Information Technology on Accounting Proof Reading Services

Information Technology on Accounting Proof Reading Services

Research topic:         

Influence of technology on accounting practices in Australia:

Technology has its impact on almost all the fields. The advancement in the technology is making changes in all the processes that have been used in different sectors. Usage of internet has reduced the location barriers and enhances the processes that can earlier been difficult to practice due to location barriers. More and more people are also getting engaged in using the technological services provided by the organizations as these services are easy to access. Technology acts as the driving force for the changes that are occurring these days in most of the sectors. These changes are positive in nature as they facilitate the public in accessing the services and businesses to enhance their practices by minimizing the cost and time. (Wang, 2011)

Introduction:

This change in the technology is influencing the practices of accounting in Australia as well as all over the world. The companies are using the technological automated program to perform accounting functions rather than using manual power for each and every process. As far as the latest practices in accounting have been concerned, the usage of accounting software has been increased. These automated programs help to load the data automatically in the software that have earlier been loaded by the hired employees. (Englund Dimitrova, Alvstad, Hild, & Tiselius, 2011) Cloud computing is another latest technological advancement that facilitates the companies by providing a server to store their accounting data and that data can be used anytime by the accounting employees of the companies to extract the information out of that. This automated software is not limited to data storage and loading, it has also expanded their way to risk assessment and auditing process of accounting. Auditing is the basic function of accounting that needs to conduct in every interval of time to monitor all the functioning of the accounting department of the firm. (Forrester, 2006)

This research report is about how much the technological change has its impact on the accounting practices. This research explores about the accounting process that are based on the technological advancement and the intensity of the technological impact on the same. One of the most important forms of technologies that have been used is the information technology.  (“Impact of technology”’ 2017)The advancement in this field and its impact on accounting practices act as the driving force for the accountants to make use of more and more technological told in their accounting process related to information technology. Due to this much level of involvement of information technology in the accounting sector, it has been made the part of the curriculum for the accounting students in Australia so that they can have prior knowledge of the accounting software that they would have been used in their employment times. ("How technology can change the way accountants work", 2017)

Problem statement:

The problem statement in this research report is “The technological advancement is bringing the change in the accounting practices in Australian firms.”

Literature review:

Technology is the factor that affects the accounting practices in Australia. Many researches have been done in order to understand and analyze the impact of technology on the accounting practices. (Wang, 2011) suggests that the technological changes in the accounting practices have positive impact as it allow the users to access accounting services in easier way than before. Many barriers such as location barriers have also been removed due advancement in the technology and thus accounting practices have become easier. There are various technological advancements that have taken place from years. Development of accounting software and implementation of the use of these software by the firms has made it easier for them to perform accounting functions. One of the most important technology that has been developed in the field is cloud computing. Many researches have also been conducted on the use and impact of cloud computing on the accounting practices by the organization in Australia. (Yalcin, 2012)The researchers suggest there are several other technological developments that helps in several functions of accounting. Auditing is the function that requires keen observation and thus IT tools in the accounting practices helps the auditors to audit or check the data with ease.  May of the IT companies that develop the software argues that the demand of accounting software has been increasing in Australia. This is because every company wants to perform effectively and have to compete with the competitors who are already using such IT practices in accounting.

The research that has been conducted is about the impact of the technological advancement on the accounting practices and how these advancement bring out the change on the practices of accounting in the organizations. Many researches have been conducted to determine the impact of the technology on accounting but it is not yet determined that whether the impact is positive or negative. This is because of is difficult to say that every change is negative or every change is positive. According to (Forrester, 2006), it is not necessary that every impact of technological changes result in positive or negative framework. It may be neutral and provide only mere alteration sin the practices just to make work easier or presentable. Change in the methods of bookkeeping or feeding the data on computer file rather than in books does not bring a lot of change but is just a modification in the process.(Willson & Pollard, 2009)

According to (Scott, 2009), the changes that have brought up in the accounting practices due to technological advancement are reliability and agility. Development of software for performing accounting functions allow the accounting performers to agile the data and to make it understandable. This is because it helps in deriving a proper information from that data. As the data that has been calculated by the computer is assumed not be wring so it also allows the users to rely on that data and the information extracted out of that.

