I began my career as an accountant almost 40 years ago, and since then many technological advances have been brought to bear on various aspects of the financial reporting process including the use of accounting software packages and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, computer auditing and electronic audit work papers, the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Accounting Standards Codification, software tools for analyzing financial information and, more recently, various cloud computing applications.
Despite these advances, I question whether technology has had the kind of transformative effects on accounting and financial reporting that it has had on other aspects of business and life. In communication, for example, consider how the Internet and social media, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and the ever-increasing array of apps have revolutionized the dissemination, accessibility, understandability and usability of information. In some ways it seems a bit surprising that financial reporting would lag behind in harnessing the power of technology, since at its core financial reporting is about communicating financial information from companies to investors and other stakeholders.
