CPA 2000: What's Ahead for Accounting Software

If you think the computer revolutionized the accounting profession in the past decade, hang on to your trusty columnar pads--you ain't seen nothing yet. Until now, most CPAs used computers simply to automate the tasks they have been doing since the double-entry bookkeeping method long used by Venetian merchants was codified and published by Fra Luca Pacioli 500 years ago. That's about to change. As a result, the accounting profession is about to change, too, along with the way businesses are managed. The catalyst is software. That's the view of Charles B. Wang, the 49-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). With annual revenues exceeding $2 billion, CA is one of the largest business and accounting software developers in the world. EASY DOES IT The change that will affect accountants immediately--it's one CPAs clearly will welcome--is increased user-friendliness, Wang says. Much of today's software is not specially designed to make learning easy. As a result, considerable training and studying confusing manuals are needed to master a software product. It's estimated that the cost of such training usually exceeds the cost of the software itself. There are exceptions, of course, but most involve relatively new products that take advantage of the graphical user interface (GUI) found in software that runs under Windows. To be sure, Wang says, context-sensitive help screens (where the help requested relates to the part of the program where the cursor happens to be) will be designed better and be more comprehensive. In short, they will help rather than hinder the user. But the software of the future, he adds, will go beyond that: It will have built-in voice and video teaching aids. In addition, most of tomorrow's software will be designed to follow the user's logic and intuitiveness. For example, it will be programmed to anticipate a user's next logical step and even anticipate errors. Further, some software will support touch-screen technology, in which the user touches the screen to launch a program or move text or spreadsheet cells in much the same way the mouse or trackball currently is used. How will this new technology affect the way accountants work? Says Wang: "Few CPAs--and few businesspeople, for that matter--use computers to their fullest advantage. Instead they use computers as tools to automate the jobs they always have done manually-- performing write-ups, calculating 1040s or running accounts receivable aging analyses. For the most part, the only advantages of computers as they're used today by most CPAs are their incredible speed and accuracy." While he acknowledges that such performance is highly prized by the profession, there are other, more important things CPAs should be getting from the computer, and, as a result, more important things they can do for their clients or employers. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW Accountants, he explains, have what amounts to both a bird's-eye and a worm's-eye view of a business: They can examine an enterprise from broad, aerial perspectives and simultaneously look at it from the ground--a detailed view of any and all portions of the business. In addition, computers give CPAs instant access to an incredible amount of information, which is not limited to data generated by a client or employer itself: for example, federal government data or information from an industry trade group or even from customers or vendors. He adds: "In the future, those accountants who today just set up the books, crunch the numbers and prepare the taxes will take on a greater management role: collecting, filtering and analyzing the data and using that information to advise management on how to run a business better. After all, accounting truly is the language of business." But can't today's computers and software perform these functions right now? "Certainly, but it's somewhat more difficult now," Wang says. …