What is a system flowchart?

System flowcharts are a way of displaying how datadata: information without context, eg a list of students with numbers beside their names is data, when it's made clear that those numbers represent their placing in a 100 metre race, the data becomes information flows in a system and how decisions are made to control events.

To illustrate this, symbols are used. They are connected together to show what happens to data and where it goes. The basic ones include:

Symbols used in flow charts

Note that system flow charts are very similar to data flow charts. Data flow charts do not include decisions, they just show the path that data takes, where it is held, processed, and then outputoutput: the term denoting either an exit or changes which exit a system and which activate/modify a process.