Picalo is all about automation.  The software developer believes strongly that fraud detection is best done through scripts.  Scripts provide documentation, continual improvement and reuse of routines, and most important, speed.

Picalo uses the excellent Python programming language, rated by Tiobe as one of the most popular languages in the world.  This provides a full-featured language as compared with the simple macro environment most analysis applications provide.  Python is object-oriented yet easy to learn and use.  It provides hundreds of libraries within the Picalo environment (to scrape web sites, work with data, connect to email, etc.), and thousands more libraries can be downloaded online.

If you’ve gotten into the scripting language of your current platform (such as VBA in MS Office), you’ll love the power and flexibility Python gives you.