Accounting Technology In Accounting

Accounting; From Clay Tablets to the Cloud, How Technology has Changed the Accounting Profession
Every business professional knows that accounting is the language of business. The

language of business has especially been transformed in the last 38 years due to the almost

constant change in technology. Accounting professionals have become the interpreters for the

language of business, a language that all business professionals must understand to be successful

in today’s highly competitive market. Luca Pacioli, the father of accounting, would be astonished

among other things at how the current accounting professional could not operate efficiently and

effectively today without technology. Although the contemporary accounting professional
Evolution of Accounting Technology
Some of the earliest forms of writing were on clay tablets from the Middle East and date back to around 3000 B.C.E. After translation, some of these tablets were found to be records of taxes. Human beings have recorded accounting transactions for the last 5,000 years. Accounting could arguable be the oldest profession for humankind.
Luca Pacioli until the Modern Era
Prior to the 15th century, Italy was still using roman numerals. Solving mathematical problems with roman numerals was problematic to the Venetian merchants of the time. Sometime during the 15th century, Venetian merchants began using Arabic numbers. Arabic numbers made mathematics much easier. (Kestenbaum, 2012)
One of the first books printed on the Gutenburg printing press was Luca Pacioli’s book about double entry accounting in 1494. David Kestenbaum explains Luca Pacioli’s double entry accounting with the following quotation:
Every transaction gets entered twice in financial records. If one day you sold three gold coins ' worth of pepper, you would write that the amount of cash you had went up by three gold coins. You would also write in that the amount of pepper you had went down by three gold coins ' worth. Before double-entry, people just kept diaries and counted their money at the end of the day. This innovation allowed merchants to see every aspect of their business in neat little rows. (Kestenbaum,
According to Professor Clark of APSU, “Accounting has changed more since 1980 than in the previous 4000 years” (Clark, 2016). The prime reason for this exponential growth in the last 35 years or so is the impact the internet has had on all of our lives. As access to the internet grows, more small businesses will be able to grow. The technology, access and speed of the internet will need to continue to match the exponential growth of the technology that uses it. So far, that seems to be the