Data means facts, which may be numeric, textual pictorial or vocal. On the other hand, Information refers to processed data placed in a meaningful context for the uses. Processing converts data into information. When all related information is summarized to meet a particular need, it is called as report.
The context and design of the report varies according to the level it is submitted and the type of decision to made on the basis of the report. A report must be efficient, effective, accurate and relevant. It should be helpful in taking decisions. An accounting report: is essential a report which must be able to fulfil certain basic criteria, which are following:
(i) Relevance
(ii) Completeness
(iii) Accuracy
(iv) Timeliness
(vi) Summarization.
(i) Relevance: To be useful, report must be relevant to the decision-making needs of user. Report has the quality of relevance when it influences the economic decisions of the user by helping them to evaluate past, present, or future events or confirming or correcting their past evaluation.
(ii) Completeness: To be reliable, a report must be complete within the bounds of materiality and cost. An omission can cause report to be false or
misleading and thus, unreliable and deficient in terms of its relevance.
(iii) Accuracy: To be reliable and useful in decision making process, a report must be accurate i.e. it is free from error or bias or subjectivity. It must be represent true and fair description neutrally.
(iv) Timeliness: Reports must be timely to have any usefulness for decision make t If there is undue delay in reporting, it may lose its relevance. To provide report on timely basis, it may often be necessary to report before all aspects of transaction or other executes are known.
(v) Summarization: Report must be brief and comprehensive so that user can use its information timely for decision-making purpose. The following four steps are taken in designing the accounting report:
(i) Defining Objectives: The objectives of the report must be defined clearly. It must specify, who are the user and the decision to be based on the report.
(ii) Structure of the Report: The report should be complete and must be presented in a clear style.
(iii) Querying with the database: The report must specify the various information queries which are helpful in interacting with the database.
(iv) Finalizing the Report: It must have complete ending with proper suggestions of its study.
Various types of accounting Reports: The report may be routine report or specific report. For example, ledger is a routine report whereas a report generated to show the accounts of particular customer is a specific reports. Different reports serve different purposes.
(i) Demand Reports: Report generated on the demand of the management. For example, Stock Valuation Report, Bad debts reports for a given period etc.
(ii) Supplier Reports: Report generated as per the need of the management Presenting various aspects of the supplier. For example, Purchase analysis, Vendor analysis report etc.
(iii) Customer Reports: Reports generated as per need of the management depicting the top customer, list of faulty customer, list of bulk customer etc.
(iv) Exception Reports: Reports generated for some specific condition o exceptions. For example, Stock Status Report, Over Stocked Status etc.
(v) Responsibility Reports: The various reports prepared by managers responsible. For example, report regarding different aspects of sales to be submitted by the Sales manager.
(vi) Summary Reports: It is a summarized report of all the activities of are organization. For example, Balance sheet, Trail Balance etc.

'An organization is a collection of interdependent decision-making units that exists to pursue organizational objectives'. Every organization performs the same functions i.e. accepting the input and providing them into output.
Information is one of the most important resource in today's growing business environment.And most of the growing business houses are heavily investing in information system. Every organization depends upon its information system or the purpose of decision-making. All organization pursues some objectives through the process of allocation of resources, which is accomplished through the process of managerial decision-making. Information system facilitates decision regarding allocation of resources and assists an organization to achieve its goals.
An organization has various types of information system at various organizational levels:
(i) ESS i.e. Executive Support System: It helps in making decision at the strategic level through advanced graphics and communication.
(ii) MIS i.e. Management Information System: These are the information system at the management level of an organization that serve the functions of planning, controlling and decision making by providing routine summary and exception reports.
(iii) DSS i.e. Decision Support System: This information system is at the organizational management level that combines data and analyzing report to support the decision.
(iv) TPS i.e. Transaction Processing System: These information system serve at the operational level. They perform and record the daily routine transactions, which are very important to run the business.
Role of Transactions Processing System in Decision-Making Process in Business Organization: Transaction Processing System process the transaction. The purpose of TPS is to record, process validate and store transactions that occurs in the various fields of the business organization for subsequent retrieval for decision making purpose. The transactions may the internal or external. Internal transactions may be occurred when stores supplies materials for production. However, when sales department, sales goods to the market, external transaction occur. TPS follows six steps in processing a transaction:
(i) Collection and Entry of data: Data must be collected and entered into the system through input devices before it is processed.
(ii) Validation of data: It ensures the reliability and accuracy of input data by comparing with stored data. It checks for correction and if some error are found it corrects.
(iii) Manipulation of data: It performs the calculations for the transactions.
(iv) Storage of data: Processed actions are stored in transaction database.
(v) Information: Stored data is processed using the query facility to produced desired information.
(vi) Output or Report Generation: Lastly reports can be prepared on the basis of the information content according to decision usefulness of report.
TPS accepts complete transaction as input stores and retrieves the accounting data for processing as and when required for generating an accounting report as output.
TPS helps in decision-making of business organization by processing entire accumulated data to generate the desired results according to decision requirement. As we know that TPS serve the organization at the operational level and record and process the daily routine transactions. For decision-making, these daily routine transactions are very important. TPS can provide instant report for management for decision-making, like Stock Statement, Trial Balance, Trading and Profit and Loss Account, Balance Sheet, Value Added Tax (VAT), Payroll reports etc.
It becomes very easy for the management to take decision when it has all the reports in its hand. So we can say that the TPS provides great help for decision-making of business organization.

The differences between Computerized accounting and Manual accounting are as follows:
(i) Manual accounting consists of journalizing and then posting of the same to ledgers whereas in computerized accounting system the journal entries are passed only and posting happens automatically.
(ii) Computerized accounting is subject to lesser possibility of errors as compared to manual errors.
(iii) Trial balance is required to be prepared in manual accounting to determine the arithmetical accuracy of the books of accounts whereas in computerized accounting the trial balance is automatically prepared.
(iv) Final accounts can be immediately prepared in computerized accounting at any point of time whereas in manual accounting final accounts can be prepared only after the period ends, which requires time as well.

