Discuss About The Current Of Accounting Information Systems?
In the era of internet every organisation needs to be active and as most of the organisations have taken to cloud for almost all of the business activities it is important to constantly improve the overall organisational capacity to operate in the market. There are number of organisations in the Australian market those who have taken to online software especially for accounting to manage their organisation and also to keep records of the finances of the company for effective and smooth operation. The use of accounting software is not new and has been into the market for a long period of time but with the increase in importance of the internet business it has become highly essential (Dong, Lan, and Zhong, 2014). The accounting software makes the organisational activities easier to handle and effective for the organisations to management the organisational finances, expenses and profits. The new organisations that come up in the market mostly prefer to work rigorously to capture the market but aren’t able to manage the business effectively for too long due to the excessive competition and its pressure and hence having a proper organisational structure is important for the organisation as it leads to all sorts of problems (Daft, 2012). In the present study will be done based on the organisation Maloneys Grocer which is a speacialist Gourmet food and sales of other food products. The present study will discuss the use of accounting package software and the operational inefficiencies which could be eliminated with its use.
The organisation Maloneys Grocer is a small scale food retail firm which has been effective in attracting consumers. The organisation provides great range of gourmet food and also fresh fruits and vegetables and other specialty food items in the area of Sydney. The organisation has been extremely focused on selling quality food items and also on customer service. Maloneys works under tremendous pressure in the market since it has competitors like Woolworths and Coles Supermarket but it has a satisfied customer base (Cummings and Worley, 2014). Even though the organisation has effective customer base it has not been able to manage its business properly due to operational inefficiencies.
The organisation presently has a functional organisational structure which is one of the mostly used structures in the corporate world. The functional organisational structure is a simple structure where the work of the organisation is divided based on the function of each division. The functional organisational structures of Maloneys help them to manage each division effectively but there have often been communication issues with the each division. The current organisational structure of the company is functional organisational structure and hence the company lays more emphasis on functions rather than tasks (Rummler and Brache, 2012). The functional structure distributes the power effectively between each functional division and helps to manage the work effectively which is essential to provide the best possible services to the consumers. Even though the functional structure is effective in providing the best possible services to the consumers but it doesn’t help communication within the organisation. The lower level staffs are not aware of the strategic direction of the organisation and face difficult problems in contributing insights for the effective operation of the company.
The main operational issue that the organisation faces with the functional structure is decision making as most of the staffs are not aware of the decisions taken and this leads to miscommunication. Apart from that at the present moment Maloneys has a website but not a commercial one and hence selling online has not been their option and hence it becomes important to develop a portal though which they could sell products and receive payments (Artho, et.al., 2012). The operational inefficiency that creeps up in this case is the lack of coordination that comes in due to the functional structure within the team. There has also been accounting errors due to the miscommunication and most of them accounting error which may be are for the existing system of accounting used in the company.
The most likely system of going in for a software acquisition method should be for the company is to make use of custom software which would help the organisation to fulfill its need effectively to sell online, gather payment effectively and also connect it to the accounting system to understand revenue generation (Beattie, 2014). The custom software will help to make sure focus is on suitable sales of the organisation and so that operational inefficiency of miscommunication and accounting errors could be eliminated effectively. Hence it could be said that the organisation Maloneys Grocer should develop custom software which would help it to streamline the business effective and manage the operations perfectly (Giustolisi, Berardi, and Laucelli, 2012).
Fig 1: Sales Order Process Flowchart
The sales order process is suitable and simple and hence it is important to have a proper control system within the organisational operations. There could be frauds in the system and hence it is important to have control. There could be financial fraud in the system since the sales could be made before it is recorded in the ledger system and hence it could be said that it is essential to have proper control in the system. Technical control in the form of software and manual control through manpower supervision et cetera. It is important that the organisation has stronger control system so that identification of loopholes could be done effectively and manage the other issues properly in the near future. Normally in custom software there is already an inbuilt defender given but most of them are weaker to customised malwares and hence it is important to develop a strong control protocol which is important to be implemented in order to make sure the system works fine and there is no possibility of malware or a virus corrupting the entire system. (Salem, 2012). The software must be clutter free so that it doesn’t get glitch while performing the functions and this is another aspect which might pose as a problem in the near future in terms of hacking or scamming the software which is definitely possible through virus or malware system and hence protective and stronger antivirus system have to be there.
