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Accounting Information Systems 8th Edition Hall Test Bank
Accounting Information Systems 8th Edition Hall Test Bank
TRUE/FALSE
1. Processing more transactions at a lower unit cost makes batch processing more efficient than real-time
systems.
ANS: T PTS: 1
ANS: F PTS: 1
3. Directing work-in-process through its various stages of manufacturing is part of the conversion cycle.
ANS: T PTS: 1
4. The portion of the monthly bill from a credit card company is an example of a turn-around document.
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5. The general journal is used to record recurring transactions that are similar in nature.
ANS: F PTS: 1
ANS: F PTS: 1
ANS: F PTS: 1
8. System flowcharts are often used to depict processes that are handled in batches.
ANS: T PTS: 1
9. Program flowcharts depict the type of media being used (paper, magnetic tape, or disks) and terminals.
ANS: F PTS: 1
10. System flowcharts represent the input sources, programs, and output products of a computer system.
ANS: T PTS: 1
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated,
or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
11. Program flowcharts are used to describe the logic represented in system flowcharts.
ANS: T PTS: 1
12. Batch processing systems can store data on direct access storage devices.
ANS: T PTS: 1
ANS: F PTS: 1
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15. Auditors may prepare program flowcharts to verify the correctness of program logic.
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16. A control account is a general ledger account which is supported by a subsidiary ledger.
ANS: T PTS: 1
17. The most significant characteristic of direct access files is access speed.
ANS: T PTS: 1
18. Real time processing is used for routine transactions in large numbers.
ANS: F PTS: 1
19. Batch processing is best used when timely information is needed because this method processes data
efficiently.
ANS: F PTS: 1
20. An inverted triangle with the letter “N” represents a file in “name” order.
ANS: F PTS: 1
21. Real-time processing in systems that handle large volumes of transactions each day can create
operational inefficiencies.
ANS: T PTS: 1
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated,
or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Accounting Information Systems, 8e—Test Bank, Chapter 2
22. Operational inefficiencies occur because accounts unique to many concurrent transactions need to be
updated in real time.
ANS: F PTS: 1
23. Operational inefficiencies occur because accounts common to many concurrent transactions need to be
updated in real time.
ANS: T PTS: 1
ANS: T PTS: 1
25. Batch processing of accounts common to many concurrent transactions reduces operational efficiency.
ANS: F PTS: 1
26. The block code is the coding scheme most appropriate for a chart of accounts.
ANS: T PTS: 1
27. Sequential codes may be used to represent complex items or events involving two or more pieces of
related data.
ANS: F PTS: 1
ANS: T PTS: 1
29. For a given field size, a system that uses alphabetic codes can represent far more situations than a
system with that uses numeric codes.
ANS: T PTS: 1
30. Mnemonic codes are appropriate for items in either an ascending or descending sequence, such as the
numbering of checks or source documents.
ANS: F PTS: 1
31. The flat-file approach is most often associated with so-called legacy systems.
ANS: T PTS: 1
ANS: F PTS: 1
© 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated,
or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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fate of the Empire was being then decided. On the one side was military
dictatorship and religious toleration in connection with the traditional
institutions of the Empire, on the other Protestant supremacy and political
federation under the leadership of the foreigner. Stubbornly the question
was fought out, not by arms but by endurance, but day by day it became
clearer that Wallenstein had calculated rightly, and that Gustavus must
starve the first. By the beginning of September the strain was growing
intolerable, discipline was becoming relaxed, and the king felt that he must
stake all on one last attack. On September 3d he led his army against
Wallenstein’s entrenchments, but in vain. After heroic efforts he had to
retire baffled. A few days afterwards he
marched out of Nuremberg, leaving the best Retreat of Gustavus.
part of his army dead before the ramparts of the
Alte Veste, or dying in the hospitals of the town. Wallenstein, following out
determinedly the plan he had laid down for
himself, never attempted to pursue, but turning Invasion of Saxony by
north into Saxony prepared somewhat leisurely Wallenstein.
