AIS Ch. 2 Flashcards
Data Processing Cycle
The four operations (data input, data storage, data processing, and information output) performed on data to generate meaningful and relevant information.
Source Documents
Documents used to capture transaction data at its source - when the transaction takes place. Examples include: sales orders, purchase orders, and employee time cards.
Turnaround Documents
Records of company data sent to an external party and then returned to the system as input. Turnaround documents are in machine-readable form to facilitate their subsequent processing as input records. An example is a utility bill.
Source Data Automation
The collection of transaction data in machine-readable form at the time and place of origin. Example are pos terminals and ATMs.
General Ledger
A ledger that contains summary-level data for every asset, liability, equity, revenue, and expense account of the organization.
Subsidiary Ledger
A ledger used to record detailed data for a general ledger account with many individual subaccounts, such as accounts receivable, inventory, and accounts payable.
Control Account
A title given to a general ledger account that summarizes the total amounts recorded in a subsidiary ledger. For example, the accounts receivable control account in the general ledger represents the total amount owed by all customers. The balances in the accounts receivable subsidiary ledger indicate the amount owed by each specific customer.
Coding
The systematic assignment of numbers or letters to items to classify and organize them.
Sequence Codes
Items are numbered consecutively so that gaps in the sequence code indicate missing items that should be investigated. Examples, include prenumbered checks, invoices, and purchase orders.
Block Code
Blocks of numbers that are reserved for specific categories of data, thereby helping to organize the data. An example is a chart of accounts.
Group Codes
Two or more subgroups of digits that are used to code an item. A group code is often used in conjuction with a block code.
Mnemonic Code
Letters and numbers that are interspersed to identify an item. The mnemonic code code is derived from the description of the item and is usually easy to memorize.
Chart of Accounts
A listing of all numbers assigned to balance sheet and income statement accounts. The account numbers allow transaction data to be coded, classified, and entered into the proper accounts. They also facilitate financial statement and report preparation.
General Journal
A journal used to record infrequent or nonroutine transactions, such as loan payments and end-of-period adjusting and closing entries.
Specialized Journal
A journal used to record a large number of repetitive transactions such as credit sales, cash receipts, purchases, and cash disbursements.
Audit Trail
A path that allows a transaction to be traced through a data processing system from point of origin to output or backwards from output to point of origin. It is used to check the accuracy and validity of leger postings and to trace changes in general ledger accounts from their beginning balance to their ending balance.
Entity
The item about which information is stored in a record. Examples include an employee, an inventory item, and a customer.
Attributes
The properties, identifying numbers, and characteristics of interest of an entity that is stored in a database. Examples are employee number, pay rate, name, and address.
Field
The portion of a data record where the data value for a particular attribute is stored. For example, in a spreadsheet each row might represent a customer and each column is an attribute of the customer. Each cell in the spreadsheet is a field.
Record
A set of fields whose data values describe specific attributes of an entity, such as all payroll data relating to a single employee. An example is a row in a spreadsheet.
Data Value
The actual value stored in a field. It describes a particular attribute of an entity. For example, the customer name field would contain “ZYX Company” if that company was a customer.
File
A set of logically related records, such as the payroll records of all employees.
Master File
A permanent file of records that stores cumulative data about an organization. As transactions take place, individual records within a master file are updated to keep them current.
Transaction File
A file that contains the individual business transactions that occur during a specific fiscal period. A transaction file is conceptually similar to a journal in a manual AIS.
