...by treating it with a Knowledge Graph layer
over existing ledger data (artifact)
...to enable quasi-social views focusing on finan-
cial records connectedness (requirement)
...in order to enable auditing reasoning pat-
terns and contextualized accounting data management
(goals)
Design science is often used to build new sys-
tems in order to evaluate whether their prescriptions
are feasible and useful, and to gain deeper insights
into the problem being investigated. The field of
accounting information systems can benefit greatly
from this methodology as domain-specific informa-
tion, tacit knowledge and implicit reasoning patterns
can be captured in innovative design decisions.
The larger context for the problem tackled here
is an experimental Digital Transformation project
towards a data-centric IT architecture, from an
application-centric mindset that has lead over time to
financial data silos requiring scheduled synchroniza-
tion, as well as time consuming manual consolidation
and verification. To obtain a contextualized account
network, a GraphDB instance (Ontotext, b) is popu-
lated through its OntoRefine plug-in for lifting legacy
tabular data to RDF graphs (Ontotext, c). Seman-
tic queries and SPARQL-based reasoning patterns are
then employed in an account analytics workbench to
build a network of how accounts interact with each
other depending on their co-occurrences in a double-
entry ledger system, and to navigate those relation-
ships according to some patterns of domain-specific
interest.
The remainder of the paper is structured as fol-
lows: Section 2 summarizes the Accounting Cycle,
afterwards Section 3 describes the knowledge capture
process and derived semantic patterns. Section 4 dis-
cusses evaluation challenges and Section 5 presents a
SWOT analysis.
2 THE FINANCIAL
ACCOUNTING CYCLE
In a business, every transaction affects at least two ac-
counts - as a debit (increase in assets) and as a credit
(increase in liability, equity, income). The debit and
credit entries must always be equal. After the trans-
actions are recorded in the general journal the finan-
cial statements are prepared starting with a trial bal-
ance sheet. A balance sheet is a financial snapshot of
a company’s financial position at a specific point in
time. It includes a list of assets, liabilities, and the
difference between the two, known as net worth. The
balance sheet is built on the accounting equation (as-
sets = liabilities + owner’s equity).
The accounting cycle is a series of steps that trans-
form a company’s basic financial data into financial
statements. The accounting cycle ensures that the
company’s financial statements are consistent, accu-
rate, and in compliance with official accounting stan-
dards.
The accounting cycle consists of the following six
steps:
Step 1: Gather and analyze documentation for the
current accounting period, such as receipts, invoices,
and bank statements.
Step 2: The ledger is made up of journal entries,
which are a chronological list of all of a company’s
transactions, written down according to double-entry
accounting procedures. To ensure that the company’s
bookkeeping is always up to date, journal entries are
recorded to the ledger on a continual basis, as soon as
business transactions occur.
Step 3: Prepare a trial balance: this is analyzed
mainly for the accounts that involve expenses and in-
come accounts in correlation with the result of assets
and liabilities accounts. Based on this correlation pos-
sible errors in the recorded transactions are investi-
gated by analyzing the account statement.
The error detecting process requires a significant
amount of time because it implies the human anal-
ysis of multiple inter-related account statements that
reflect an economic event. The following types of er-
rors may occurs in the process of recording of trans-
actions:(Renu G., 2013)
A. Clerical Errors. Clerical errors are errors in
recording, posting, totalling, and balancing. Clerical
errors are further separated into two types: (I) omis-
sion errors and (ii) commission errors (e.g. posting
in wrong account, error in totaling and balancing; er-
rors in carry forward totals to trial balance and so on).
Clerical errors may or may not have an impact on trial
balance.
B. Errors of Principle. When commonly accepted
accounting principles are not followed when record-
ing the transactions in the books of account, it is
called a principle error. For example, selecting the in-
correct account head or declaring capital expenditure
as revenue. A trial balance or routine inspection will
not reveal such an inaccuracy. It can only be discov-
ered through searching or independent verification.
C. Compensating Errors. Compensating errors are
ones that occur as a result of previous faults being
compensated for. This is difficult to detect because
the net effect is zero. The totals and posts can all be
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