to choose a position between the Elbe and the Saale, where he might
entrench himself for the winter, and apply the gentle pressure of his
marauding and requisitioning bands to the ever-vacillating will of John
George, and detach him from the Swedish alliance. Gustavus had in the
previous year lost Magdeburg by a want of decision. He was not going to
lose Saxony in the same way. Summoning Oxenstjerna and Bernhard of
Saxe-Weimar to his aid, he flew through Thuringia as quick as he could go,
and seized Erfurt and Naumberg before Wallenstein quite realised what had
happened. It was now the beginning of November, the weather had
suddenly turned piercingly cold, and Wallenstein, making up his mind that
Gustavus would not pursue his operations further that winter, prepared to
entrench himself between Merseburg and Torgau, and gave permission to
Pappenheim to return to the Rhineland capturing Halle as he went. It was a
great blunder. Gustavus dashed forwards on Wallenstein’s main army to
crush it before the mistake could be repaired. Wallenstein finding a battle
inevitable sent messenger after messenger to bring Pappenheim back, and
hastily throwing up some field entrenchments and deepening the ditches
which intersected the plain, awaited the onslaught of the Swedish king at
Lützen on the 16th of November.
As at Breitenfeld the Swedes were drawn up
in two lines, and the imperialists only in one, Battle of Lützen, 1632.
but Wallenstein, unlike Tilly, seems to have
interspersed bodies of musketeers among the troops of the cavalry, and
posted a strong reserve behind his centre. The battle began as usual with the
artillery in the early morning, then, as the autumn mist cleared away, the
Swedes advanced to the attack about ten o’clock. There was no room for
generalship. It was hard hand-to-hand fighting. For two hours the battle
swayed backwards and forwards, the hardest of the fighting being on the
Swedish right, where the king himself was engaged with Piccolomini’s
black cuirassiers. Bit by bit the Swedes were gaining ground, when
Wallenstein bringing up his reserves directed a terrible charge upon the
Swedish centre, and forced it back with fearful loss, especially among the
officers. Gustavus, at the head of such
horsemen as he could muster, flew to the Death of Gustavus.
rescue, and as he made his way through the
mist which had gathered again for a few moments in the hollow, found
himself unexpectedly in the middle of a troop of the enemy’s cavalry. A
shot broke his left arm, another pierced his back, and he fell heavily to the
ground, where he was soon despatched by a bullet through the head. His
white horse, riderless and bloodstained, tore on through the enemy into the
Swedish ranks and announced the loss of their leader. Bernhard of Saxe-
Weimar took the command, and rallying the army with the cry of
vengeance, renewed the charge with an enthusiasm which carried all before
it. Just then Pappenheim and his cavalry appeared on the right flank of the
Swedes, and the battle again settled down to hard hand-to-hand fighting for
three hours more. Pappenheim himself fell dead in the first charge, but his
men, like their enemies, fought on the more fiercely to avenge the fall of
their captain. At last as the darkness fell the Swedes nerved themselves for
a supreme effort, and drove the imperialists from their entrenchments just as
the leading columns of Pappenheim’s infantry appeared upon the field.
The honours of the battle were with the
Swedes, its fruits were with Wallenstein. As Results of his death.
regards mere numbers the Swedish loss was
probably heavier than that of the imperialists, and their army more
weakened as a fighting force. But if Gustavus had been the only man killed
on that side, his death would have more than counterbalanced the whole of
the imperialist losses, for not only was he the general and the king, not only
was the one man capable of uniting the forces of Protestantism, the one who
could successfully cope both with the ambition of Richelieu and the
fanaticism of Ferdinand, but he was also the only man still in power in
Germany who ennobled the struggle with a distinct moral ideal. Whether
Protestants in Germany had sufficient powers of cohesion and strength of
conviction to follow a common policy, whether Sweden, even under
Gustavus, could have become sufficiently German in interests and
sympathies to command the allegiance of Germans, may be doubtful; but at
any rate it was a policy worth trying, it was a policy based on the moral and
political needs of the people, and not upon the personal ambition of the
successful general. If it failed it would fail only because Protestantism in
Germany had not the qualities necessary to make it succeed. But when
Gustavus Adolphus died on the field of Lützen all moral and religious ideal
died too out of the Thirty Years’ War. On the one side was the personal
ambition of a military dictator, on the other the national ambition of a
foreign aggressor, and the very followers and companions of the noble
Gustavus himself soon sank to be little more than ‘condottiere’ bent only
upon gorging themselves and their country out of the spoils of helpless
Germany.
