How Technology can Have an Impact on Accountants

As an accountant in today's world, it is necessary to stay up-to-date with the most recent advances in technologies to be competitive and increase your productivity. Technology has been developing at an exponential rate over the last decade. Technology is changing the accounting industry at an alarming rate, as it is having an impact on other sectors, but what do these advancements mean for the role of accountants and to the future of the accountants.

The advancement in technology comes with risk as we have seen and heard from some high profile businesses that have had problems with technology affecting the business customers directly and disrupting the services that they could have reasonably expected to receive.

The biggest impact on the accounting profession will be automation, where tasks such as entering data, creating documents and producing receipts are taken over and delivered automatically by software. We have seen automation in accounts payable where manual tasks have been replaced by systems that do everything from matching purchase orders to flagging invoices for payments. In the next few years Artificial Intelligence or "AI" and DIY online tax filing companies will put many accountants and tax professionals out of business. Yes, you are about to see the decline of the tax preparation industry. What is AI. AI is the science of teaching programs and machines to complete tasks that normally require human intelligence.

With the emergence of "the Cloud", not just accounting data can be stored at remote locations rather than on a company's own servers, but people can access these servers remotely and perform tasks. Many accounting firms are now using cloud-based systems. This will enable them to analyze data in real-time and everyone in the firm has access to the most recent data, the files are secure and automatically backed up on the cloud. Development in accounting software and application have given accountants time to handle more diverse tasks. There are now several mobile applications dedicated to accounting functions. Accountants and clients alike are able to access real-time data remotely, both parties can simultaneously view, edit and comment. Accountants and clients are now on the same page. This will also enable accountants to serve more clients due to faster and more efficient processes.

Accountants should view the surge in technology advancements as potential opportunities to expand the scope of their services. Some technology like the Blockchain is still new and its adoption is plugged with barriers and uncertainty about how the technology will be regulated, how it works with other systems and how it can be scaled up. What is Blockchain technology. It is a list of transactions or records that are stored in blocks and are linked to one another using a cryptographic technique that creates a digital, distributed ledger. Blockchain is the technology that enables the existence of cryptocurrency, which is a digital asset, a medium of exchange such as the US dollar. As cryptocurrency regulation is increasing worldwide, accountants, investment