AUDITORS & MACHINES

Grey River Argus, 13 December 1938, Page 2

AUDITORS & MACHINES

IN MODERN OFFICES. Apart from the accountancy profession proper, directors and managers of companies must be necessarily interested in the relations of auditing to mechanisation in a modern office. •‘We think it quite plain that whatever revolution mechanisation may have- effected in the realm of bookkeeping, no comparable effect has been wrought on auditing; for thC| auditor who sits before a balance sheet pondering the terms of his report must bestow the same critical attention on each balance sheet item whether it is brought before him by one vehicle or by another;” states an editorial article in “The Accountant” (London). “A failure in verification or in vouching is not to be excused because the bookkeeping channel was of this kind or of that kind; the question turns solely on the relationship between balance sheet and facts. “It is natural that machines should be unable to furnish narrative in as much wealth as the pen although, for accounting purposes, especially in certain directions, lack of sufficient narrative is to be deplored. For this reason we think that, in present conditions, a manuscript ledger containing all the real accounts and at least some of the nominal accounts is desirable. In our .opinion the mark of excellence in what is: Called a “private"' ledger is: the wealth of narrative it incorporates into the record of acquisition, depreciation and disposal of- the assets of; the business, - so that; at all times? all the facts may instantly be ascertained without tiresome search into the subsidiary records. Hence a manuscript ledger seems to us to be desirable, possibly as an expansion 'of mechanical sheets which have aireddy been produced in the: ordinary coiirse.’ It is not improbable that these remarks may go far to settle the question which appears to agitate the minds of some of our correspondents whether a mechanical record is a ‘book’ in the eye of the law. We do not wish to wait on law but rather to create conditions of general acceptance which the law will ultimately take up into its. own recognition, but our suggestion seems to us to be helpful towards an accommodation between views -which. we do not wish to see drift into opposition. “Finally, the ultimate test by which an auditor may decide whether a system ds a bar to his unqualified approval of. a balance sheet seems to us to be whether the scheme permits him a twofold test. Can he first look down his balance sheet headings and with speed and certainty inspect the details < from which the aggregations originated? And, contrariwise, can he take any given originating document and trace it With equal ease through the records to its place in the final statement of accounts?. A system which gives a satisfactory answer to both these questions seems to us to be worthy of approval from the auditing point of view; jand it is because most properly devised mechanical schemes do permit satisfactory answers, that we look with favour on the continued spread of the mechanical idea.”