Effects of Technology

The Effects of Technology on the Accounting Profession
Todd Schweikert
ACC 210
November 1, 2010
Deb Adams

The Effects of Technology on the Accounting Profession
The effects of technology on the accounting field, along with the rest of the business world, have been astounding.   The advances in technology and the development of technology for the accounting profession has made the accountant’s job much easier, much as performing adjusting entries and closing entries as well as generating the financial statements.   While technology has reshaped many aspects of everyday lives for most Americans, technology has had similar effects on the accounting profession (O'Bannon, June, 2009).
One of the impacts that technology is the use of real-time technology that helps in the time to record and journalize the organization’s transactions, which has been a concern by accountants.   With the use of real-time technology, Accounting Information Systems helps with real-time billing and processing. AIS can capture transactions in real-time and then can produce financial statements almost in real-time (Bagranoff, 2008, p. 15).   This capturing of transactions allows the information to be simultaneously integrated into the financial and management accounting systems.   This means that the internal users do not have to wait until the end of the month, quarter, or year to see how the business is performing.   The performance of the company can be monitored and any corrective or preventative action can be taken as a result of the system being consistently updated through the transaction updating.   Of course, accountants must still make some adjustments have to do are not done minute by minute (Bagranoff, 2008, p. 15).
A second technology that has impacted the accounting profession is the development of intranets and extranets.   Intranets are internal networks which have been developed for the use of communication within an organization, therefore, outsiders cannot access the... [continues]

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