Applications for Computer Time Sharing in Public Accounting.

This article deals with the applications for computer time sharing in public accounting. Time sharing makes available to the user the power of large-scale computer systems--their speed, accuracy, etc.--but eliminates some of the major disadvantages of acquiring such a system, including its large fixed cost, its frequent nonavailability due to tight batch processing schedules, and the necessity of having a large staff of highly-trained personnel to manage and operate the system. The type of problem that is best suited to the application of time sharing is one that occurs relatively frequently, but at irregular intervals, and is therefore not amenable to advance scheduling. The need for computer time for problems of this sort is what makes the immediate access feature of time sharing so valuable. A second feature of a good time-sharing application is that the problem has standard solution technique with relatively few variations. Writing program for such a problem will not be as difficult as for a more complex problem. Probably the most potentially useful applications of time sharing in the audit area involve statistical sampling, both in drawing a sample and in appraising the results of a test. Programs which generate sets of random numbers are very simple to write, and are also usually available among the library programs supplied by the time-sharing service.