Although some individuals may argue that accountants should
focus on producing financial statements and leave the design and
production of the managerial reports to the information systems
specialists, I would disagree. Accountants play a vital role in developing
and evaluating the standards of control and security of the accounting
system, through their close relationship with the designers of the
system. This ensures the standards of the control and security are
appropriate and sufficient. Accountants can provide financial insight on
how the organization is doing, which can empower the decision-makers
to find the right course of action to increase operating efficiencies and
make pertinent decisions to remain competitive. Accountants can help
implement managerial reports to track a department key performance,
which can help guide managers to make accurate, data-driven decisions.
There is no advantage of an accountant only focusing on financial
information. Not having the accountant involved would be a
disadvantage to the company and the accounting staff. The accountant
is there to help draft reports on the cost of production, expenditures
for the workforce, and the cost of various projects and schemes.
Therefore, without these key data which is provided by accountants
the decision-makers will not be able to utilize these reports to measure
differences, or variance between the expected and actual results, or the
ability to compare performance to other benchmarks. One major
disadvantage of leaving the accountants out of the managerial
reporting process would entail the failure in the utilization of a strong
asset in the ability of accounts to use the accounting function to guide
the company’s success.
Accountants should be involved in the production of reports that
include more than just the financial measures of performance because
they have the training on how to design a system to provide the
maximum reliability of the data produced. If the accounting information
system does not produce the relevant information, there is potential
risk of having unreliable information because the individuals in the
production process is not trained in or has the adequate knowledge of
the threats to the reliability and the best measures to deal with any
possible threats.
Reference:
Romney, M. B., Steinbart, P. J., Summers, S. L., & Wood, D. A. (2020).
Accounting Information Systems (15th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.
