QUESTION 1

Circle College is a private college established in 2015, with the main campus located in Changloon, Kedah. In several years, Circle College expanded, eventually opening campuses in Jitra, Alor Setar, Sungai Petani and Kulim. Circle College offers various courses in Business Management, Accounting and Finance. The five campuses throughout Malaysia offers a range of pre-university to undergraduate programs certified by reputable higher education institutions in Malaysia that are in collaboration with Circle College. Students in Circle College are exposed to a national atmosphere as students from all across the nation enrol in the college.

Circle College current information system includes manual procedures supported by independent non-networked PCs in each branch. Communications between branches relies entirely on the exchange of hard-copy documents. Recently, Circle College has been experiencing higher rates of operational problems and accounting errors. It is believed that these stem from their outdated way of networking and computing systems. As a result, management is considering implementing a new fully integrated accounting information system, which will automate their information processing such as student enrolment, student's fees receipts, payroll processing and cash disbursement procedures.

Given the current problem, the management has set up a committee to develop a new information system. The committee consists of people such as top management, IT staff, IT consultant from the service provider.As an accountant of the Circle College, you are appointed as part of the committee. The committee will conduct activities phase by phase which consists of system planning, system analysis, system design, and system implementation. For the initial process, you are responsible to conduct some research on the related concepts of accounting information system (AIS) concerning Circle College. In achieving this, you will need to refer to the General Model of AIS and the Information Model that are illustrated in the diagrams below.

General Model for AIS.

The General Model for AIS consists of seven main components in AIS including end users, data sources, data collection data processing, database management, information generation and feedback. Each component has a different characteristics and accomplishes different functions in the financial reporting process.