On the death of Gustavus the supreme
direction of Swedish affairs passed into the The lead taken by
Oxenstjerna.
hands of Oxenstjerna, whose one object was to
carry out the policy of his dead friend and king; but Oxenstjerna was no
general, and being without the supreme authority which Gustavus wielded,
had often to persuade where he would have commanded. His first step
showed the change which had taken place. Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, like
other military adventurers, required his reward before he would venture his
life further in the cause, and a duchy had to be carved for him out of the
bishoprics of Bamberg and Würtzburg. It was the first confiscation of
Catholic lands by the Protestant forces, the first forcible subjection of a
Catholic population to a Protestant ruler. However justifiable it might be as
an act of retaliation for the Edict of Restitution, it was but too evident a
proof of the increasing tendency to consider the interests of the German
people as of no value in comparison with the political and military
necessities of their so-called saviours. Sure of
the assistance of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, The League of Heilbronn, 1633.
Oxenstjerna was enabled to unite the circles of
Swabia Franconia and the upper and lower Rhine to Sweden by an
offensive and defensive league, which was signed at Heilbronn in April
1633. Bernhard took command of the forces raised by the circles, and
prepared in conjunction with the Swedish army to resume the attack on
Vienna.
The supreme word on military affairs for the moment lay not with
Bernhard or with Oxenstjerna but with Wallenstein. The death of Gustavus
left him, as he well knew, without a rival in
Germany, and retiring slowly from Lützen Schemes of Wallenstein.
behind the mountains of Bohemia, he
surrendered himself to the illusion that he could now dictate peace to
Germany on his own terms. Secure, as he thought, of the support of his
army, contemptuous of the politics both of Ferdinand and of Oxenstjerna,
he prepared to enforce his own conditions of peace upon the Emperor and
upon the Swedes alike. The Edict of Restitution was to be withdrawn, the
Swedes to be compensated by some places on the Baltic coast, while he
himself, the peacemaker, would exchange the duchy of Mecklenberg for the
Rhenish Palatinate, or possibly the crown of Bohemia. During the summer
of 1633 he was pressing these terms upon Oxenstjerna and upon John
George. In June he had almost obtained the consent of the latter, but
Oxenstjerna, cautious and hostile, would not trust him. Couriers went quick
and often between the two, and rumours of treachery were beginning to be
heard behind Wallenstein’s back, not merely at Vienna, but, a far more
serious thing, in the camp. The more they were canvassed the more did
Wallenstein’s proposals seem hateful to important interests in Europe. The
Jesuits and the Catholics were not willing to
give up so soon the policy of the Edict of Opposition of the Jesuits, the
Restitution. The Spaniards and the French Spaniards and the army.
would risk anything rather than see Wallenstein lord of the Palatinate.
Conservative statesmen and the loyal soldiers resented the attempt to
impose terms on the unwilling Emperor by the brute force of an army
nominally his own. The soldiers of fortune, especially the officers, did not
want an end put to a war which had been so lucrative and promised to be
more lucrative still. In January 1634, the Spaniards were plying the
Emperor with accusations, and demanding the dismissal of Wallenstein, just
as Maximilian and the League had done four years ago. Wallenstein
contented himself with binding his officers closer to him by an oath. Sure of
their support he could face the world. But in the beginning of February his
support began to give way underneath him. Piccolomini, Gallas and
Aldringer deserted him, and Ferdinand boldly threw himself into the arms
of the Spaniards. He dismissed Wallenstein
from his command, branded him as a traitor, Dismissal and murder of
released his army from its obedience to him, Wallenstein, 1634.
and put a price upon his head. The breach was complete but still
Wallenstein did not quail. Summoning the colonels to meet him at Pilsen he
obtained from them on February 20th an undertaking to stand by him
against his enemies, and moved to Eger to meet Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar,
in the hope of inducing the Swedes to make common cause with him, and
oblige the Emperor to accept the peace. There also came four soldiers of
fortune, two Irishmen and two Scots, who, finding in the declaration issued
by the Emperor a warrant for their own dark plots, like Fitzurse and his
companions five centuries before, determined to take upon themselves the
responsibility of ridding their master of too powerful a servant. At nightfall
on the 25th of February, Wallenstein’s chief supporters were invited to a
banquet and there murdered. Devereux, an Irish captain, reeking from the
butchery, made his way to the general’s quarters, and struck him down to
the ground as he arose from his bed alarmed at the noise. So perished
Wallenstein in the height of his fame and power, and with him perished the
last chance of keeping the foreigner out of Germany.
At first the star of Ferdinand seemed to shine the brighter in spite of the
dark shade cast by the murder of Wallenstein.
The army placed under the orders of the young Battle of Nördlingen, 1634.
