ROBOTIC ACCOUNTING:

Future of Accounting Industry

There’s no doubt about it - Robotic Accounting is the future of the accounting industry. The technology is already within our reach. Accenture estimates that 80% of the finance and accounting tasks to be automated in the next few years.

With these innovation coming in faster than they can count, some accountants, even those among the best, are afraid for their jobs. The misconception is that robotic process automation in accounting will make their tasks obsolete. While their reaction is not surprising, experts say that automated accounting is something that accountants, bookkeepers, and auditors should all welcome with open arms.

Robotic Accounting or Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a software that mimics the task executions of humans, therefore allowing accounting firms to operate as a virtual workforce. Unlike previous attempts in automation, RPA integrates automation with artificial intelligence, allowing the growth and advancement of the bot, enabling it to be smarter and more capable of mastering the process.

 A large number of audit processes may be a good fit for RPA. The audit processes that would benefit the most from RPA are those that contain defined audit tasks that are repetitive and time consuming and that do not require audit judgment. Public accounting firms may identify an audit process where RPA can add value by considering expert knowledge, such as that of revenue audit leaders, and calculating the actual hours spent performing audit tasks. Furthermore, the most important factor to justify automation is the number of times a firm need to perform a particular function, which is mainly dependent on the number of similar audits being done.

Benefits of RPA

  1. Large numbers of the process can easily have automated.
  2. Cost are reduced significantly as the RPA takes care of repetitive task and saves precious time and resources.
  3. Programming skills are not needed to configure a software robot. Thus, any non-technical staff can set up a bot or even record their steps to automate the process.
  4. Robotic process automation support and allows all regular compliance process, with error-free auditing.
  5. The robotic software can rapidly model and deploy the automation process.
  6. The defects are tracked for each test case story and the sprint.
  7. Effective, seamless Build & Release Management
  8. Real time visibility into bug/defect discovery
  9. There is no human business which means there is no need for time for the requirement of training.
  10. Software robots do not get tired. It increases which helps to increase the scalability.

Disadvantages of RPA:

  1. The bot is limited to the speed of the application
  2. Even small changes made in the automation application will need the robots to be reconfigured.

Myths of RPA:

  1. Coding is required to use RPA software

That's not true. To use Robotics Process Automation tools, one needs to understand how the software works on the front-end and how they can use for automation.

  1. RPA software does not require human supervision

This is an illusion because humans are needed to program the RPA bot, feed them tasks for automation and manage them.

  1. Only large big companies can afford to deploy RPA

Small to medium-sized organizations can deploy RPA to automate their business. However, initial costing will be high but can be recovered in 4-5 years.

  1. RPA is useful only in industries that rely heavily on software

RPA can be used to generate automated bills, invoice, telephone service, etc. which are used across industries irrespective of their software exposure.

Summary:

  • Robotics Process Automation allows organizations to automate task just like a human being was doing them across application and systems.
  • The main goal of Robotics process automation process is to replace repetitive and boring clerical task performed by humans, with a virtual workforce.
  • The average productivity of human is 60% with few errors as compared to Robot's productivity which is 100% without any errors.
  • RPA implementation has 4 phases 1) Planning 2) Development 3) Testing 4) Support & Maintenance
  • RPA is used in wide range of industries like Healthcare, Insurance, Banking, IT etc.

 

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