Question

Masters Ltd has just realised that it has a problem with sales data as its sales order system records sales to customers that subsequently fail a credit check. a) What decisions made during the revenue cycle would be affected by this data problem? How can the problem be corrected? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ b) How would this data problem affect the performance of the revenue cycle? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ Question 3 continued next page Practice Questions Accounting Systems and Information Assurance - ACCT20072 Page 5 of 7 Question 3 continued Griffith Ltd has just realised that it has a timeliness problem with its general ledger data. It updates daily transactional data from subsidiary systems to the general ledger weekly; however, general ledger reports are available on an unrestricted basis. The CFO recently realised that some users do not know that they need to wait until after the Sunday night update to run their month-end reports. c) What decisions made during the general ledger and financial reporting cycle would potentially be affected by this data problem? ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ d) How would this data problem affect the reported results of the organisation?

Answer 1

A) Credit sales should be approved before the order is processed any further.

This problem can be corrected by :-

- Automatic checking of credit limits and balances by improving the IT system.

- Emails to credit manager for accounts needing specific authorization.

B)The revenue cycle will get disturb because without having checks on the credit limits, the management will not be able to find the persons who have inability to pay.

C) Griffith needs to determine which time zone they are operating in and gear their posting and reporting cycles globally around that time zone only. If the mismatch takes place in the management reports then internal decision making could be flawed.

If the timing mismatch occured in financial reports then Griffith may find that they are in breach of corporate reporting requirements with potentially serious implications.

D) Other process may not be directly affected in terms of their operational activities however decision making relating to budgets and foercasts may be on inaccurate data which would flow through to create issues for other processes.