I disagree that that accountants should “Stay in their lane” when it comes to designing and
producing managerial and other reports. These reports, when they are used, are used in a wide
variety of departments in businesses. I can’t think of a managerial report that would only be
used by one department in a company. When it comes to the design of these reports,
accountants should have a say in how they are produced and how they are managed and ran.
This should not just be limited to accountants, Anyone who is anticipating on using managerial
reports in a business should be involved in the design of these reports. the information coming
from these reports are used by accountants to produce the financial reports. there needs to be
accountant involvement in order for them to be able to accurately use the information to
produce more reports
a Allowing Accountants to be involved in the design phase would stream line the
report process. With ERP reporting systems, time and human error decrease. ERP systems allow
for access to reports and information from all over the company, that before would have taken
time and more effort to retrieve. “Data Input is captured once, rather than multiple times, as it
is entered into different systems, downloading data from one system to another is no longer
needed” ( Romney, Steinbart, Summers, & Wood, 2020). With the use of ERP systems, there is
now a need for information to only be entered once, reducing the human error. When there
were multiple systems and multiple times information was entered and downloaded and
entered again, it leaves room for error, and allowing for different reports to be off from one
another. These types of systems are great for businesses, and when implemented and designed
properly they can save a lot of time and money. These reports don’t work without accountants
being involved in the design process. With accountants being the ones using these reports and
processing the data they need to be able to accurately and time produce information, and this
only works when they system works for them.
a There are some cons for accountants being too involved. If only accountants are the
ones running the non-financial reports it raises multiple issues, some being it is out of their
scope of expertise, there would be no separation of duties, allows for less oversite. During the
implementation process, there needs to be discussion with accountants and other people in the
businesses. Accountants need to access the data from the managerial reports but others do as
well. Accountants being the ones accessing and producing these reports might put them in a
position where it is outside of their expertise, and the reports are not being used for their full
potential. When a new system is being implemented, there needs to be a discussion about how
involved accountants can be in the other non-financial reports. As well as safe guards being put
into place by accountants and System specialist. If accountants are too involved, or if there are
not any other specialist involved, it opens the door for fraud or for errors not to be found.
There is need for accountants to focused on the design of these reports but also a need for the
System specialist to still be producing and overseeing the reports.
Romney, Marshall, B. et al. Accounting Information Systems. Available
from: MBS Direct, (15th Edition). Pearson Education (US), 2020.
