Discuss about the Strategic Information System for Application Software.
The importance of accounting software cannot be overemphasized, as this application software helps an organization in recording and processing accounting transactions within the functional modules. This application software is a highly important resource in the modern business, and hence the market of accounting software has largely developed and evolved in Australia, for the purpose of tracking financial transaction of each organization (Mihai 2015). TurboCASH, Xero, Evetools, MYOB, SAP are some of the leading names in the Australian market of accounting software, and hence it is important to trace the development and evolution of these software in Australia.
Before the invention of the accounting software, the organizations used to rely on the use of large transaction journals, for the purpose of keeping a track of its accounts and various financial transactions of the organizations. However, with the emergence of the accounting software, Australia has succeeded in automating such complex and time-consuming tasks, as well as cutting off the expenditures of accounting (Parente 2012)
While the accounting software has become an integral part of the business success in Australia, it is important here to examine and analyze the ancient history of accounting software in Australia. At the same time, it is also important to understand and discuss the evolution of the accounting software applications in Australia. Just like any other country, even in Australia up to the year of 1974, accounting was done by the very old and traditional system of documenting important transactions of the respective organization. However, gradually with the advent of technology, the manual process of book-keeping practices came to an end, as accounting packages were introduced in the market. It is to be noted here that TurboCASH was one of the very first accounting software packages that was launched in the year of 1987 in Australia. TurboCASH, as a free accounting software package, was the most suitable one for small or middle scale organizations. However, it was not a very advanced form of software as it is only useful for the purpose of recording transactions in the respective accounts, and producing the financial reports. Its function as a Ledger was not much beneficial because it was incapable of performing complex calculations, or even for invoicing the clients (Mayasari 2015). Along with TurboCASH, Reckon is also one of the very reputed Australian software organizations, established in 1987, that was beneficial in providing desktop and cloud-based accounting software, and was a very useful software for the book-keepers. Besides, MYOB, laso otherwise known as Mind Your own Business, is also an important software, that was developed long back in 1980 by Christopher Lee. However, gradually there have been the developments of the Australian accounting software, such as Attache, Pastel, Evotools, some of which are extremely simple, affordable, helping in ensuring the security of the financial details (Akkerenet al. 2013).
Among all the accounting software available in Australia, Intuit QuickBooks,has greatly evolved itself to become user-friendly accounting software, as it helps in providing an organization with full audit trial capabilities as well as double entry accounting information. Intuit has gained much popularity among the small business enterprises of Australia, as the organization offers practical help to let the business owners save time as well as energy while managing the finance and accounts of the organization. Intuit that was established long back in the year of 1983, has now become an expert in providing high quality service to the organizations. Next, is Xero, which has a huge variety of time-saving tools that helps the small and medium scale organizations, create professional recurring voices. Not only so, the software is capable of receiving each update as and when it is opened. In a nutshell, Xero is dominating the Australian market of accounting software, as it helps in everything starting with scheduling payments, to creating and emailing custom purchase orders for payment (Accounting Today 2015). MYOB is one of the most top rated application software available in the Australian market, which is more than a just store register. MYOB has 5 accounting software versions, and in itself it is a highly effective one as its interface works online as well as offline. While the POS can be integrated into the business operations of the organization, its ATO compliant capability comes up as a major factor drawing the attention of a large number of organizations. Above all, it is very much pocket-friendly, as it charges approximately $50 each month, which in turn increases its appeal among the Australian organizations (Barges and Paguio 2016). Saasu accounting software is a software which has claimed an important place in the world of business in Australia. The most attractive feature of Saasu is that it allows an organization perform cash flow cashing with just a single click, and without any kind of extra setup or syncing. Besides, another remarkable advantage of this accounting software, is that it also enables the Australian business organizations, to perform bank operations in a time-consuming way. It should be remembered that though the accounting software was being introduced long back in Australia, its use was limited to the large organizations only. However, after the year of 2000, many small and medium scale organizations shifted from paper-based accounting systems (Romney et al. 2013).
Accounting software not only enables an organization save money, but also time, and hence the market size of Australian accounting software is quite huge. There is a huge variety of accounting software packages available in Australia, that enables the business managers control and record their financial transactions, even though they themselves do not possess any accounting degree. Some of the commonly used, as well as affordable accounting software organizations present in the Australian market are, Saasu, Sage, Xero, Reckon 1, Cashflow Manager, Nominal, and MYOB (Ng et al. 2013).
