How Technology Has Changed Accounting

The history of accounting is as aged as civilization and this history also is powerful base to develop the accounting of the next generation.

One of the most fundamental concepts in accounting is double-entry bookkeeping, developed in medieval times and first documented by Luca Pacioli, an Italian friar, in 1494. During the time, the bookkeeping methods are involved in making business financial transactions records and preparation of statements concerning the assets, liabilities, and operating results of a business.

Accounting records were often the only reliable records of such historical transactions. Imagine all the records are done by manual papers, thus this is not easy to translate all data into readable report.

How Technology Has Changed Accounting today?

The more recent history of accounting reached a milestone in the 1980s when new technology improved the speed and ease of transmitting information among different computers and systems.

The introduction of computer technology into accounting systems changed the way data was stored, retrieved and controlled. Today, a global real-time integrated information system is a near reality, suggesting new accounting paradigms. Most large sized companies have invested dozens to hundreds of ancillary systems that feed into their general ledger and consolidation systems.

On the other hand, accounting has been a leader of the Information Revolution. In fact, much like language, many countries have different and unique accounting, banking, and financial systems