AIS: A Model Of An Accounting Information System

1.0 Introduction
Accounting information system (AIS) perfomed a firms’s data processing tasks that gathers data describing the firms’s activities, transforms the data into information, and makes the information available to users both inside and outside the firm.
Figure 1.0 below is a model of an AIS. As you can see at the bottom of the model is the input, transformation, and output elements of the physical system of the fire at the bottom. Data is gathered from throughout the physical system and the environment and entered into the database. Data processing software transforms the data into information for the firm’s management and for organizations in the firm’s environments and for individuals.
The AIS is the only CBIS subsystem that has the responsibility of meeting information needs outside of the firm and to furnish information to each environmental element except competitors.
A firm does not have a choice of whether to have an AIS; it is a requirement. Also, all firms perform the procedures basically the same way. It is based data oriented rather than information oriented, and the data is largely historical. Although it is data oriented, it does produced some information. In addition, it provides the database that serves as the foundation for other CBIS subsystems.

Diagram 1.0: A Model of an Accounting Information System.

2.0 Characteristics
These are several characteristics of Accounting Information Systems:
2.1 Performs necessary tasks
The firm has not decided whether it wants to perform data processing. The firm is required to maintain records of activities with the law. Elements in the environment such as government, shareholders and owners, and the financial community demands that the firm engage...

... middle of paper ...

...inancial record of the firm’s operations and produces information that describes those operations. The information exists in the form of printed and displayed documents that are used by managers and non-managers in the firm, and by all environmental excepts competitors.
Data processing consists of four basic tasks-data gathering, data manipulation, data storage and document preparation. Manipulation consists of classifying, sorting, calculating, and summarizing. Document preparation can be triggered by either an action or a time schedule.
There are several characteristics of data processing that distinguish it from the other application areas. Data processing performs necessary tasks, adheres to relatively standardized procedures, handles detailed data, has a primarily historical focus, and provides problem-solving information as a byproduct of its other activities.