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
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.
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.
