The Role of an Appropriate Accounting Programme in a Small Company XY

Accounting is an important part of every company, as it collects and processes data to prepare quality information that forms the basis for sound management decisions. It must comply with laws, standards and rules, whilst at the same time being adapted to the needs of the company. The more technology develops, the greater the needs, which is why accounting programmes also enable ever more automation. It has been shown that advanced accounting programmes enable a great deal of automation, imports and exports. This consequently means much less time spent on basic bookkeeping and more time for reviews, analyses and the preparation of various reports.

Problem

Accounting is an important part of every company, as it collects and processes data to prepare quality information that forms the basis for sound management decisions. It must comply with laws, standards and rules, whilst at the same time being adapted to the needs of the company. In recent years, both the view of accounting and the accounting process itself have changed.

Programmes are used for all bookkeeping, the company reports to FURS directly on the eDavki portal, everything is digitalised, almost nothing is done manually any more.

Solution and Method

The more technology develops, the greater the needs, which is why accounting programmes also enable ever more automation. Small companies that manage their own accounting must carefully select an accounting programme, as it can either make their work much easier or fail to ensure that their data is up to date. Since companies are generally already limited by the size of their own accounting department, it is all the more important that they have a suitable accounting programme that enables small-scale and quality accounting.

Advanced accounting programmes are not a luxury for smaller companies, but are essential due to progress and their impact on company operations. For a programme to be classified as an advanced accounting programme, it must be user-friendly and customised. This means it must be adapted to the company's operations and must enable a great deal of automation, exports and imports of data.

It must also be simple to use. Since accounting records accounting events and information, it is very important that the programme allows the user to enter data only once. Any duplication of such entries in various records is pointless and uneconomical.

An advanced programme must enable transfers automatically. It must also enable automatic exports of legally required information. Progress in the field of electronic banking has meant the elimination of duplicate work for many companies.

Good programmes, when posting received invoices, also enable the automatic creation of payment orders in electronic banking. They also enable the automatic export of bank statements to the general ledger and partial posting. All automatic transfers between the general ledger and subsidiary journals, automatic calculations and automatically prepared data for exports to portals and other programmes are factors that distinguish advanced accounting programmes from ordinary ones.

The author of the diploma thesis dealt with analysing more advanced accounting programmes from the perspective of the needs of small companies. The basis was the current accounting programme in company XY, which no longer meets the company's needs. For this purpose, she researched the state of the accounting programme market and the satisfaction of their users.

Results

It has been shown that advanced accounting programmes enable a great deal of automation, imports and exports. This consequently means much less time spent on basic bookkeeping and more time for reviews, analyses and the preparation of various reports. The analysis showed that there are many suitable and capable programmes on the market that are also affordable for smaller companies.

A satisfaction survey of users of comparable accounting programmes showed that the capability of the programme is directly proportional to user satisfaction. Thus, she first divided the programmes into capable and less capable, and then analysed the satisfaction of their users. All users of capable programmes were very satisfied with the programme and its support.

Users of programmes where most entries are still posted manually were not satisfied with either the programme or the technical support. Such results were also expected. The hypotheses she wished to confirm were: H1: For small companies, a capable accounting programme is important and necessary, as it affects the speed and quality of accounting information. ** H2:** If a company uses an appropriate accounting programme, this can mean the elimination of data and work duplication for them. ** H3:** An optimal programme enables accounting to be carried out entirely by one person.

This is essential for small companies, as they cannot afford a large accounting department. All the stated hypotheses were confirmed in the diploma thesis, as it turned out that good accounting programmes ensure fast and quality accounting information, eliminate work duplication, and through automation enable small companies to have their accounting carried out entirely by one person. Small companies that have internal accounting and do not have an appropriate accounting programme still post most entries manually.

This consequently leads to them having a huge amount of work and not having up-to-date accounting information. Since companies cannot afford such a situation in the long term, they have two options: either increase the capacity of accounting with an additional employee or acquire a better accounting programme. The third option – external accounting – is usually not of interest to such companies, as they have already decided on internal accounting at the outset despite higher costs.

External accounting is not of interest to them either because of the allocation of services and information, or because of distrust in their knowledge, or because they want to have control over accounting. In company XY, with the increase in the scope of services and better operations, the scope of accounting has also increased. If the company were to continue using the same accounting programme, which does not enable optimal accounting, it would no longer be able to obtain up-to-date and quality information for decision-making.

The company will therefore have to change something in the near future. Given the size of the company, employing an additional person in accounting would not be economical, and given the opinion of management and company policy, external accounting is not desired. This leaves a new and improved accounting programme.

The survey and analysis showed that there are several capable accounting programmes on the market that would enable the company to have the accounting it desires. It would make sense for the company to switch to a better accounting programme as soon as possible, one that enables more automation, exports and imports. Optimisation of accounting would be represented by switching to another programme that would enable the company to also import bank statements and post them automatically, copy permanent monthly received invoices, copy templates, automatically calculate VAT and have an integrated electronic book of received invoices.

The analysis also showed that such an accounting programme is financially accessible to the company. The change would therefore not financially burden the company additionally, but the burden would be represented by additional work when establishing the new system.