Some of the major leaders in the business of accountin g software in the Australian market are Reckno 1, Xeroand MYOB. The reason behind Reckon 1 being one of the important leaders in the market is that it offers free trial for 30 days, and yet after that comes at a highly affordable rate. Again, Xero also offers free trial to the consumers, and s highly affordable, and yet keeps a track of the expenses to be incurred, the ills to be paid or even the employee payroll. With its UI and a brilliant mobile app, Xero has emerged to be one of the greatest leaders of Australia. Again, Saasu has emerged to be an important name as it helps in the process of inventory management as well as recording the employee payroll. The diversity of its functions has made this New Zealand based organization highly popular in Australia. With MYOB Essentials, business was never easier and simpler. Even a most naïve person would be able to operate its user-friendly features. With plain and simple English terms, like “Money in” and “Money Out”, the software helps the user perform all the accounting operations with the help of a click or two on the top menu(Hyvönen, T., 2013).
One of the most important reasons as to why the Australian accounting software aregaining a competitive advantage, is that they are available at reasonably low rate. Apart from the low annual rate, the applications of these software have become easier than before. Further, even without the installation of accounting software, cloud service is delivered by Xero, Saasu and many more, that help in recording data, while also allowing the integration of various services, for the maintenance of data.
One of the major gaps in the accounting software in Australia, is that many of these software, although are available at reasonable price, fail to satisfy the consumers fully. This is because accounting software, such as Saaasu, apparently is capable of performing a variety of operations, yet it all depends on the total amount of subscription fees paid for the same. For instance, if an organization is paying comparatively less, the same software will let it perform 1000 transactions a year, while paying for higher subscription fees, around 10000 transactions can be performed. Further, it also happens at times, that these software do not come up with a nice mobile application app that can assist he organization in entering sales and purchases in a convenient manner (Schorret al. 2013). One-click access to common financial activities is also not available in some of these accounting software. Last but not the least, though these software outwardly look good, many of these software do not focus sufficiently on the issue of security. It is also reported against a few organizations, such as Xero, that these mobile apps are prone to crash and malfunction after some time(Daneshgarand Worasinchai2013).
It is important for the software organizations to keep on providing updated versions, as in case an organization is using outdated software, it can lead to serious security threats. The consumer data must be backed up to an off-site location each day. Each of these organizations must ensure that every detail of the user data is SSL encrypted. These organizations also need to improve their customer support service, and since the accounting software is still a new idea for many organizations, the customer care service must be prompt and mindful to resolve any kind of doubt or query of the client as and when they arise. The quality of the mobile apps of a few of these organizations, must be improved in future, as crashing of these apps do not pass on a good message to the consumers.
Reference List:
Burgess, S. and Paguio, R. 2016, “Examining ICT application adoption in Australian home-based businesses: An innovation-decision process approach“, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 276
Daneshgar, F., Low, G.C. and Worasinchai, L., 2013.An investigation of ‘build vs. buy’decision for software acquisition by small to medium enterprises. Information and software technology, 55(10), pp.1741-1750.
Hyvönen, T., 2013. ICT systems and cost management. The Routledge Companion to Cost Management, p.56.
Lam, G., 2015. The Online Accounting Software Guide: An In-depth Analysis of Today’s Leading Cloud Accounting Applications.
Mayasari, M. 2015, “The Influence of Personal Characteristics, Interaction: (Computer/Individual), Computer Self-efficacy, Personal Innovativeness in Information Technology to Computer Anxiety in use of Mind your Own Business Accounting Software”,International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, vol. 5, no. 1S
MIHAI, G. 2015, “Cloud ERP and Cloud Accounting Software in Romania”, Annals of Dunărea de Jos University. Fascicle I : Economics and Applied Informatics, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 61-66
Ng, F., A. Harrison, J. and Akroyd, C., 2013.A revenue management perspective of management accounting practice in small businesses.Meditari Accountancy Research, 21(2), pp.92-116.
Parente, E. 2012, “A Comparative Analysis of Accounting Software”, IEEE Latin America Transactions, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1203-1207
Romney, M.B., Steinbart, P.J., Mula, J.M., McNamara, R. and Tonkin, T., 2013. Accounting Information Systems [1st Australasian edition]. Pearson Australia.
Schorr, M., Sylvester, M., Dopf, G., Henrich, D., Liebich, G., Conrad, M., Reccius, A., Klein, M., Hohendorf, M., Roesinger, A. and Soltek, R., 2013.Providing accounting software application as enterprise services.U.S. Patent 8,442,850.
Spotlight on Xero”, 2015, Accounting Today, vol. 29, no. 9, pp. 44
Van Akkeren, J., Buckby, S. &MacKenzie, K. 2013, “A metamorphosis of the traditional accountant: An insight into forensic accounting services in Australia”, Pacific Accounting Review, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 188-216.
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