After recording all the transaction in to a computerised programme for accounting, following reports can be generated quickly:
Trial Balance: After recording entries into computerised programme for accounting and posting entries into the ledger, a statement is generated by the programme showing the abstract of the balances (debit or credit) of various accounts in the ledger. This statement is known as Trial Balance.
Profit and Loss Account: Profit and Loss Account is that account which is prepared to determine the income of the enterprise for a particular accounting period. All expenses and losses (indirect expenses) are recorded in the debit side and all incomes and gains are recorded in the credit side of this account to find out the net profit or loss during the year.
Balance Sheet: Computerised programme helps in generating Balance Sheet at the end of the accounting process which shows the financial position of the business. It may be defined as a statement depicting the exact financial position of business on any date.

A relation is a table in which data are arranged in rows and columns. A relation has distinct rows. Each row of relation can be uniquely identified by its contents. The Relational model uses a collection of tables to represent both data and relationship among the data. Each table has multiple columns and each column has a unique name. A row in a table represents a relationship among a set of values. The intersection of a row and column must give a single value.

There are three levels of data abstraction:
(i) Physical Level: The Physical Level is the lowest level of abstraction that describes how the data is actually stored.
(ii) Logical Level: The Logical Level is the next higher level of abstraction. It describes what data are stored in the database and what relationships exist among those data.
(iii) View Level: The View Level is the highest level of database. It describes only a part of the entire database.

Following are the main advantages of readymade packages:
(i) Cost Effective: Readymade systems are very cost effective in automating the accounting function. The cost to implement readymade systems is lesser
than the cost of creating a new system from the scratch.
(ii) Time-Saving: It takes a lot of time to create and implement customized accounting software. Purchasing a readymade software saves a lot of time.
(iii) No Overruns: When a company purchases and installs a readymade software, there is no risk of cost overrun and schedule overrun. Customized software generally lead to cost and schedule overruns.
(iv) Better Features: Readymade packages are created for a vast number of users. It incorporates many features for capturing maximum number of users. This way, these software have better features than software that are developed in-house or by software vendors.

It is a fact that more than 80% of computers have been used to process business data. Business users were one of the earliest users of computers. The accounting department is generally the first one to get computerized.
Following are the main benefits of using AIS:
(i) The computers are more efficient in processing numeric data as compared to humans. As accounting work mainly deals with numeric data, computers are faster in processing accounting data. Moreover, accounting deals with basic mathematical calculations and it is very easy to develop software for processing accounting data on computers.
(ii) Accounting calculations are carried out in a step by- step manner and by following accounting rules. Every transaction is entered as per its type. As the nature of accounting data is algorithmic, softwares can be easily designed to process accounting data.
(iii) The basic methods and rules for processing accounting data are same regardless of size and type of the business. Due to this reason a general type of accounting information system can serve every type of business. If some organizations need to have some customized control, a customized package can be developed after minor
modifications.
(iv) The performance of computers remain unaffected by the size and volume of data to be processed. Computers will not make mistakes with increase in volume of data nor will they get bored when same process is repeatedly processed. Therefore, computers are better in processing accounting data than humans.
(v) It is much easy to maintain accounting standards and control the accounting data of an organization.

Here are the advantages of using computerized accounting software:
(i) Automation: Since all the calculations are handled by the software, computerized accounting eliminates many of the mundane and timeconsuming processes associated with manual accounting. For example, once issued, invoices are processed automatically making accounting less time-consuming.
(ii) Accuracy: This accounting system is designed to be accurate to the minutest detail. Once the data is entered into the system, all the calculations, including additions and subtractions, are done automatically by software.
(iii) Data Access: Using accounting software it becomes much easier for different individuals to access accounting data outside of the office,securely. This is particularly true if an online accounting solution is being used.
(iv) Reliability: Because the calculations are so accurate, the financial statements prepared by computers are highly reliable.
(v) Scalable: When a company grows, the amount of accounting necessary not only increases but becomes more complex. With computerized accounting, everything is kept straightforward because shifting through data using software is easier than shifting through a bunch of papers.
(vi) Speed: Using accounting software, the entire process of preparing accounts becomes faster. Furthermore, statements and reports can be generated instantly at the click of a button. Managers do not have to wait for hours, even days, to lay their hands on an important report.
(vii) Security: The latest data can be saved and stored in offsite locations so it is safe from natural and man-made disasters like earthquakes,fires,floods and terrorist attacks. In case of a disaster, the system can be quickly restored on other computers. This level of precaution is taken by Clever Accounting.
(viii) Cost-effective: Since using computerized accounting is more efficient than paper-based accounting, work will be done faster and time will be saved. When one considers, Clever Accounting, one of the latest online accounting solutions, which starts at a low monthly subscription, then computerized accounting really becomes a no-brainer.
(ix) Visuals: Viewing your accounts using a computer allows you to take advantage of the option to view your data in different formats. Youcan view data in tables and using different types of charts.

Computer Hardware is a physical part of a computer. It has following components:
(i) Mother board: Motherboard is a main board of a computer. It is also called logic board. It allows communication between many crucial electronic components of a system.
(ii) Keyboard: Keyboard is an Input device and it is used to input text into the computer. All the keys in keyboard are arranged in specific order.
(iii) Speaker: Speaker in computer produce electrical signal produced with the help of amplifier and turn these into sound waves.
(vi) Monitor: It is a computer screen. The Operator can see the result. In present time LCD Monitors are used instead of CRT monitors which were used in old days.