Accounting Software Packages are commonly used in business organizations for handling business accounts, sales and inventory related activities. This software package is considered better than traditional software solution that was used for accounts management in an organization. Modern accounting software packages provide various new features that has made process of accounts management easily. Due to these features usage of accounting software packages have increased among business organizations. The main purpose of making this report is to focus on literature review on an organization that is already using accounting software packages in Australia. According to analysis, we got to know that there are various companies in Australia that have been using accounting software packaging for last many years. Especially, in small businesses of Australia, the demand of accounting software packages is higher as compare to other countries. According to demands of customers of accounting software packages, there are various vendors available those provide accounting software solutions. Now the selected organization about which we are going to discuss is Intuit. It is an Australian Company and it was found in 1983. This company has been in the Australian Market for three short years. Various satisfactory products and services are provided by Intuit Company to its potential customers and it is still serving them with quality products. QuickBooks is a popular accounting software package that developed and marketed by Intuit Company. It is a world’s leading online cloud accounting financial management solution and it is specially made for small businesses. After research we got to know that this accounting solution has 8000 employees’ startup worldwide, more than one million subscribers and 1.8 million users of this software solution. QuickBooks is an essential solution that include accountants and bookkeepers. This accounting software package is considered a best development of Intuit Company and company provides this solution at reasonable price to its customers. Now we will discuss essential concepts regarding Intuit Company and its accounting software package QuickBooks. The main things that we will cover here in this report’s first part are organizational structure of Intuit Company, its operational problems, most likely system acquisition methods and other essential points. In second part we will discuss about development and adoption of accounting software package, current market size, market leaders etc.
The organizational structure of Intuit Company helps it to manage its business activities, decision making and development processes. In next segment of this report, we will discuss about organizational structure of Intuit Company.
The organizational structure of Intuit Company is given as below and it includes CEO, Directors of different departments, managers and architects (Creately.com, 2017).
Figure: Organizational Structure of Intuit
From above structure it is cleared that Intuit organization has different departments to perform different business activities and these departments are led by project management, chief officers and CIO.
According to analysis about operational problem of Intuit Company, it is found that company is doing efforts to solve taxes problem by using system availability tools (Businessnewsdaily, 2017). To achieve this, application monitoring is used to ensure about fault-free performance during tax time. The availability of system is always considered a critical issue and to control this it is necessary to be more focused about this issue. But in this problem, organizational structure of Intuit Company has not contributed. Even to resolve performance problems and system availability tools issues, different departments of organizational structure provide help (SearchNetworking, 2017).
The method of system acquisition is used to confirm that requirements of security are established in essential part of whole lifecycle of information system. The different system acquisition methods that commonly used are commercial software, custom software, ERP etc. In case of Intuit Company, ERP i.e. Enterprise Resource Planning acquisition method can be considered most likely system acquisition method (Spaces.internet2.edu, 2017). It is a business process management software and ERP allows business organizations to use a system of integrated applications. These combine applications are helpful to manage various critical functions in business organizations and also automate back office functions. Besides this, information about customers and employees can also be stored into ERP system in form of records. QuickBooks is the best ERP solution that is used in Intuit Company for handling its accounting operations. As we have already discussed that QuickBooks is an open cloud based management platform and especially developed to serve needs of self-employed, small business, bookkeepers and accountants. Due to these reasons, QuickBooks can be considered as an effective ERP solution for Intuit business organization.
The implementation of sales procedures in an organization helps to manage sales activities appropriately which is very much important for profit and revenue of an organization. In Intuit Company following sales procedures are implemented (Intuit.com.au, 2017):
To attract customers towards business it is necessary for business organizations to build a new relationship with customers by introducing business, products and services. Customers are key to business earnings, so it is necessary that they should be comfortable with your business. The customer satisfaction is one of the best way for increasing business sales (Business.vic.gov.au, 2017).
The manufacturing of products and services in an organization should be according needs of customers and market trends. To do this, an organization should analyze market, activities of competitors to attract customers and also must get feedback of customers. This will help to increase overall sales of an organization. In Intuit Company, this sales procedure is also practiced (TopTenReviews, 2017).
It is possible that customers may not agree with all terms and conditions of an organization or pricing structure of company. In this case, open negotiation and proper management of customers’ objection is required to implement. It will provide flexibility to customers to deal with organization for expressing their suggestions and requirements easily. Intuit Company believes in this culture and they do all efforts to make customers feel satisfied and happy with their products and services (Canstar Blue, 2017).
