What Is the Advantage of an Accounting Information System?
The main advantages of an accounting information system are the increased speed of processing the numbers, efficient organization, and classification and safety of inputted data. This contrasts the manual evaluation of information, which involves writing out the data by hand and doing time consuming calculations.
The Houston Chronicle claims the main benefit of accounting information systems is the speed of processing tasks. Data is entered once and can be used over and over again. Accountants are responsible for classifying information in an organized fashion and an accounting information system makes this job easier. For example, re-classifying sales to interest revenue can be accomplished with a simple selection from a drop-down menu. Reports can then be generated using the new data.
Another important responsibility of accountants is data protection. In manual accounting, if the paper journal used to record the numbers is damaged or lost, the accountant has to start all over again. The Houston Chronicle also points out that losing sensitive information is a big problem as confidentiality policies may be compromised. A computerized accounting information system offers an advantage since the data is entered and saved in the software. Furthermore, the data can be uploaded to the Internet where a backup copy can be stored.
