Complete a research paper on a topic related to accounting information systems, controls, or data management (roughly 5-7 pages).

RUNNING TITLE: ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS
RUNNING TITLE: Accounting Information Systems 1
Research Paper on ERP-Accounting Information Systems
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Instructor’s Name
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Accounting Information Systems 2

Abstract
There are various kinds of Accounting Information Systems used by companies and all
these systems seem to differ in terms of benefit and purpose. Amongst many, an information
system that has been found to be useful and important to operations of the business is the ERP
i.e. Enterprise Resource Planning system. The research paper herein would describe what exactly
an ERP system is, history of ERP system development and discussion on its benefits.
Accounting Information systems
Accounting Information System (AIS) provides the basis of a company’s information
system for internal and external user reporting. It provides a decision-making platform for
managers of company.
There are three categories of accounting information systems. These three categories
according to the text of Leslie Turner and Andrea Weickgenannt, are:
1. Manual Systems
- typically utilized in smaller size establishments for record and document
maintenance that may be paper-based.
2. Legacy Systems
- Companies using such systems may not depend on documentation based on
paper. However, companies which have been heavily using such systems for
many years call such software systems as Legacy Systems.
3. Modern, integrated IT Systems
- Typically, bigger companies utilize these systems that are generally integrated
facilitating collaboration of business processes.
Accounting Information Systems 3

The accounting information system connects to different areas focusing on data
collection and processing directed towards accounting purposes; for Internal control purposes
and to provide relevant decision-making information by choosing from different options. The
accounting information systems can comprise of individual sub subsystems, can exist in
combination or as integrated systems.
Combined accounting information systems in terms of combination of various types of
the previous two systems have not been considered in this discussion. Hall (1995) indicated that
many sub-systems that can be created include sub-systems for transaction processing, book-
keeping journal sub-systems, fixed assets sub-systems and management reporting sub-systems of
eporting. Additionally, G.H. Bodnar and W.S. Hopwood (1993) defined sub systems in terms of
expenditures, revenues, finance, financial reporting including production. Individual sub systems
that became characteristic of most contemporary accounting information systems consisted of
general ledger, analytical book-keeping and auxiliary sub-systems.
The accounting information system established upon individual sub-systems had the
advantage of automatically transfe
ing data from these analytical book-keeping sub-systems
onto general ledger sub-systems thus making booking easier.
On the other hand, integral accounting information systems represent module sets that are
integrated as one and a single information system for the company. In Integral accounting
information systems, the data are entered only once into the system which is further used for
processing. Integral accounting systems enables the entry of transactions at the place of
occu
ence and are mostly based on an on-line computer system that uses and updates
information in all places where ever applicable. The advantage of integral accounting
information systems is that recording of data is done online and only once. The interactions
Accounting Information Systems 4

etween accounting modules...