Linking Business Processes and Transaction Cycles

Information technology enables companies to move from functional‐managed, cycle‐based organizations to process‐managed organizations. Despite this change, business classes continue to be organized along functional lines and do not provide an overall, integrating framework (Walker and Ainsworth 2001). As a result, students may not understand business processes and the relationship between business processes and accounting transaction cycles. This paper presents a tutorial for a fictitious pizza delivery company to help students understand business processes and link them with accounting transaction cycles. Designed for a first semester accounting information system class, this comprehensive tutorial covers data flow diagrams; flowcharts; and resources, events, and agents (REA) modeling. The tutorial includes review questions and exercises. Teaching notes and solutions follow the tutorial section.