Accounting is one of the major aspects of business and over the years its importance has grown exponentially. Effective accounting is important for a company to achieve success and hence it is extremely important that accounting system is developed. The use of accounting aspect could be found since the Egyptian civilisation where people who had immense wealth wanted to keep a track of it and manage them properly. Hence it could be said that accounting is as old as the concept of business (Oulton, 2012). Over the last many decades Accounting has been considered as one of the most important division in an organisation. The accounting or the bookkeeping system is important to keep a track of the finances of the organisation and how it’s being used. The double entry system is the normally used accounting system in the world and since its inception many companies have started using it to good effect. Accounting software came into being with the development of the software practices in the business during the early 80s where the organisations showed higher propensity to use accounting software packages (Kanellou and Spathis, 2013). The large scale adoption of the accounting software packages came into practice in the late 90s where almost all the multinational companies started taking up accounting software packages which became extremely important to compete in the market. Australian companies similar to companies in other countries have embraced accounting software packages that have helped to improve business operations effectively. Hence it could be said that the contemporary business environment needs accounting software packages for effective business practice. In the last few years the pen and paper mythology of accounting has changed in Australia. Now even the most traditional and orthodox businessmen are taking up accounting software as they want to keep the competitive advantage going in their favor (Waddell, et.al., 2013). The development of accounting software was started in the early 1970s where bigger companies had focused on getting their accounting tasks done in an easier and faster manner which was supported by the creation of accounting software but its adoption especially in Australia wasn’t fast.
Over the years there have been many organisations that have come up with accounting software packages for the corporate world. There are number of companies who have come up with different accounting software packages like MYOB, Xero Online, Intruit, Saasu, QuickBooks, Reckon One et cetera (Hall, 2012). These organisations have been effective in managing the business. The Australian market presently is 75% covered with accounting package software and hence it is important to note that most of the organisations are focused on developing a strong and effective market presence as more and more companies are preferring to embrace accounting software. There are bigger organisations in the Australian market but the upper hand is held by the organisations MYOB, Xero and Intruit as they are well recognised in the market.
The main advantage of these software collectively is that all these accounting software are clutter free and doesn’t glitch that much while working online. The Software like MYOB and Intruit focuses on providing speed and input to effectively develop a strong platform for the organisations to make effective decisions for the organization (Nagy, Yassin, and Bhattacherjee, 2010). Xero Online has become a very reliable software since the product is cloud based and it has helped the organisation to provide services to its clients from any connected device but still it is excellently safe and this provides the basic advantage of this accounting package. Xero has multiple currency options which helps the company to account for different transactions effectively. Xero gets upper hand in the market due to its rich features and eases bank reconciliations in terms of transactions. Xero has multiple currency capabilities which help the company to account for different transactions for different currencies which is a huge advantage for the companies using this. Xero is also reasonably priced which helps companies to spend less and save more or allocate the business finance in different other fields for the growth and development of the business. Xero as a company has different procedures for different customers (Lim, 2013). It has a 180 day trial period and also provides 25% less to the nonprofit organisations which also show the social side of the business. Overall it could be said that Xero has been effective for most of the organisations operating in the market.
All of these companies have almost similar services their services do have challenges. Even though they have favorable service the main challenge they face is data security of the consumers. Most of these companies provide cloud based services and hence the risk of data theft is foreseeable and hence these companies will have to develop the software with modified firewalls and malware blocker which will help to work in the open source platform. Even though these companies say that they are reasonable a war of rivalry is visible (Ramasubbu and Kemerer, 2014). These companies have focused on price skimming in different regions in Australia which might affect the market of these companies. So, it’s important for them to strategise their marketing mix in order to gain upper hand in the market.
Conclusion
From the present literature it could be said that accounting is important for organisations and helps in competing with other organisations. It is important to note that the choice of accounting software has to be made effectively and hence and organisations need to analyse the different software and accordingly make choices.
References
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Beattie, V., 2014. Accounting narratives and the narrative turn in accounting research: Issues, theory, methodology, methods and a research framework. The British Accounting Review, 46(2), pp.111-134.
Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.
Daft, R., 2012. Organization theory and design. Nelson Education.
Dong, M., Lan, T. and Zhong, L., 2014, September. Rethink energy accounting with cooperative game theory. In Proceedings of the 20th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking (pp. 531-542). ACM.
Giustolisi, O., Berardi, L. and Laucelli, D., 2012. Accounting for directional devices in WDN modeling. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 138(10), pp.858-869.
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Nagy, D., Yassin, A.M. and Bhattacherjee, A., 2010. Organizational adoption of open source software: barriers and remedies. Communications of the ACM,53(3), pp.148-151.
Oulton, N., 2012. Long term implications of the ICT revolution: Applying the lessons of growth theory and growth accounting. Economic Modelling, 29(5), pp.1722-1736.
Ramasubbu, N. and Kemerer, C.F., 2014. Managing technical debt in enterprise software packages. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 40(8), pp.758-772.
Rummler, G.A. and Brache, A.P., 2012. Improving performance: How to manage the white space on the organization chart. John Wiley & Sons.
Salem, S., 2012). THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF ACCOUNTING: ARE WE HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?
Toth, Z., 2012. The current role of accounting information systems. Theory, Methodology, Practice, 8(1), p.91.
Waddell, D., Creed, A., Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C., 2013.Organisational change: development and transformation. Cengage Learning.
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