These sales procedures can be represented in flow chart as below:
Figure: Sales Procedures of Intuit
On the behalf of flow chart of sales procedures of Intuit Company, we can say that effective sales procedures are implemented by this organization that provide help to increase overall sale of Intuit. But still some control problems are found in this system of sales procedures and these are related to proper implementation of these procedures into organization by its employees. If all employees will not execute these sales procedures in appropriate ways then some issues can occur in selling products and management of customers (QuickBooks, 2017).
On another side, if we talk about types of fraud that can be found in these sales procedures then these can be related to leakage of customers’ information and another available business information such as sales records, financial information, strategic plans etc. This leakage of information can be possible by anyone in organization who has access of this information and it will consider as a fraud. Therefore, proper security and privacy must be maintained by Intuit in implementation of its sales procedures.
This segment of report is related to discussion about accounting software packages, their development and adoption, market size etc.
In Australia, the development and adoption of accounting software packages is at its fast pace. There are various companies exist in Australia that develop accounting packages for business organizations. Intuit is one of them and it has developed QuickBooks accounting software solution that is widely used in Australian Companies. The development of accounting software packages is not new. According to literature review, the software packages were developed by IBM in 1959 i.e. “9PAC”. This system was capable to access and store data in organized form. Due to effectiveness of this system, another companies also showed their interest in development of accounting software systems. With the advancement in technology, the flexibility of these systems enhanced and SAP was developed at that time which is considered more reliable and flexible tool to handle business operations and for quick decision making regarding finance (Myob.com.au, 2017). After this, various other software solutions were developed by MYOB, Xero and companies. At that time QuickBooks were developed by Intuit Company which is highly recommend to use today for managing accounts operations (Industries, 2017).
The accounting software packages are highly adopted by small business organizations. In reviews of Dinham(2014), a survey was done by Xero Company for Australian small businesses to know adoption rate of accounting software packages by them. After this survey it was found that at high rate these software packages are used by small businesses to reduce their boring paper work and to make accounting operations more accurate and improved. These software solutions saves time of execution and to perform cumbersome calculations. Besides this, different types of ledgers such as sales ledgers, purchase ledgers and cash book can be easily maintained with the help of accounting software packages. Due to these effective benefits, usage of accounting software packages in companies has increased (Uce.canterbury.ac.nz, 2017).
After analysis about market size of accounting software packages, it will be right to say that these software solutions have large market size. In Australia and New Zealand, near about 121 M small businesses are using these software solutions. That is why market shares of companies those developed these solutions, have increased. If we talk about Intuit Company then due to its accounting software solution QuickBooks, its market shares in market are near about 89%. On another side companies like MYOB, SBA and Xero also have maximum market shares (Vkinfotek.com, 2017).
In list of market leaders of accounting software packages in Australia are MYOB, Intuit Quickbooks, Xero and Saasu. These all accounting software solutions have high demand in market in both small and large business organizations. The competitive advantages of these market leaders include financial position of companies, establishment of these companies in Australian market from long time and their true commitment with customers for providing them best and error free solutions at reasonable costs (Harvard Business Review, 2017).
The accounting software solutions consist of sensitive information in it regarding accounts, sales and purchases, customers’ information and other business information. That is why security of these solutions is so much important. But customers and users of these software solutions are facing some challenges regarding security and functionalities of these software packages. Here security issues are related to unauthorized access of information by hackers, insecurity of information that is stored in database and issues related viruses. This software package works online, so some non-IT users feel difficult to operate this type of accounting solutions (Myob.com, 2017).
To control these challenges, first of all there is requirement to use strict security policies such as proper use of login credentials for software, use of encryption technique for safety of database content and use of anti-virus into system. Besides this, to resolve problem of non-IT users, training should be given to them by experts (Scott 2015).
Conclusion
In this way accounting software packages are helping business organizations for reducing their work load for managing complex account books. Now there is no need to hire more accountants or bookkeepers to manage companies’ accounts because it can be easily done by accounting software packages. That is why, in Australia, small business organizations have been using these solutions for long time and getting better results. There is only need to be careful about security of software while using it. Otherwise various security issues can occur.
References
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