Accounting Information Systems as a means of enhancing financial performance. A case of National Railways of Zimbabwe.

Abstract

Accounting information systems (AIS) as a part of a company’s information systems (IS) are seen as facilitating decision-making within organizations and should be tailored to an organization’s environment, requirements of tasks, and structure. An accounting information system is a structure that a business uses to collect, store, manage, process, retrieve, and report its financial data so that it can be used by accountants, consultants, business analysts, managers, chief financial officers (CFOs), auditors and regulatory and tax agencies. In particular, specially trained accountants work with AIS to ensure the highest level of accuracy in a company's financial transactions and recordkeeping and to make financial data easily available to those who legitimately need access to it, all while keeping data intact and secure. Accounting information systems have been widely used by many organizations to automate and integrate their business operations. The main objective of many businesses to adopt this system are to improve their business efficiency and enhance performance. The qualitative characteristic of any Accounting Information System can be maintained if there is a sound internal control system. Internal control is run to ensure the achievement of operational goals and performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the use of Accounting Information Systems as a means of enhancing financial performance in which it was found that accounting information systems are of great importance to both businesses and organizations in which help in facilitating management decision-making, internal controls, quality of the financial report, and it facilitates the company’s transaction and it also plays an important role in economic system. The study was done through a case study of National Railways of Zimbabwe and a questionnaire was designed in order to come with mentioned results. SPSS software was used to analyze the primary data collected. Recommendations made after the study were to utilize the utmost benefit of related knowledge based on computer systems, evaluate accounting policies that are used in the company and they should be revised according to the principles and standards for giving more useful accounting information systems, improvement of AIS knowledge by management and to pay utmost attention to the role of accounting information system in better understanding of financial dimensions of development as one of the important tools of decision making and planning.