Hypertext challenges in the auditing domain

ABSTRACT

Auditing is the process by which an opinion is formed on the financial statements of a company by a group of outside professional accountants. Large numbers of documents pertaining to the company's business are examined and many more are produced during an audit in order to arrive at and provide a basis for this opinion. These documents contain a wide variety of interrelated information. Capturing these interrelationships is essential to performing an effective audit. Currently, this is accomplished by using a highly-structured, manual hypertext system. While quite effective, the system is difficult and time-consuming to maintain, and can become unwieldy when conducting an audit for a very large company. We are in the process of developing an electronic system to meet the needs of this complex task. The complexity of the referencing system challenges current hypertext and user interface technology. At the same time, the structure of the domain affords an interesting application area within which to explore and more fully develop hypertext techniques. During the course of this project, we are exploring automatic generation of links, automatic generation of documents, hypertext path creation and access, creation of a typed-link topology for the domain, referencing of individual points and regions within documents, linking bodies of hypertext, and many other issues.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS

  J. Computer Applications
  J.1 ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING
      Subjects: Financial (e.g., EFTS)

General Terms:
Design, Performance