HA2042 Accounting Information Systems Tutorial Questions Assignment 1 Answer

Week 1

Transaction cycles 

Transaction cycles are broadly defined as interlocking sets and events of the business transactions. These transaction cycles are essential to determine the profitability and effectivity of the business. The business undergoes numerous financial transactions while operating and accurate reporting of the transactions helps the organization to stay resolved of financial knowledge (Ariana and Bagiada, 2018). There are three important transaction cycles in the business that are:

• Expenditure cycle

Expenditure cycle is defined as when the organizations spend their budget to acquire inventory such as raw materials for manufacturing final products. The expenditure cycle, to complete, involves various subsystems like (Trigo, Belfo and Estébanez, 2016): 

• Purchasing department 
• Accounts payable department
• Cash disbursement department 
• Payrolls 
• Conversion cycle 

It is the most important cycle of all the organizations. This process ensures the conversion of the resources purchased into final usable products to earn the profitability in term of cash. Due to the repetitive conversion events of the operations  practiced in this phase, a bigger portion of accounting transactions occur in conversion cycle (Lin et al, 2015). The subsystems under this cycle are:

• Production planning and production control
• Cost accounting 
• Revenue cycle 

Large proportion of accounting transactions take place in this cycle. It includes all the transactions that are related to the marketing and sales of the products and services. Moreover, the revenue generation only takes place after completion of the conversion cycle. The subsystems of the revenue cycle include (Gunawardena et al, 2016):

• Sales order processing
• Cash receipts

Week 2

A.

• Vendor 

A person who is involved in supplying services to the business is known as a vendor or a supplier. The company offers a purchase order of the various services required for the organizational operations to the vendor. In the purchasing order, delivery date, price, etc. are stated by the purchasing department and the invoice of products is sent to the company by him (Wilcox et al, 2015).

• Invoice 

An invoice is the bill of the goods and services that are presented to the company by the vendor. The accounts department examines the invoice of the vendor with the purchasing report and receiving report and finally the payments are settled (Shearer and Todd, Square Inc, 2018). 

B. 

AP refers to the accounts payable department of the company that is accountable for delivering the payments to the suppliers or vendors and all other creditors. A PO refers to the purchase order which is commercial document involving all the terms and conditions of the product required. Reconciliation receipt (rec rept.) includes set of records to check the discrepancies in the budget and later an invoice is generated. Invoice is the bill of all the products. T is the treasurer who receives the invoice to prepare the payment cheques for the vendor.

Week 3

Flat-file data management 

Flat- file is a database that stores the whole data in a general text form. The file does not include any structure mark up and word processing. The flat-files contain all the record in a single format and no separate columns are available. Moreover, the stored information is easy to understand and is easily extracted without complex criteria. The flat-files are preferred even though there is no provision for manipulation due to their ease in carrying information. Therefore, no changes can be made in the file due to the presence of the delimiters (Stewart et al, 2016). The multiple data tables that carry information have no links with each other in the flat-file. They are also used by programmers while building applications because they use lesser space due to their structure. Even the process is simple but the data is limited to individuals and it cannot be shared among separate users. There are many other disadvantages of using flat-file databases that are faced by students which are mentioned below (Mallach, 2015):

• Redundancy : the data is repeated again and again for the same student and no relationship does exist among the tables. 
• Data integrity: the files lack data integrity because as the data increases, the correctness and reliability are compromised. 
• Slow process: due to the availability of large data, the process of searching and assessing the data becomes slow. Therefore, flat-files tend to consume more time than the 
• Size of file: due to the redundancies in data, the file size increases which makes the task search task a burdensome process. 
• Erroneous: the data is repetitive and this can result in errors in the data. 
• It gives rise to inconsistent data. 

Due to these drawbacks in the flat-files, they cause aggravations to the student but their simplicity allows them to be used on a large scale. 

Week 4

A. a separate combination is required for this case.

Reason: the bad debt write-off and reconciliation of accounts approving department should be separate to the general ledger control account because this enables to check the errors in the reports. Later, the general ledger can receive the error-free and satisfactory evidence concerned to the matter of bad debt write-offs. 

B. It should not be separate.

Reason: the person who is distributing the payroll to the employees should also be accountable for approving the employee time cards. This intact combination of the tasks eliminates the chances of biasness among the employees. The same person would be distributing the cheques after examining the period for which the employee worked. It also reduces the extra financial loss of the company when the employees will be given the amounts they deserved for the hours they worked. 

C.  It should be an intact process.

Reason: to reduce the unnecessary errors that can arise due to involvement of multiple people, the process of amount posting from cash receipt and cash disbursement to the general ledger should be performed by an individual. Moreover, the person will have idea of the cash receipts and disbursements so, he can post the amount to general ledger without occurrence of discrepancies in the accounts. 

D. It should be separate.

Reason: this function should be performed by different persons to save time. If the same person takes responsibility of writing and suppling the cheques, then it will become hectic process for that person to take care of two different processes. 

E. it should not be separate.

Reason: assigning separate persons for it would increase the chances of errors. To avoid the errors and to maintain the integrity, same person should do these both tasks. 

Week 5

A.

The management should report the architects about the new changes in the system. The reason being the employees should be kept in light as much as possible by the management. However, in the current case, the management is scared about the changed behaviour of the architects. The architects can be given strict rules or the management can enforce the objectives for the architects. This would not let the architects to sit and think of the new system. The architects can give their piece of mind but if the management informs after adding the new system, the architects may not like the abrupt change. Moreover, the pre information would render the architects to stabilize themselves for the coming change (Noe and Kodwani, 2018).

B.

I don’t approve the development process of the management because they are keeping the architects in dark for not informing them about the addition of new system. Therefore, personally, it is not a right way to develop new systems. The consultation and suggestions of the architect matters and they should be involved in the development process with due respect. Therefore, it would not be ethical to keep them unknown of the new developments. The architects are the integral part of the company and they are foundation for the smooth running of the company. Therefore, they are required to be informed for the development of the system.