Question

find a new article about an issue of accounting information system ?

Answer 1

An accounting as an information system (AIS) is a system of collecting, storing and processing financial and accounting data that are used by decision makers. An accounting information system is generally a computer-based method for tracking accounting activity in conjunction with information technology resources. The resulting financial reports can be used internally by management or externally by other interested parties including investors, creditors and tax authorities. Accounting information systems are designed to support all accounting functions and activities including auditing, financial accounting & reporting, managerial/ management accounting and tax. The most widely adopted accounting information systems are auditing and financial reporting modules.

Problem Statement

The problem persists in the modern technology of financial information in accounting. The large-scale as well as multinational organizations have been automated in processes and informatics but the problem persists with accounting information system when it need to deal with different people as well as processes. In Australia, different stakeholders holds to play different roles through the role of information collection which is often operated by the custodian stakeholder. The data quality management is the issue that the managers needs to face on a daily basis (Ndlovu 2015).

Moreover, the accountants serve to provide two lines of processes that is internal as well as external line. The internal line deals with the internal audit in finance. As per say, the financial issues are penetrating and critical which becomes more challenging for data quality to achieve 100% accuracy. On the other hand, the other process that deals with the 100% accuracy is external audit in the financial informatics and accounting information system. The external audits have to meet various criteria that becomes difficult to keep pace with managerial focus, customers focus, accountants focus and others (Ahmad, Ayasra and Zaideh 2013).

However, data quality has to go through various administrative permissions on a given information so that the overall records are not only bounded by audits but as well as organizations.

Arguments

Although, as seen that data quality internal focus lies on the internal control as well as audits. However, the challenges of data quality have been critical and has become indispensable with general management decisions (Mancini, Vaassen and Dameri 2013). Nonetheless, the earlier attempt of accounting information system was a statistical approach but recently, mathematical concept like reliability, cost has provided a cushion. Moreover, some concepts have been extended to trade-offs for information system that are evaluated on cost/ quality control as well as spreadsheet models (Collier 2015).

Data Quality Issues

Data Quality issues play an important role in defining Accounting Information System implementation. Although data quality has been an emerging problem in the business set up which is resulting in decision making operations of the business (Soudani 2012). It has been seen that modern businesses heavily rely on accounting information systems and the basic motive is to ensure data quality. The primary data quality issues that can be highlighted are:

Product Issues in Data Quality Management – There have been quality issues that exists both in manufacturing as well as information manufacturing. Although, the issues have been common but a different name has been given under each head on input, process or output.

Information Manufacturing Product manufacturing Raw materials Raw data Input Information system Assembly line Process Information products Physical products Output

Figure: Data Quality Issues in Product and Information Manufacturing

Source: (Barha 2013)

On the other hand, when we compare on semantics, the data of poor quality may lead to erroneous decisions. Moreover, the issues of input, prices or output are not detected in the early stage then it creates to be a critical issue for both database researchers as well as practitioners.

1. Product as well as Service Quality – The issues in product quality will lead to tangible issues whereas in service quality it will lead to issues in delivery process (Oakland and Morris 2013).

2. Data Quality in Database Systems – The functions like recovery, integrity and security control do not ensure the quality of data in the database management systems. Although, the data quality established in DBMS is through integrity constrains and validity checks but that also does not sufficient to ensure the yardsticks to measure the quality. The data can lead to inconsistency and incompleteness that can lead to data corruption which results in issue of flawed data in the real world (Barha 2013).

3. Data Quality in E-Business – In e-business, the data quality issues are different from the traditional environment because the interactions with the environment leads to more complexities such that the context is impacted and ultimately results in data quality issues (Zhu et al. 2014).