Accounting Information Systems

AY2019/2020 Semester 1

The purpose of this course is to help students to develop a strong conceptual foundation in accounting information systems, a necessary pre-requisite for effective performance in accountants and auditors in the current digital era. The course enables the students to understand, evaluate and use Accounting Information Systems effectively in their future roles as accountants, managers, consultants, or auditors. The course seeks to: 1) Provide an in-depth understanding of key business processes of an organization, and how the data captured during the business process flow through to management and financial accounting. 2) Train students to model key business process activities and identify risk and control issues related to a business process 3) Provide comprehensive knowledge about AIS packages and enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages and explain how AIS/ERP packages are implemented. 4) Provide students with an overview of some key modules of an ERP and teach students the skills of using an industry standard package such as SAP. Students will study how AIS/ERP is deployed in common business transactions. They will learn about the information flow in fundamental accounting processes and the major risks and controls associated with these processes. Students will be taught on how data is captured, processed, stored and accessed for generating management information and business reports and documents. Students will gain hands-on training on ERP usage via lab sessions on SAP ? an industry standard ERP package. With an understanding of the systems development process and knowledge of AIS deployment in accounting and business processes from pre-lab sessions, students will gain an appreciation of the underlying workings of a typical ERP/AIS. This learning and experience will equip them with knowledge for more effective sourcing, selection, implementation and deployment of AIS/ERP packages in practice. In addition, students will also learn how they can make use of Excel for more effective reporting from the data generated through AIS/ERP packages.