Documents in the Revenue Cycle List - Assignment Example

The paper "Documents in the Revenue Cycle List" is a wonderful example of an assignment on finance and accounting. In the present business scenario, manually created revenue cycle documents slow down the revenue cycle operations and that may create a number of financial problems emerging from delayed recoveries from accounts receivables. “Internet and ERP have injected many changes in the revenue cycle. Sales Orders arrive on the web. In the cases sales orders that need credit decisions in a few minutes, web-based services offer automation of the entire credit approval process.” (Ashotosh Deshmukh, 2005). But sometimes automation becomes inefficient say when customers’ creditworthiness is judged merely on the basis of credit points stored in a system. There is always a need control to maintain a standard Basic objective of control over electronic forms is that accurate data should be available when needed, and all revenue cycle activities are performed efficiently and effectively. For effective control over electronic documentations in the revenue cycle operations the following procedures should be considered:

• Further processing on Sales orders should be done only on verification that required goods are available.
• Sales Order processing should be automated as per batch technology and real-time technology.
• Sequential number to Sales Orders, Sales Invoices and Credit Memos generated through an electronic system should be assigned by the system itself.
• Regular file backups, file labels, modification of default settings on ERP systems, encryption, etc. are the basic control features of the electronically operated revenue cycle.
• Under the electronic system, though the customer’s credit is approved as per criteria decided by the Credit Manager and programmed into the system, final approval should be manually done by the Credit manager after generation the hard copy of the Credit memo by the system. In other words, there should be some manual control in approval of customer credit history.
• Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) should be encouraged instead of receiving cheques and pay orders from Accounts receivables. This will eliminate the mistakes and frauds occurring at the stage of maintaining and operating remittances related documents, like remittance lists and passing of accounting entries on the basis of those documents.