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of companies using AI say that people take the decisions, and 2% of decisions are fully automated.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
25.1%
According to a Harvard Business School study (2023) of 758 consultants, tasks within the model's capabilities were done 25.1% faster with AI.
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
„Should we be using the new checklist?”
The person responsible for the methodology approved a new checklist and recorded that it applies to engagements started after the change takes effect. The team started its engagement earlier and has a partly completed copy of the previous checklist. The announcement does not say whether older engagements may switch to the new version.
- Who approved the guidance
- Which engagements it applies to, and from when
- How to treat work already started
- The link to the previous version and where it applies
- Who is responsible for describing the difference
The people responsible for the methodology and the engagement lead decide on a switch to the new checklist. The assistant helps phrase the question without passing on client documentation, because the engagement start date and the state of the checklist are enough to clarify it. Judging the audit work stays with the team.
What an audit methodology knowledge base costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 250 methodology questions × 15 min = 62.5 h (€2,181)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €327
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €3.90
- Cost of one case
- €8.72 today, €1.32 with the system
- Saving
- €1,850 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.6 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 6,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The model is a small item here. The result depends on the time that searching and asking around take today, and on how much of it is left for checking the answer.
Before we quote a build, we run a test on 20 to 100 questions the team has already asked: we compare the app's answer with what an employee found by hand and measure the time from the question to the source. The test takes 5 working days and costs €0.
Publishing guidance and updating engagement files
Check what your software handles. Caseware Cloud Engagements describes managing template versions from draft to publication for authors with the enterprise author role, and for the Audit product the update documentation describes the ways to update. An answer in a chat does not confirm that the engagement files have been updated.
The approved template is hard to find
tidy the library and change announcements
no new app
Documents updated during the work
update features in the audit software
configuration
Answers spread across guidance and announcements
an AI app on the methodology
from €3,000
Assessing whether a knowledge base helps
For a first assessment, a small set of approved methodology and the questions recently sent to its owner are enough, including a question about an engagement started before the change. If every question ends with a request for the author's decision, the library does not hold the rules people ask about, and writing them down is the first change. The scope is described on the private ChatGPT for your company page.
For the first call, one question that regularly comes back to colleagues and a note of where the team looks for the answer are enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: answers from company documents
We run the same count for your documents in the free analysis.
€3,723
a month for finding answers to 800 questions in documents
Payback: 1 mo.
Our assumptions are 8 minutes to find an answer in documents or ask a colleague, and checking in 15% of the old time. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 6,000 + 500 tokens per answer from documents, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
