, the Institute of Chartered Accountants issued a statement entitled Accounting by Electronic Methods. This statement referred to E.P.D. as “…the method of analyzing, marshaling, recording and reporting business information by means of equipment, the central feature of which is an electronic digital computer (Pinkney, 1966). Bookkeeping for accountant has been time consuming and in the 1950’s accountants have looked around for new ways of processing this data. Punch card machines was the first move but they were not fast enough for their needs, the digital computer was the next choice for providing a faster and more detailed cost analysis. Accountants didn’t change their ways overnight; changing over from manual system to computers took many years.Computers in general were still complicated to most of its users. In the late 1970’s the microprocessor with integrated circuits changed the computer world age with all around improvements from memory to the size of the computers. The mainframe and minicomputer was in most places of business in the late 1960’s. The need for less computer language (binary code) and the ease of use were the main concerns of the late 1970’s. Auditing in general was changed forever, as data once on paper was now on magnetic tape reels and later floppy disks. The detection of fraud was more difficult to discover when data could be easily erased or changed. Auditing changed with the times as it always had. The discovery for new internal controls was needed, as these controls were important to make an audit successful and efficient. A computer system within a business with strong internal controls made an audit easier and resulted in more dependable financial statements. The computer of the 1970’s could handle large amounts of data and process the information in a very short time. Computers made accounting jobs in general easier, with the computer handling the bookkeep...
