Design and Applications of an Intelligent Financial Reporting and Auditing Agent with Net Knowledge (FRAANK)

This paper discusses the use of intelligent Internet agents as essential tools for automating financial analysis functions in the virtual world. Several important characteristic features of intelligent agents are discussed, including autonomy, communication ability, collaboration, and mobility. This paper focuses on developing a new intelligent agent called FRAANK – Financial Reporting and Auditing Agent with Net Knowledge. The prototype of FRAANK described in this paper provides intelligent access to, and processing and integration of rapidly changing financial information available from various sources on the Internet. FRAANK is an example of an agent that provides a value-added service that can be used for extracting data from natural text financial statements and converting them into XBRL-tagged statements, can potentially be utilized in an auditing practice, or used by investors and creditors in making their decisions.