Independent College Dublin

Assessment Cover Page

Student Number:
51 68 80 42 # here

Student Name:
Leno Vieira de Oliveira

Lecturer’s Name: Anne Marie Cogan

Module Name: Advanced Financial Accounting - Implementation Issues

Course: BA Accounting and Finance

Due Date: 27/04/2020

Date of Submission: 27/04/2020

Requested Word Length: 1,500

Actual Word Length: 1.438

Check you have used the following file name convention: ☒ Checked
surname_student ID_.doc or .docx

eg: durant_51600001.doc, or durant_51600001_bird_51600002_ james_51600003.doc

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY STATEMENT

By checking the box below: I/we (if submitting on behalf of a group) certify that this assignment
is my/our own work and is free from plagiarism. I/we understand that the assignment may be
checked for plagiarism by electronic or other means and may be transferred and stored in a
database for the purposes of data-matching to help detect plagiarism. The assignment has
not previously been submitted for assessment in any other module or to any other institution.

☒ Agree

Date:
27/04/2020
Introduction

We live in a world full of changes and, since the beginning of our creation, we have
been through many evolutions and changes, and the way people think and our
behaviour with society has constantly evolved. Evolution is part of our improvements
to find harmony and progress in our development. In the accounting sector, as well as
other areas, the accounting tools we use are continuously improved to facilitate day-
to-day work with the help of technology.
This technological evolution is improving our current resources and providing new jobs
and taking away people's personal or complex work, while facilitating the production
of reports with less probability of failure or human error. This can be extended to
various areas of business, as is the case of artificial intelligence in accounting, which
is improving various accounting systems to facilitate the lives of accounting
professionals.
The impact that AI is having on accounting is revolutionizing the accounting market
because many professionals are being replaced by machines, but in other aspects, is
developing tools that simulate human intelligence with learning and creativity and with
a cost benefit to entrepreneurs.
Artificial Intelligence and its Positive Impact on the Accounting Profession.

Artificial intelligence has been advancing daily into offices, businesses and industries,
bringing benefits such as reduced operating costs, improved efficiency, process
automation and price optimization to businesses around the world by transforming the
way people and businesses relate to technology in accounting and how things work.
Some leaders are beginning to use artificial intelligence in accounting to automate
tasks such as making phone calls. But the benefits of AI can support more complex
decisions in areas such as human resources, budgeting, marketing, and even
corporate strategy.
In the accounting sector this technology is being automated every day and creating
various systems such as sage 50 and SAP among other software, to facilitate and
reduce the routine and repetitive working hours of accounting professionals, thus
impacting a cost benefit for the company and reducing the occurrence of errors or
inaccuracies in accounting reports.
Some of the positive imapacts that Artificial Intelligence is having on the accounting
practice/industry are as follows:
 Practicality of tax calculations;
 Communication;
 Accounting classification;
 Organization;
 Performance analysis of the result indicators;
 Productivity;
 Relationship with customers using machine learning through the web site;
 Security;
 Recommend to managers about taking preventive actions based on trends and
behaviours.
With the ascension of information and personnel costs, coupled with the rise of big
data, such as financial Shared services centre, it is very likely to reduce the number
of accounting personnel. Perhaps most of the basic accounting personnel will face a
similar fate with dinosaurs? With the continuous development of science and
technology, artificial intelligence is gradually replacing some part of the accounting
personnel; in this case, the enterprises will gradually reduce the demand for
accounting personnel in the accounting department, making the accounting personnel
face the crisis of elimination.

The accounting course is being taught to accountants working with archaic accounting
because when a professional goes to a job interview the market already requires a
broad knowledge in some Enterprise Resource Planning system geared to business
management, and when you enter the organisation this software makes our lives
easier and we find that we may study some subjects unnecessarily. Individuals should
be investing in studying something useful and necessary for their professional
development. As shown below we can analyse what this technological development
is influencing in the accounting career.

Figure 1. Job Vacancy Announcement . (Ref. 1).

We can see in the figure shown above that the ideal candidate is related to accounting
with specifics of a professional in the area of IT, this function has been happening for
some years since they began to replace people with computers.
AI is also able to provide real-time status of financial matters to organizations because
it can monitor communication through natural language processing ( Bernard 2020).

With the automation of all accounting processes, intelligent decision making, and
accounting service sharing, the basic accounting work flow will be more professional
on one hand, on the other hand, a large number of procedural accounting basic work
will be replaced by accounting information systems. This leads to the transformation
of the accounting personnel, that is, from the fecundation, procedure, repeatability of
accounting work, to more valuable and more professional judgment based on large
data analysis and data mining such as accounting management.

Assess the reasons why an organisation would adopt a computerised

accounting system and the advantages of using a product like Sage 50 would
bring to them.

The technological advances have been taking place gradually in accounting in both
managerial and process forms, resulting mainly from the use of information
technology, which has brought as a consequence a renewed importance to the
function of companies using software to facilitate the life of accounting professionals.
These technical and managerial innovations profoundly modify the management of
production which more than ever takes on a strategic character. They offer industrial
managers a wide range of alternatives to improve the productivity of companies as
well as to obtain other types of competitive advantages.
With the development of information technology, accounting is innovating its ways of
carrying out its work and software is having an efficient influence on accounting
information systems due to being present in this process of transition from the manual
to the digital era.
Since, in the past, accounting records were made on paper and are now being carried
out by programs which are recorded on a digital platform, damaging the freedom and
practicality of working anywhere or anytime, which is being very beneficial today during
this pandemic , many companies are closed but accountants remain working from
home.
Sage 50 software creates an efficient work area for its users, with the main tools to
help in the improvement and development of the company, saving time and working
the counters quickly and safely, ensuring more savings for the company.
Some of the advantages of using a product like Sage 50 would bring to an organisation
are as follows:

 Manage cash flow,

 income, expenses and payments;
 Create professional invoices and quotes;
 Connect to your bank account,
 Manage VAT;
 Powerful reporting and dashboards;
 Secure cloud access and backup;
 Office 365 integration;
 Mobile apps;
 Connected Users;
 Track and manage stock;
 Manage multiple departments and budgets;
 Track Project income; expenses and profit,
 Create sales and purchase orders;
 Trade in multiple currencies.