The sample used to extract the data about the technological impact on accounting practices is the data from the firs that are using different software to perform the accounting functions. The research defines that communication is also an important part to perform accounting functions with efficiency. The IT tools also allows the users to communicate efficiently with high speed. This results in efficient communication and hence the accounting functions or the tools can be used by the users very easily. The data that is required by any of the department can be transferred easily with the help of these software. If the technology has not involved in the accounting functions than data transfer would become very difficult for the organisations.

The limitation is that, everything that has been discussed about the impact of technological advancement is positive in nature and no negative impact has been observed. The main negative impact of this technological involvement in the accounting practice is that it requires skilled workforce to perform or to function this software based on IT. Without the involvement of human resources, it is not possible to conduct the operations. For this the companies require skilled workforce or have to spend money on training the existing employees about how to use this software on accounting functions. Unskilled workforce may not use the tools in appropriate way and this will result in ineffective data and information that could further because by other departments of the company.

It has been observed that the accounting firms that are serving other organisation with the accounting solution have to deliver quality services to the clients. In order to make the deliverables higher in quality. This is because of the competitive environment persisting in the industry. To attain the competitive advantage from the IT tools, it is important for the companies to deal with the tools that are of high quality and effective in nature.

The key findings of the research suggest that technology has an adverse and great impact on the accounting practices in the Australian firms. Another finding is that advancement in the technology act as the driving force for the accounting professionals to upgrade their accounting methods by using different software available in the market for the practices. Only the positive aspects have been discussed in the report because of the lack of samples and the research clarifications. To conclude it can be suggested that IT tools and technological advantages give positive as well as negative results for the accounting practices in Australia. The advantages can be defined in terms of agility mad reliability as well as speed and accuracy.(Yalcin, 2012) The data that has been stores or the information that has been extracted from using these tools is easier to access and are more accurate. The accuracy allows the employees to be reliable and it also results in speedy tasks. The disadvantages that has been found are related to the number of hiring. The company has to spent on the salaries of the people as skilled people wants more salary and the implementation of accounting software made it mandatory for the organisations to hire skilled workers. As the technological advancement in the accounting practices is so fast that the companies now and then have to make changes and improvement in the technologies. This is very difficult for the companies to upgrade the software in small interval of time and providing training to the employees regarding those upgradations. Sometimes fault in the software may also affect the functioning of the companies using the software which was difficult for the non IT user to understand. The company now have to hire the IT team in order to make regular check over the usage of the software and its reliability.

As the limitation of the research, it has been analysed that the research has been conducted mainly on the positive changes and not on the negative impact of the technology or IT tools in accounting. The disadvantages that has been discussed in the above should also be involved while making the research on the involvement of technology in accounting.

Research questions:

Research questions can be defined as the questions that need to be answered after conducting the whole research. It acts as the foundation of the research as it outlines the research proceedings. In this report, the research is based on the impact of the technological advancement on the accounting practices in Australia. The research questions are:

Research question 1: Is there any impact of the technological advancement on the accounting practices of Australian firms?

Research questions 2: How the technological advancement affect the accounting practices?

Research background:

Research background provides the idea of the historical aspects of the research. This research has been conducted in order to identify the impact of the technological advancement over the accounting practices in Australia as well as the level of involvement of technology in the same. This research revolves around the latest technology development and the changes that have been made in the accounting practices due to that. This requires the analysis of the companies that are using different types of software tools to perform their accounting functions.

Research methodology:

The research methodology section of the report describes about the techniques that has been used to conduct he whole research. As far as this report is considered, qualitative research technique is used in which the qualitative data from the literatures and the articles will be studied to extract the relevant information about the topic. Secondary data has been used for the analysis. The secondary data in this case involves the study on the usage of different software by different Australian companies. This data can be studied from the company records for the purchase software data. The secondary research also includes the analysis of the data and records by the software companies about their sales.

