Chapter 9 Vocabulary - Controlling Information Systems: Business Process and Application Controls

Control Matrix

A tool designed to assist you in evaluating or assessing the potential effectiveness of controls in a particular business process by matching control goals with their associated control plans

Effectiveness Goals

Describe measures of success for the operations process and are unique to an organization; developed during an enterprise’s risk-management process

Efficiency Goals

Relate to ensuring that resources used in the business process are being employed in the most productive manner

Security Goals

Relate to protecting entity resources from loss, destruction, disclosure, copying, sale, or other misuse

Input Goals

Relate to ensuring input validity, input completeness, and input accuracy with respect to all business process data entering the system

Update Goals

Relate to ensuring the update completeness and update accuracy of the business process input data

Document Design

A control plan in which a source document is designed to make it easier to prepare the document initially and later to input data from the document

Written Approvals

A signature or initials on a document to indicate that an event has been authorized

Preformatted Screens

A computer screen designed to control the entry of data by defining the acceptable format of each data field, automatically moving to the next field, requiring that certain fields are completed, and/or by automatically populating fields

Online Prompting

A control plan that requests user input or asks questions that the user must answer

Populate Input Screens with Master Data

A control plan that operates when a clerk enters the identification code for an entity, such as a customer, and the system retrieves data about that entity from the master data, to eliminate the need for re-entry of those data

Compare Input Data with Master Data

A process to determine the accuracy and validity of the input data; such comparisons may be done manually or by the computer

Procedures for Rejected Inputs

A control plan designed to ensure that erroneous data (i.e., not accepted for processing) are corrected and resubmitted for processing

Programmed Edit Checks

An edit that is automatically performed by data entry programs upon entry of the input data

Limit Checks / Reasonableness Checks

A type of programmed edit check that tests whether the contents (e.g., values) of the entered data fall within a predetermined range

Document/Record Hash Totals

These totals reflect a summarization of any numeric field within the input document or record, such as item numbers or quantities on a customer order

Mathematical Accuracy Checks

These edit checks compare calculations performed manually to those performed by the computer to determine whether a document has been entered correctly

Check Digit

A type of programmed edit in which an extra digit is included in the identification number of entities such as customers and vendors. Through mathematical formulae, the computer uses the check digit to verify that the identification number is input correctly

Confirm Input Acceptance

This control causes the data entry program to inform the user that input has been accepted for processing

Automated Data Entry

A strategy for the capture and entry of event-related data using technology such as OCR, bar codes, RFID, and EDI

Enter Data Close to the Originating Source

A strategy for the capture and entry of event-related data close to the place (and probably time) that an event occurs, reducing the likelihood that events will be lost and not entered into the system and that errors will be introduced into the system

Digital Signatures

This technology validates the identity of the sender and the integrity of an electronic message to reduce the risk that a communication was sent by an unauthorized system or user or was intercepted/modified in transit

Exception and Summary Report

This report reflects the events—either in detail, summary, or both—that were accepted or rejected by the system

Batch Control Plans

Control plans used to regulate information processing by calculating control totals at various points in a processing run and subsequently comparing these totals

Document/Record Counts

Simple counts of the number of documents entered (e.g., 25 documents in a batch). This procedure represents the minimum level required to control input completeness

Item or Line Counts

Counts of the number of items or lines of data entered, such as a count of the number of invoices being paid by all the customer remittances

Dollar Totals

A summation of the dollar value of items in the batch, such as the total dollar value of all remittance advices in a batch

Hash Totals

A summation of any numeric data existing for all documents in the batch, such as a total of customer numbers or invoice numbers in the case of remittance advices; used for control purposes only

Turnaround Documents

Documents such as remittance advices that are used to capture and input a subsequent event

Key Verification

A control plan in which documents are keyed by one individual and then rekeyed by a second individual. The data entry software compares the second keystrokes to the strokes keyed by the first individual. If there are differences, it is assumed that one person misread or miskeyed the data

Sequence Checks

A type of control in a batch processing system where documents that are numbered sequentially are used to determine that all documents have been processed (completeness) and that no extra documents have been processed (completeness if a duplicated document, or validity if a bogus document)

Batch Sequence Check

A process to check event data within a batch including the following steps: (1) the range of serial numbers constituting the documents in the batch is entered; (2) each individual, serially prenumbered document is entered; (3) the computer program sorts the input documents into numerical order, checks the documents against the sequence number range, and reports missing, duplicate, and out-of-range data

Cumulative Sequence Check

Provides input control when the serial numbers are assigned within the organization (e.g., sales order numbers issued by the sales order department) but later are not entered in perfect serial number sequence (i.e., picking tickets do not necessarily arrive at the shipping department in sequence)

Manual Reconciliation of Batch Totals

A control plan that works in the following manner: (1) batch totals are established manually; (2) as individual source documents are entered, a computer program accumulates independent batch totals; (3) the computer prepares a report that includes the relevant totals that must be manually reconciled with the totals established prior to the particular process; (4) the person who reconciles the batch totals must determine why the totals do not agree and make corrections as necessary to ensure integrity of the input data

Computer Agreement of Batch Totals

A control plan that works in the following manner: (1) batch totals are established manually; (2) the manually prepared total is entered into the computer and is written to the computer batch control totals data; (3) as individual source documents are entered, a computer program accumulates independent batch totals and compares these totals to the manually prepared totals; (4) the computer prepares a report, which usually contains batch details and whether the totals agreed or disagreed

Agree Run-to-Run Totals

Reconciling totals prepared before a computer process has begun to totals prepared at the completion of the computer process

Tickler File

A manual file of documents, or a computer file, reviewed on a regular basis, that constraints business event data that is pending further action

One-for-One Checking

A business process control that uses a detailed comparison of individual elements of two or more data sources to determine that they agree