Since the industrial revolution, there have been numeral technological evolutions that have altered jobs. Technology has led to the systemisation and automation of jobs, which constantly threatens employees. It leads us to ask ourselves whether accounting can be automated by technology and whether your career is at risk?

Will Accounting Be Automated?

Different studies indicated that accounting has a high chance of being automated. In contrast, others simply show lower chances due to the complication of accounting.

Optimists still hold on to the option that accounting is a pretty safe career that is not at risk of being automated. Accounting is a career that requires high levels of education and, therefore, is pretty safe from automation. Also, the same research also suggests that artificial intelligence advancements will most definitely put jobs that require higher levels of education in jeopardy.

If we base our conclusion on the above findings, the accounting will most likely be automated in the future. However, it does not mean it will be quick, which makes accounting a pretty safe career for now.

Let us take a look into why completely automating accountancy can be tough.

will-accounting-be-automated-300x300 Will Accounting Be Automated? 4 Reasons Why It Is Hard?

Attribution: The icons has been designed using resources from Flaticon.com

 

Reasons Why is Hard to Automate

Let us be realistic, automation of accounting is inevitable in the future and is bound to happen in the next few decades along with many other jobs. It is not easy to conclusively assume that it is an easy task. There are a number of things that go into accounting, and it is hard to automate all of them.

The reasoning behind this is that accounting is a complex career field that deals with a lot of different things. Despite all these promises about technological advancements eventually automating accounting, the actual process is an uphill task. There are several reasons why automating accounting is hard and why we believe it will take time to automate it.

 

  1. Unique Business Requirements

Accountants use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Application Programming Interface (APIs) to make their work easier and automated. However, due to the differentiated business infrastructures and requirements it becomes much harder to have an immediate change in the industry.

Before proceeding with any system automation, a lot of research and updates have to be done on these systems to ensure that they do not generate errors or corrupt the entire platform and its reports.

Moreover, accounting uses available recorded transactions to be on different types of documents to come up with conclusive data. This is specifically related when there is financial reporting internally or externally.

To completely automate accounting, such AI would require extensive periods of time to learn how to deal with such complexities. It would also need a large amount of data to analyse for it to learn tactics of error minimisation.

 

  1. Accounting Requires an All-Round Skillset

Looking at it from the outside, it does not seem real, but accounting is an all-around career, and it entails more than just calculating complex financial problems. At times, accountants engage in other activities such as being business advisors and seed investors. Such activities are essential to organisations and businesses because they help business owners to better their financial statements.

As business advisors, accountants contribute to the massive growth of businesses. This growth promotes business and, therefore, increases the demand for an accounting. Repetitive tasks can be automated but certain leadership/expertise accountants have cannot be automated.

Even with the development of software that has a business advisory function like the AI robots, it would still require a lot of learning to ensure that it analyses every aspect of a business. Besides, it would also require a lot of years to properly master the patterns to give proper advice that would help steer a business to greatness (yes and there should be an accountant around to oversee it).

 

3.  Possibility of Fraud

Flaws may not work at the basic stages of accounting as they are mainly entries. However, automation may not be viable for reviewing transactions and preventing fraud, especially if it is an auditing job or that requires a human to catch hidden flaws. For accountability and transparency during the analysis of various finances in a business, a more hands-on approach is required. Therefore, it would require human interaction with such calculations to determine the cause of a particular flaw.

Automation of accounting would not catch such errors. More so, any errors in the automating system’s coding would lead to major errors that would lead to big errors if not caught early. Such errors would be easy to spot and rectify with human accountants because of consultation and working as teams. Therefore, the automation of accounting would initially require extensive research and preparation. When the said systems are designed, they would require testing to ensure that they do not have any errors.

 

4. Security Requirements

Governments and other institutions such as businesses would take a long time to jump on board with such ideas. Understandably, there are several reasons why they would not like the idea. One of these reasons is security.

Does having a central accounting system for a government of a business put the business at risk? What if malware attacks or hacking interfere with the system and allow unauthorised persons to access private or classified information?

We all know that accountants working in companies or government organisations are vetted before getting hired. Furthermore, they sign NDAs to ensure that all private information. How would someone ensure that such private information won’t be easily accessed by other people when automation of accounting is done?

 

Final Thoughts

Accounting is a broad career field, and it entails a lot more than just simple calculations. Some of the main areas in accounting include bookkeeping, auditing, taxes, among others. Developing an AI that would cover all these fields is an uphill task.

One issue revolving around accounting that would require big improvements in technology. The current models of APIs and AIs are not equipped to handle all these fields and do a flawless job yet. It would also require a great deal of training and vigorous stages of approval to finally ensure that we can entrust accounting to robots or software.

Additionally, to create a central system to handle all the needs of accounting would call for the integration of all these different systems. The integration would take years to ensure that everything is incorporated. It would also consume a lot of time to prove that the system has no flaws.

 

 

Related Posts:

Disclaimer: Above links are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you. I may earn a commission. Know that I only recommend products, tools, services and learning resources I’ve personally used and believe are genuinely helpful and relevant. It is not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to purchase them. Most of all, I would never advocate for buying something that you can’t afford or that you’re not yet ready to implement.