Abstract ABSTRACT: During its study of the auditing profession, the Cohen Commission received some practitioner inputs which suggested that "one of the causes of the discontinuity between accounting theory and practice is that students graduate from accounting programs with no understanding of the mechanics of how an accounting system operates and what the related documentation looks like" [AICPA, 1978, p. 177]. Thus, the question is raised as to whether accounting curricula are providing students with sufficient knowledge about the form and function of the various documents, records, journals, and ledgers used by enterprises to conduct and to record the results of business activities. The implication of the CPA inputs to the Cohen Commission efforts is that a lack of such knowledge can be a deterrent for auditing students in understanding the concepts of audit program development and evidence collection procedures. This paper reports on a Systems Understanding Aid that has been designed to address students' need for additional knowledge about basic accounting system documents and records. The Aid was administered to students and evaluated for effectiveness. Student testing of the Aid has shown it to be an effective pedagogical supplement to the accounting curriculum.

Abstract The article presents a simulated case for audit education. Many of the concepts and ideas that are explored in an auditing course are not comprehended as well as they might be. As a means of easing this problem authors developed an experimental project which included case material in combination with detailed accounting records and complete sets of facsimile source documents for part of a hypothetical client's operations. The case material described the client's operations and accounting system. For the order filling and billing portion of the client's system, a complete set of accounting records and source documents were produced by computer simulation. Although the simulation that was developed may initially appear similar to the traditional audit practice case, they actually differ greatly in their objectives. The narrative description and the simulated documents included only the information which was believed necessary for the interim audit of the sales account and for evaluating the effect of the results of the sales audit on year-end procedures in accounts receivable and sales.