The Effectiveness of Information Technology on Accounting Applications

Automation of accounting and tracking of numbers started with the abacus.

Accounting processes and applications have much to thank information technology for, being able to process mounds of data and information faster and easier than decades before. However, these same advances create additional workload due to overly ambitious expectations of data crunching not supported by sufficient funding to make such resources work properly.

Accounting Rules to Business Processes

Today's accounting database systems and their management are built on business processes attempting to translate accounting activities to steps in programming code. Because so much of the accounting processes now run through whatever system is chosen, the accountants themselves act more as database administrators than traditional accountants.

House of Cards Vulnerabilities

Because accounting records get integrated into databases with technology, mistakes become harder to find. The entire system builds upon itself from the ledger level to system-wide reports, but the accountants each work on only one portion. As a result, the total output can be wrong without anyone seeing reconciliation problems until reviewing summary reports.

Speed of Reporting/Ease of Retention

A clear benefit of accounting information technology remains the speed at which mass amounts of fiscal data can be crunched into reports for management decision making. Further, data automation has also provided an added benefit of easy record retention, as long as sufficient storage space exists to hold it.

References

• BNET: The Emergence of Accounting Information Systems Programs
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Accountants and Auditors
• Enotes: Accounting Information Systems
• Walden University: The Impact of Information Technology on Accounting