Accounting Info systems

Relevance

Helps influence a decision

Feedback value

Helps evaluate past decisions

Predictive value

Helps forecast future outcomes.

Materiality

Important enough to affect decisions

Faithful representation

Accurately reflects the business, Complete, neutral, and free from error.

Discretionary

Not required by law; managers weigh benefits against costs

Mandatory

Required by law, such as tax returns and Form 10-K.

Start event

thin circle

thick circle

End event

Activity/task

something someone does

Sequence flow

Arrow

Gateway

Diamond

Pool

Organization

Lanes

departments/individuals

Class

A collection of things the business stores information about, such as customers, employees, sales, or products.

Association

Relationship between two classes

Multiplicity

Minimum and maximum number of relationships between classes.

Attribute

A characteristic of a class, such as customer name or address.

Primary key (PK)

Uniquely identifies each row; cannot be NULL

Foreign key (FK)

Connects tables by referencing another table's primary key.

Good primary keys

Should be unique, non-null, and stable. Sequential numbers are often useful.

Foreign keys must…

match an existing primary key or be NULL.

Preventive (Internal Control)

Stop problems before they happen (authorization, segregation of duties).

Detective (Internal Controls)

Find problems (reconciliations, physical inventory counts).

Corrective

Fix problems or reduce losses (retraining, backups, disaster recovery).

REA

Resources, Events, Agents

Resources

Things of value, such as inventory or cash.

Events

Business activities, such as sales or cash receipts.

Agents

People or organizations involved, such as customers, employees, or suppliers. Use the diagram’s multiplicities to determine how many resources, ev

Select

Chooses the columns to display

From

Identifies the table

Where

Filters the records

Group By

Groups records for calculation

Order By

Sorts the results

Volume

Amount of Data

Velocity

Speed at which data is generated

Variety

Different types and formats of data

Veracity

Date cleanliness, quality, and reliability

Ask the question

Master the date

Perform the analysis

Share the story

AMPS

Descriptive

What happened?

Diagnostic

Why did it happen?

Predictive

Will it happen in the future?

Prescriptive

What should we do?

Data visualization

A graphical representation of data, such as a chart, graph, or image.

Exploratory (Data visualization)

Used to discover patterns, trends, and relationships in data.

Explanatory (Data visualization)

Used to communicate findings and explain what the data means to an audience.

Bar Chart

Compare categories

Histogram

Show the distribution of numerical data

Scatterplot

Find relationships between two numerical variables

Map

Compare locations

Pie Chart

Show parts of a whole

Abstract structures

accounts, product, categories, budgets, etc.

Accounting Information Systems

a system that records, processes and reports on transactions to provide financial and non-financial information to make decisions and have appropriate levels of internal controls (security measures to protect sensitive data) for those transactions.

Relevance (3)

Feedback Value, Predictive value, Materiality

Faithful representation (3)

Complete, neutral, free from error

Data

are simply raw facts that describe an event and have little meaning on their own.

Information

data organized in a meaningful way to be useful to the user. Data serves as an input.

data object

Represents data (ex. an invoice) that is only available for the duration of the process

Datastore

Represents data that is available across process, such as information in a database

Association

Connects data objects or datastores to activities. The arrowhead shows direction of the data flow when necessary.