Design and Use of Adequate Documents and Records
The proper design and use of electronic and paper documents and records helps ensure the accurate and complete recording of all relevant transaction data. Their form and content should be kept as simple as possible to promote efficient record keeping minimize recording errors, and facilitate review and verification. Document that initiate a transaction should contain a space for authorizations. Those used to transfer assets to someone else should have a space for the receiving party’s signature. To reduce the likelihood of documents being used fraudulently, they should be sequentially pre numbered so each can be accounted for A good audit trail facilitates tracing individual transaction through the system, the correction of errors, and the verification of system output. Document, form, and input screen design are discussed in more detail in Chapter 20.