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An information system (IS) accounting function should:
o Record the consumption of data processing resources at the
most basic level of usage (for example, job and session).
o Classify the usage both by user (cost center) and by
resource consumed (load center).
o Summarize the information based on the classifications that
will impart the greatest amount of information to those who
use it without obscuring important facts.
o Report the summarized information at regular intervals in a
manner most likely to reflect significant trends and
characteristics.
According to Welsch, Zlatkovich, and White (page 32 of
Intermediate Accounting, published by Richard D. Irwin, Inc.)
in accounting terminology the process of recording the detail
data is called "journalizing," after the journal in which it
is recorded. The classification process is called "posting"
the information to the appropriate account. The summarized
record of the accounts into which a transaction is posted is
called the ledger.
In large accounting systems, multiple ledgers frequently keep
only one type of account. Thus, the ledger itself may well
serve the reporting purpose. In that case, a summary ledger,
the general ledger containing all accounts, is also
maintained. The periodic process of publishing the contents
of the general ledger for the organization and other
interested parties is known as producing the Statement of
Financial Position.
Few data center accounting systems will ever be called upon
to produce a Statement of Financial Position, although they
may contribute to the overall corporate statement. However,
data processing managers need to allocate some portion of
their costs to those who actually consume the resources.
Thus, a computer accounting system can approximate the
requirements of a business accounting system.
NOTE: Some profit-oriented organizations prefer to apportion
not the costs incurred, but some percentage of the
actual monetary value of the processing performed.
Allocating dollars to the users (called chargeback) is
dependent on two processes: measuring the resources consumed
by the user and determining a dollar representation of those
resources. The remainder of this chapter discusses the first
of these two processes, measuring the resources consumed, or
computer accounting. The second process, pricing, is
discussed in Chapter 3.
It may seem easy to determine the quantity of resources
consumed by a user, since, unlike other equipment, the
computer will do it for you. Unfortunately, it is often
difficult to make a distinction between a resource and a
product, or what was consumed and what was produced. The
following example by Melvin J. Strauss (page 45 of the book
Computer Capacity, A Production Control Approach) shows that
the relationship between some of the accepted measures of
computer utilization and their cost is even more confusing:
XYZ Corporation purchased a bank of disk drives for
$623,000. XYZ's chargeback algorithm recovers for disk
utilization by charging for EXCPs. If XYZ had purchased
a box of EXCPs, its cost would have been a certain number
of cents for each consumable EXCP. Everything from the
vendor's brochure to the standard lease or purchase
agreement would be stated in terms of EXCPs. However,
XYZ did not buy EXCPs; it bought disk drives, and there
is no rigorous method of determining how many EXCPs the
disk drives might contain.
The remainder of this chapter describes the characteristics
of a computer accounting system, discusses some of the
popular methods of accounting for data processing
utilization, and points out some pitfalls.
This section contains the following topics:
2.1 Essential Characteristics of an IS Accounting
2.6 Additional Accounting Options
2.7 DASD/DFHSM/SMS Storage Accounting
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