The Interaction Of Documentation Format And Sequence On Error Detection In A Sales Returns Accounting Information System

Abstract

This paper describes an experiment investigating whether the documentation mode and sequence of documentation jointly affect error detection performance when documenting an accounting information system. Forty-six graduate and undergraduate accounting and accounting information systems students participated in the study in three groups.  The students received a narrative and flowchart describing a client's sales returns processing system and were asked to identify the control weaknesses and violations in the system.  One group of participants received both the narrative and flowchart simultaneously. Another group of participant received the narrative first followed by flowchart after a period of time and a third group received flowchart first followed by narrative after a period of time as well.

The results show that neither narrative nor flowchart was differentially effective than the other in detecting system control errors. However, there was a significant interaction of documentation format and documentation sequence, suggesting that the amount of error detection when documenting a system was dependent upon the format and the sequence in which documentation was conducted. It also seems that given a choice of documentation formats to use, participants prefer to use narrative primarily more than flowchart in documenting a system. When forced to use flowchart first followed by narrative, participants' overall error detection performance improved significantly than when using narrative first followed by flowchart.  The implication in this study is that a second documentation format goes a long way to detect errors that would otherwise not be detected.  Similarly, the degree to which errors are effectively detected depended on the sequence in which documentation format is used.