Accounting Audit Trails

During Live Operations, the Transaction Processing, File Maintenance, and Reports and Inquiry menus provide functions used during day-to-day operation of the system.

To process transactions, a three-step procedure is followed: (1) transaction entry; (2) journal printing; and (3) transaction posting, where records are integrated with permanent master files.

Transaction Entry

During purchase order entry and the entry of receipts and invoices the system performs validation checks on all transactions entered.

Journal Printing

After transaction entry of receipts or invoices, the transaction data must be printed on a journal before it can be posted. The journals should be reviewed or edited by the operator, or someone else in the department who can verify the entered data. Save the journals; they are an important part of your audit trail.

During journal printing, the system performs validation checks on the data to ensure that it can be posted correctly. Errors and warnings may be printed on the journal and summarized at the end of the journal. Transaction data that prints with errors will not be allowed to post until the errors are corrected and the journal is reprinted without errors.

This process ensures that data is verified twice before being posted to permanent master files, and gives added assurance that erroneously entered data will not be posted to permanent files.

Transaction Posting

Once transactions have been entered and the journal has been printed and verified, the transaction data is ready to be posted to your permanent master files. This process usually involves adding records to a system-maintained detail file, and summarizing the detail for historical records. Each transaction is deleted after it has been posted.