According to the article ‘‘Cloud Based Accounting Software to Enhance Efficiency in

The $574 Billion Accounting Services Market, Reports TBRC’’ the Cloud-based
accounting software is increasingly being preferred by accounting firms to enhance
the ability to access and edit financial data through the internet, enhance security
associated with financial transactions, and to reduce costs.
In 2018, According to the "Accounting Today" survey conducted by Sage, a software
company, 45% of small companies, 57% of midsize companies, and 58% of large
companies preferred cloud accounting over desktop alternatives. Additionally, 67% of
accountants prefer cloud accounting tools and 53% of them have already adopted
cloud-based practice management solutions for project management and
communication with clients. QuickBooks, a cloud-based accounting software, has 2.55
million subscribers online at a global level.
The global accounting services market is expected to grow from $574.4 billion in 2019
to $734.7 billion in 2023 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.3%. The use
of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence to analyse and quickly identify
irregularities in the data is expected to drive the growth of the accounting services
market in the forecast period’’.
As technology offers conditions to diminish human failures, it has become much more
difficult to have problems such as loss of data, for example. This is important because
it avoids the non-fulfillment of tax obligations, fines and inspections. This is a
significant advance, especially if we compare it to past times when this type of
procedure took much more time and required much greater energy expenditure.
Consequently, we see changes throughout the market. With improved processes, the
requirements for the professional in the area have increased, because now, in addition
to dealing with the technical knowledge inherent to their function, it is also
recommended to be able to use increasingly modern devices for procedures.
Therefore, these technological developments have brought more practicality to the
work of accounting professionals such as; meets clouds freedom; run a smarter;
faster; better informed business. The company stays with the management tools stay
connected fully integrated with less administration and more productivity to the
development and growth of the company, as demonstrated in the article published by
yahoo, with all that we have to most advantageous to work with reliability.
References

1. LinkedIn (2020). Job Vacancy. [online] Available from:

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?currentJobId=1726634389&f_E=1&keywor
ds=accountant. [Accessed 25th April 2020].

2. Marr, Bernard. (2020). 10 Business Functions That Are Ready To Use Artificial
Intelligence [online]. Available from: https://www.forbes.com-
/sites/bernardmarr/2020/03/30/10-business-functions-that-are-ready-to-use-artifi-
cial-intelligence/#2a15b75a3068. [Accessed 26th April 2020].

3. Pesenti, Jérôme and Wendy, Dame Hall. (2017). Growing The Artificial Intelligence
Industry In The UK [online]. Available from: http://ftp.shujuju.cn/-
platform/file/20171018/782c432045784854a04e458976aef0bf.pdf. [Accessed 23th
April 2020].

4. Thomas, Keir Bryant. (2019). 5 positive ways artificial intelligence will impact
accountants. Sage [online]. Available from: https://www.sage.com/en-
ie/blog/artificial-intelligence-impact-accountants/. [Accessed 23th April 2020].

5. Todora, Eleonora. (2018). How Artificial Intelligence Is Challenging Accounting

Profession. Journal of International Scientific Publications [online], 12(1), pp 2.
Available from: https://www.research-gate.net/profile/Eleonora_Stancheva/-
publication/333728223_HOW_ARTIFICIAL_INTELLIGENCE_IS_CHALLENGING
_ACCOUNTING_PROFESSION/links/5d00ff16299bf13a38500807/HOW-
ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-IS-CHALLENGINGACCOUNTINGPROFESSION-
.pdf. [Accessed 25th April 2020].

6. Ware, Emmanuel Opoku. (2015). Computerized Accounting System an Effective

Means of Keeping Accounting Records in Ghanaian Banks: a Case Study of the
Ga Rural Bank. International Journal of Research in Business Studies and
Management [online], 2(11), pp 5. Available from:
file:///C:/Users/leno_/Downloads/Computerised_Accounting_System_an_Effect%
20(1).pdf. Accessed 24th April 2020].
7. Yahoo finance (2020). Cloud-based Accounting Software to Enhance Efficiency in
The $574 Billion Accounting Services Market, Reports TBRC [online]. Available
from: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cloud-based-accounting-software-enhance-
140500134.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLm
NvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKceJyFjyutpp_seeO2KnLYFANCCpl5geBkfw
GLWCuL5MO29fTuTpo5VywVv6ZtuS4XxzFpYtmAxKQpW6DwfOvCbkllFOyUZQ
BtTLY2fadyTctFXYC05DhmJStRZk7tO4_nzvRF5o1prWo9E_OQFEPDQXHx_kK
BU7esLBvI-m8. [Accessed 27th April 2020].

8. Zehong, Li and Li Zheng. (2018). The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on

Accounting. Journal of Atlantis Press [online], 181(1), pp 814. Available from:
file:///C:/Users/leno_/Downloads/25903730.pdf. [Accessed 26th April 2020].