Ferdinand, king of Hungary, captured
Regensburg in July, stormed Donauwörth, and laid siege to Nördlingen.
There the king was joined by the cardinal-infant, Ferdinand of Spain, who
was on his way to assume the government of the Netherlands, at the head of
15,000 men. In spite of inferior numbers Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, ever
sanguine and ever impetuous, prevailed on the wary Horn, who commanded
the Swedes, to risk a battle; but the evening of the 6th of September 1634
saw him a fugitive, and Horn a prisoner with 16,000 men hors de combat.
The battle of Nördlingen was one of the decisive battles of the war. Just as
Breitenfeld had made the conquest of north Germany by the Emperor and
the success of the Edict of Restitution impossible, so did Nördlingen render
the conquest of south Germany by Protestantism impossible. The Catholic
bishoprics were recovered, Bernhard’s duchy of Franconia vanished, and
the line of the Main became once more the boundary between the religions.
In May 1635, the negotiations for peace
which had been going on so long with Saxony Peace of Prague, 1635.
were brought to a happy conclusion, and a
treaty embodying the terms agreed upon was duly signed at Prague between
John George and the Emperor. The question of the ecclesiastical lands was
settled by taking the year 1627 as the test year. Whatever belonged to
Protestants at that time was to remain Protestant, whatever was then
Catholic was to be Catholic still. This arrangement secured nearly all the
northern bishoprics to Protestantism. Lusatia was to be made over to
Saxony, and Lutheranism in Silesia guaranteed by the Emperor.
Lutheranism was still to remain the only privileged form of Protestantism.
These conditions were intended to form a basis for a general peace. It was
hoped that other states would accept them, and so gradually put an end to
the war. To some extent the anticipation was realised. A considerable
number of the cities and smaller states of north Germany accepted the treaty
of Prague, but that it would ever form a satisfactory basis for a general
peace was impossible, as long as it provided no security whatever for the
Calvinists, and did not attempt to deal with the dangers of foreign
intervention.
By the treaty of Prague Saxony ranged itself once more upon the side of
the Emperor. It is easy to sneer at the want of public spirit and the
narrowness of aim which marked the policy of John George throughout this
difficult time. Yet it will be found by an
attentive observer that from first to last there Policy of John George of
was a singular consistency in his action, which Saxony.
sprang not from weakness of will or sluggishness of temperament, but from
settled principles of policy from which he never budged. In imperial politics
John George was a conservative, in ecclesiastical matters a Lutheran, and
he remained steadily, even stubbornly, consistent to those two conceptions.
As a conservative and a Lutheran he hated the destructive policy of
Christian of Anhalt and Frederick Elector Palatine, and consequently
secured to Ferdinand his election to the Empire, and actually supported him
in arms against his revolted subjects. When Frederick threw himself into the
arms of Mansfeld, when his co-religionists in the north began to feel
alarmed, when Christian of Denmark determined to fight for his religion
and his son’s bishoprics, John George remained sturdily, obstinately,
neutral; for he believed that it was better to run some risk of aggression on
the part of the Emperor than to throw all the institutions of the Empire into
the crucible. The Edict of Restitution was the first thing that shook him, but
even that would not have weighed against the danger of allowing the
foreigner a footing in Germany, had not the Emperor actually had recourse
to violence. If John George had to break his neutrality, if he was obliged to
have a hand in the work of destruction of Germany, if conservatism was no
longer possible, then he would rather join a Gustavus than a Wallenstein or
a Tilly. But he never felt happy in that alliance. His sense of the desolation
of the country, of the destruction of war, was too great for him ever
willingly to remain long under arms. When the Emperor had been beaten
back, when the Edict of Restitution had become an impossibility, when
Wallenstein was dead, and France beginning to interfere actively in the
affairs of Germany, it was time for John George once more to range himself
side by side with the Emperor, for once more the Emperor had become the
champion of German institutions against revolution. The treaty of Prague
represents no high ideals of policy. It shows that the great religious ideals
with which the war began are over. No longer do men believe that they are
fighting for the Church or for Protestantism, for the highest interests of
nations and of souls. Seventeen years of war have disabused them of that
illusion. But next to religion among the ennobling influences of life comes
that of patriotism, and John George retiring from alliance with the foreigner,
as the Swede and the Frenchman prepare to put Germany on the rack for
thirteen more weary years for their own aggrandisement, is a figure which
shows at any rate something of patriotism and of policy, among the
heartless dissensions of ambitious brigand chiefs.
CHAPTER VI