The Information System: An Accountant's Perspective Flashcards
What are the four levels of activity in the pyramid representing the business organization?
Top Management, Middle Management, Operations Management, and Operations Personnel.
Information Flows in two directions, this type of flow supports operations-level tasks with highly detailed information about the many business transactions affecting the firm.
Horizontal Flow
Information Flows in two directions, this type of flow distributes information downward from senior managers to junior managers and operations personnel through instructions, quotas, and budgets.
Vertical Flow
What are the two major types of systems?
Natural and Artificial System
What are the elements of a system?
Multiple Components, Relatedness, Subsystems, and Purpose
What are the characteristics of good or useful information?
Relevance, Timeliness, Accuracy, Completeness, and Summarization
What rules govern data collection?
Relevance and Efficiency
What are the levels of data hierarchy?
Data attribute, record, and files.
What are the three fundamental tasks of database management?
Storage, Retrieval, and Deletion
What are the fundamental objectives of all information systems?
I. to support the stewardship function of management
II. to support management decision-making
III. to support the day-to-day operations of the firm.
Name the three most common ways to segment an organization.
Geographic Location, Product Line, and Business Function
What types of tasks become redundant in a distributed data processing system?
Autonomous systems development activities distributed throughout the firm can result in each user area reinventing the wheel.
What are the three general problems associated with data redundancy?
Insertion anomaly, Deletion anomaly, and Updation anomaly
Define the key elements of the REA model.
Resources- assets of an organization
Events- phenomena that affect changes in resources
Agents- individuals and departments that participate in an economic event.
What three roles are played by accountants with respect to the information system?
System users, System Designers, and System Auditors.
This involves specifying the criteria for identifying delinquent customers and the information that needs to be reported. As the domain expert, the accountant determines the nature of the information required, its sources, its destination, and the accounting rules that need to be applied.
Conceptual System
This includes the data storage medium to be used and the method for capturing and presenting the information.
Physical System
These are the personnel inside an organization who helps run its operations and uses the company’s financial information to make decisions. They make use of the financial information to compare past results and help make adjustments for future activities.
Internal Users
These are the people outside of an organization who does not directly run its operations and use the financial information of a specific company to make decisions. They assess their investment decisions by using relevant financial information in a company’s financial statements.
External Users
An event that affects the assets and equities of an organization and is measured by monetary units.
Financial Transaction
These are events that do not meet the definition of financial transactions.
Non-financial Transaction
Performed by more than one large computer house and serves users throughout the organization. All the users of each department functioned well to connect to these central computers through their terminals which are only input and output devices.
Centralized Data Processing
The reorganizing of IT functions into small information processing units that are distributed to users and placed under their control. Each department processes its data on its local servers which can enable sharing of data between all other departments.
Distributed Data Processing
Which of the following is NOT a financial transaction?
a. purchase of products b. cash receipts c. update valid vendor file d. sale of inventory
C
The following are subsystems of the Accounting Information System, EXCEPT
a. Transaction Processing System.
b. Human Resources System.
c. General Ledger/Financial Reporting System.
d. Management Reporting System.
B
Which of the following is NOT a purpose of the Transaction Processing System?
a. managing and reporting on the status of financial investments
b. converting economic events into financial transactions
c. distributing essential information to operations personnel to support their daily operations
d. recording financial transactions in the accounting records
A
The objectives of the data collection activity of the general model for Accounting Information Systems are to collect data that are
a. relevant and redundant.
b. efficient and objective.
c. efficient and redundant.
d. efficient and relevant.
D
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of effective information? a. relevance b. accuracy c. summarization d. precision
D
Which of the following is NOT a database management task? a. retrieval b. storage c. summarization d. deletion
C