Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Image-Processing Systems in Audit Evidence

In your responses to your peers, state whether you agree or disagree with the implications provided by your classmate. What additional implications do you think EDI and image-processing systems will have on audit evidence?

Electronic data interchange(EDI) is the communication of one computer to another in which they can share electronic documents and information through a network or the use of the internet instead of on paper (IBM, 2023). While a lawyer may use an EDI system to send or receive legal documents like contracts, businesses may use an EDI system to communicate with vendors or customers to send invoices, receipts, purchase orders, etc.. "Purchase, shipping, billing, cash receipt, and cash disbursement transactions are often consummated entirely by the exchange of electronic messages between the parties" (PCAOB, 2023).

Image-processing systems aid in digitizing information so that it can be saved electronically or exchanged through an EDI system (PCAOB, 2023). Though image-processing can be a very useful tool, AU Section 326: Evidential Matter warns that documents which are scanned in may not always be accessible as electronic information can be corrupted or changed at a later date (PCAOB, 2023). Our course textbook, Auding & Assurance Services, also states that "audit evidence provided by original documents is more reliable than audit evidence provided by photocopies or facsimiles or documents that have been filmed, digitized, or otherwise converted into electronic form" (Messier et al., 2022).