第1个回答 2014-02-20
ManualAccounting Versus Computerized Accounting
Proceedings of InternationalConference on Accounting Education Reform and Development Conference —James
As many professional accountants andauditors state - accounting is a language of business which is accepted in alldeveloped and developing countries. Every company applies accounting because itis generally accepted that companies have to reveal certain financial andmanagement information to the government and public users and of course becauseaccounting is indispensable tool in business decision-making process. With thedevelopment of information technologies there were developed many computerproducts (software) that make accounting as easy as ABC for those who usesthem. From this point accounting can be divided into two basic categories:thosewhich apply manual accounting and those which prefer computerized accountingsystems. This paper is targets the main features of manual and computerizedaccounting, their benefits and shortcomings, and their comparison.
From the accounting theory it is knownthat accounting cycle includes the following steps: journalizing thetransactions, posting them to ledger accounts, preparing trial balance, makingadjustment entries, preparing adjusted to end-of-period trial balance ,preparing financial statements and appropriate disclosures, journalizing andposting the closing entries, and preparing after-closing trial balance at last.From the first look it is not very difficult and it is so indeed, but whenthere are thousands or millions of transactions the situation dramaticallychanges. Lots of transactions that must be processed in the accounting cyclemake this process routine and even a little mistake or inaccuracy can cause allthe cycle from the very beginning in order to find and correct the mistake. Soas to shed some light on the matter lets examine accounting cycle morethoroughly. Every transaction (event that change the financial resources orobligations of the company) must be recognized, classified and documented; inaddition there must be corresponding accounts identified and changed. Thetransactions are recorded in appropriate journals (general journal, salesjournal etc) with transaction data, affected accounts? titles, debit and creditof each affected account and explanation specified in the journal record. Theabove procedure is used for each transaction. All the journal records must beposted to the ledger on a periodic basis (daily or weekly), which is a group ofaccounts put together and classified (assets, liabilities, revenue, expensesand equity) ? in other words general ledger summarizes all the transactionswithin a period of time. In addition there is a subsidiary ledger can be used,which is a more detailed source, where individual items comprised (inventory,accounts payable and accounts receivable). General ledger contains controllingaccounts which summarize the content of subsidiary ledger. At the end ofaccounting period with the help of general ledger there is a trial balancecalculated to make sure that debit and credit are in balance (if they are notequal it means that there is an error somewhere). Then there must beappropriate adjustments made like depreciation and income tax expenses,adjusted records posted to the ledger and adjusted trial balance calculated.After this there are financial statements should be prepared, which includebalance sheet, income statement, statement of retained earnings and statementof cash flows. Then journal entries of temporary accounts are closed topermanent accounts and posted to the ledger, and at last after-closing trialbalance can prepared.
In order to stay on top companies have toanalyze the performance of all organizational cells (starting from unskilledworkers and operating personnel, and finishing with top managers and other keypersonnel) and discover all the deviations from the plan, their causes, andfinally companies? management has to take corresponding measures to avoid suchdeviations in the future. These procedures are called internal controls andinclude the following five elements: control environment, risk assessment,monitoring, information and communication, which are assessed separately andput together a single rate of organization's performance. Control environmentmeans the way of organization's internal control? which manager controls theemployees, how and whom does that manager reports next about the planperformance etc. Risk assessment implies measures to determine all thepotential risks in advance, their causes, probabilities and counter-measures toavoid and manage them; how can those risks influence company's performance andfinancial state; how to minimize the costs of facing financial risks etc.Monitoring implies quality control of company's operations and personnel.Information and communication element means the control over communication flowand the quality of information flow within the organization in order tominimize the time of communication and information losses. Internal controlprocedures allow to keep companies? assets from dissipation and controlproductivity and usefulness of all departments.
Let's return to the main issue of thepaper. Manual accounting implies that employees perform the whole accountingcycle manually on a periodic basis: they calculate trial balances, journalizetransactions, prepare financial statement reports and other routines. Of courseit takes much time, resources and effort in large organizations. Computerizedaccounting implies that the only thing that employees do is recordingtransactions into the computer which processes the other steps of accountingcycle automatically or by a request. But this is a very simplified view on thecomputerized accounting because transaction is a complex category whichincludes not only sales or acquisitions, but depreciation, premiums and wagescalculation, dividends etc. So computers provide accurate calculations andsmart reports but it takes much time, resources and effort too and it ' sdifficult to assess which accounting type is more fast and economic. If manualaccounting requires qualified accountants to keep a record of businesstransactions, computerized requires accountants which can use specific softwareand thus they cost more. Computer software calculates faster but it does notknow what you need until you can clearly explain what exactly you need. Inaddition good computerized accounting system can cost thousands and evenmillions dollars, depending on the complexity and the size of organization.Computerized accounting provides better internal control report system for anygiven period of time (computer can control thousands indicators simultaneouslyand create notifications to the appropriate departments or workers if someindicators do not correspond to the normal state), while manual control takesmore time.
Among the advantages of manual accounting there are: comparatively cheapworkforce and resources, reliability, independence from machines, skilledworkers availability; the disadvantages include: reduced speed, increasedeffort of accountants, relatively slower internal control reporting, routinework and some others.Among the main advantages of computerized accounting thereare: high speed and mobility of reporting, reliability, no routine work,increased accuracy, internal control system of increased productivity, easyback up and restoration of records; the disadvantages include: extremely highcosts on developing, introducing and using the system, special trainings forpersonnel, increased personnel costs, dependence on machines etc.Obviously bothcomputerized and manual accounting have advantages and disadvantages but theyperform the same task, and the final result is the same. The main differencesbetween them are the costs ,speed and mobility. Thus small and medium businesses usually prefer manualaccounting without detriment to quality while large corporations apply complexaccounting systems which cost millions dollars but the effect from theirapplication exceeds all the expectations.
还有中文翻译，2100左右，是经济学家詹姆斯撰写的
手工会计与电算化会计
会计教育改革与发展—第四届会计与财务问题国际研讨会论文集