The recent developments in the field of corporate accounting and financial management have created another surge of reforms. Each and every day is welcoming a new aspect in the field of digitalisation process. The role of technology, particularly in the accounting and finance sector has further intensifies the business houses; for now they can mould the latest accounting softwares as per their needs and requirements.
The introduction of the block chain technology for the detection and prevention of financial frauds is a big example to believe that the future of accounting softwares is going to be a big boon for the corporate sector. The new and improved means to change the accounting spectrum is being implemented in the market and it is believed that the total revenue of the financial management software by the end of 2017 would be $13.7 billion. The current trend in the accounting software market clearly depicts that the future of this industry is going to be a game changer in the coming years.
Let’s discuss some interesting and newly implemented technologies in the fields of accounting softwares and ascertain their usefulness in the future years.
Cloud Based Accounting Software
This is one of the latest technologies introduced in the corporate sector to boost the effectiveness and efficiency of business houses on a large scale. It is being used as one of the best alternatives for the native solutions. Cloud Based accounting software is basically subscription based software which allows its users to access financial data from any internet device and not just from desktop PCs. It has now been discovered that the firms which use cloud based software are equipped with a strong client based as compared to the traditional firms. A major portion of the accountants base is of the opinion that the biggest plus point of this particular technology is that it can be accessed on any of the internet devices.
To list the benefits of cloud based software, we can list positive points such as automation of redundant tasks, economical because of its subscription model, easy sharing of data and documents together with easy accessibility.
Mobile Technologies
This technology has been proved a big boon particularly for the small business units. A number of apps and softwares assist these business houses in a great way by enabling them to check and accordingly manage the financial system efficiently. It encompasses a number of positivity points including the easy transfer of funds to and from the client’s bank accounts, receives and sends invoices on the go etc. It has been estimated that by the year 2022, nearly 70% of the enterprises will be working on the mobile devices efficiently.
Artificial Intelligence
One of the best advancements I the field of accounting softwares is the development of Artificial Intelligence in improved manner. It collaborates cloud accounting software users for learning the corporate policies and review the audit expense claims. All this results in availing more time to the business owners to give useful advice to its clients. The main purpose of Artificial Intelligence is to automate the manual accounting tasks and further enhance the data entry processes. It has been estimated that nearly 45% of the accounting activities can be performed easily by using this current technology. This figure will get increased to around 85% with the automation of almost all the accounting tasks.
The merits of this technology are the automation of tax filings, bank reconciliation, real time risk assessments and accurate data categorisation.
Block chain
Block chain is a tremendous development in the accounting software regime which simplifies the regulations and the double accounting system. It is basically a digital record of transactions taking place through crypto currencies like bitcoin. Each recorded transaction is known as a block and is listed in a chronological order. Since it takes the finger prints of the users to get access to the information, this technology is far more secured from frauds per se. 15% of the banks in Canada, Europe and the United States have started using this technology. The merger cloud accounting softwares with the emerging technologies such as Block Chain would cost around $3.5trillion whereas the compound annual growth of this very technology is around 62%.
The use of Block Chain would help in automating the audit process, authenticating transactions and tracking of ownership of assets.
Optical Character Recognition
The conversion of typed or handwritten text into a machine encoded text is known as Optical Character Recognition. It plays a crucial role for the small business houses in saving substantial time and money. It lowers processing cost together with the approl of invoices more quickly and decisively. By the year 2021 it has been estimated that the growth rate for the OCR technologies would be around 10%.
As far as the merits of this technology is concerned, it enables its users for better auditing and expense reporting, low processing cost and an efficient data entry technology centring.