course, harness information technology toperform the necessary tasks in each step of
the process. For example, a catalog retailer might use some web pages on the Internet to
gather customer purchase data, then use central file servers and disk storage to process
and store the purchase transactions, and finally employ other web pages and printed
outputs to confirm and distribute information about the order to appropriate parties.
Although computers are wonderfully efficient and useful tools, they also create prob-lems. One is their ability to output vast amounts of information quickly. Too much
information, and especially too much trivial information, can overwhelm its users, pos-sibly causing relevant information to be lost or overlooked. This situation is known as
information overload. It is up to the accounting profession to determine the nature and
timing of the outputs created and distributed by an AIS to its end users.
Another problem with computerized data processing is that computers do not automat-ically catch the simple input errors that humans make. For example, ifyouwere performing
payroll processing, you would probably know that a value of ‘‘-40’’ hours for the number
of hours worked was probably a mistake—the value should be ‘‘40.’’ A computer can be
programmed to look for (and reject) bad input, but it is difficult to anticipate all possible
problems.