There are two types of variables in every research report. One is the dependent variable. These types of variables are dependent on some other factors, that is because they are called dependent variables. Another variable is the independent variable. This variable is independent of the factors and varies without any external impact.

The independent variable in this case is the technology that can be studied by analyzing the trends in the technology with time. The dependent variable is the accounting practices as the impact of technology has been studied on the same.

Various different techniques have been used in this research. One of the techniques is secondary data collection in which the literatures about the impact of technology have been studied with the purchase reports of the companies determining the purchase rate of the accounting software. Another technique is the interviews of the accounting professionals of the companies as well as the software developers from the IT companies that develop the accounting software for the accounting firms. The interview will provide the information about the intensity of the technological impact on the companies for their accounting functions.

Research design:

Research design describes all the stages of the research that have been conducted in a sequence in order to answer some of the questions related to research. It starts with the process of drafting the questions and the objectives of the research. After that the data has been collected that would be relevant for conduction of the research. The next step is to review the literatures that need to be studied in order to conduct the research. The literature review involves the analysis of the variables involved in the research and the relationship between the same. The reports of the companies need to be analyzed from the company websites or from the company records itself to extract the relevant information out of that. This stage is called as the data analysis stage. This stage requires different methods to analyze the data. After analyzing the data, next step is to conclude the data and describe the crux of the research as a whole. The overall report is being drafted in the end. Before drafting the final report, it is necessary to discuss all the findings and the information extracted out from the analyzed data from the relevant people. It should be mandatory to match the results with the research questions that have been drafted in the initiation of the report. The answers should be presented according to the questions farmed.

Data collection and analysis:

As specified earlier, secondary data collection method will be used to collect and analyze the data. Qualitative approach of data research will be practiced to analyze the qualitative data from the reports. The secondary data involves the literature or the articles published about the topic as well as the records maintained by the companies regarding the purchase of the accounting software. Some of the primary data that will be extracted by the semi-structured interviews from the accounting professionals of the Australian firms will also be analyzed. No statistical tool is used to analyze the data as only the qualitative data needs to be assessed by observational techniques.

Expected outcomes:

The expected outcomes of the research suggest that technology has an adverse and great impact on the accounting practices in the Australian firms. Another outcome would be that advancement in the technology act as the driving force for the accounting professionals to upgrade their accounting methods by using different software available in the market for the practices. ("The impact of technology on the public accounting profession", 2017) The automated software makes the work easier for them.

Gantt chart:

References:

Books:

Englund Dimitrova, B., Alvstad, C., Hild, A., & Tiselius, E. (2011). Methods and strategies of process research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Forrester, E. (2006). A process research framework. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute.

Journals:

Wang, L. (2011). Impact of Information Technology on Accounting. Advanced Materials Research, 219-220, 1224-1227. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.219-220.1224

Willson, P. & Pollard, C. (2009). Exploring IT Governance in Theory and Practice in a Large Multi-National Organisation in Australia. Information Systems Management, 26(2), 98-109.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10580530902794760

Yalcin, S. (2012). Adoption and Benefits of Management Accounting Practices: An Inter-country Comparison. Accounting In Europe, 9(1), 95-110.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449480.2012.664394

Scott, W. (2009). The impact technology is having on the accounting profession. World conference on higher education. Retrieved on 15 August 2012, from http://itpluseducation.blogspot.com.br/2009/09/ impact-technology-is-having-on.html

Websites:

How technology can change the way accountants work. (2017). Macquarie Expertise Hub. Retrieved 2 January 2017, from http://www.macquarie.com/au/advisers/expertise/smart-practice/accounting-and-technology

Impact of technology. (2017). Cpaaustralia.com.au. Retrieved 2 January 2017, from https://www.cpaaustralia.com.au/professional-resources/public-practice/firm-of-the-future/impact-of-technology

The impact of technology on the public accounting profession. (2017). Mgiworld.com. Retrieved 2 January 2017, fromhttp://www.mgiworld.com/newsroom/2016/september/the-impact-of-technology-on-the-public-accounting-profession