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Accounting Information Systems 9th Edition by James Hall
Edition 9ISBN: 978-1133934400Accounting Information Systems 9th Edition by James Hall
Edition 9ISBN: 978-1133934400 Exercise 2
What are the characteristics of good or useful information?
Explanation
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Characteristics of Good Information
Useful information helps a user in deciding what next to do as part of carrying out of his/her designated job. Good information must trigger some action from the user. This action can be any conscious decision taken by the user in response to the status and/or conditions conveyed by the information.
When facts help a user to knowingly do or not do something, it becomes good information. The same set of facts that are meaningful for one user may be useless to another user if it does not pertain to his/her area of work.
For example, the inventory status report helps the purchasing agent to decide whether or not to order for additional raw material. Hence, such a report provides good or useful information to the purchasing agent. This same report is meaningless to a human resources manager.
The following are the characteristics of useful information:
1. Relevance: Any information that is presented to the user must be relevant to the task that the user is designated to perform. Any irrelevant information in a report can shift the focus away from the main issue.
2. Timeliness: The information must be available to the user in a timely manner. If the information becomes available to the user after the user has already taken the corresponding action, it is no longer useful to the user.
3. Accuracy: The information available to the user must not cause the user to take a wrong decision due to incorrect facts.
4. Completeness: The information presented to the user should include all the pieces of information that go into making that information completes. Incomplete information can cause the user to take a wrong action.
5. Summarization: Information should be summarized as appropriate and required for the user's task. The lower level operations staff are likely to require detailed reports while senior managers may need only summarized information to get an overall view of the activity involved.
Useful information helps a user in deciding what next to do as part of carrying out of his/her designated job. Good information must trigger some action from the user. This action can be any conscious decision taken by the user in response to the status and/or conditions conveyed by the information.
When facts help a user to knowingly do or not do something, it becomes good information. The same set of facts that are meaningful for one user may be useless to another user if it does not pertain to his/her area of work.
For example, the inventory status report helps the purchasing agent to decide whether or not to order for additional raw material. Hence, such a report provides good or useful information to the purchasing agent. This same report is meaningless to a human resources manager.
The following are the characteristics of useful information:
1. Relevance: Any information that is presented to the user must be relevant to the task that the user is designated to perform. Any irrelevant information in a report can shift the focus away from the main issue.
2. Timeliness: The information must be available to the user in a timely manner. If the information becomes available to the user after the user has already taken the corresponding action, it is no longer useful to the user.
3. Accuracy: The information available to the user must not cause the user to take a wrong decision due to incorrect facts.
4. Completeness: The information presented to the user should include all the pieces of information that go into making that information completes. Incomplete information can cause the user to take a wrong action.
5. Summarization: Information should be summarized as appropriate and required for the user's task. The lower level operations staff are likely to require detailed reports while senior managers may need only summarized information to get an overall view of the activity involved.
Accounting Information Systems 9th Edition by James Hall
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