Accounting Software/ Packages Usd In Australia

Question: Describe about the Accounting Software/ Packages Usd In Australia. Answer: Most of the small, medium and large businesses in recent times use accounting software to handle their business, but it was not the same two to three decades back. After the end of crusades, world saw a rise in the level of trade between Europe and Middle East, which led to growth of business to such an extent that it was no longer handled by a single person, so there a need of such a software arises which could handle information of their expenses, income and stock level in effective way (Chua, 2012). Earlier this software was more prevalent in European market but it also is widely used in Australian market now. Major new technological firm entered into this market and spend a huge amount on the RD to make their product more competent for small, medium and large businesses. Realizing the effectiveness of this software and the utility of automating the whole process of accounting, both small and large firms started relying on this software and in recent times every small and large company uses this software to manage their accounting system (Do, 2014). Accounting software market in Australia According the the primary research done by various research agencies, Australian accounting software have a potential market of around 120 billion Australian dollars but since almost fifty percent of the owners do not use any accounting software to handle their accounts, the estimated market size of the Australian accounting software/ packages is around 60 billion Australian dollars. And this market is highly speculated to grow at a very good pace because of various reason that suits it like Australia's fast growing digital economy, people moving towards cloud services, offshoring and outsourcing of the services to the expertise. Currently the digital economy contributes almost 79 billion dollars which marks up to 5.1 % of the GDP of Australia and it is expected to grow and reach up to 139 billion dollars which is 7.3 % of the GDP at the end of 2020. Moreover many small and large business are moving to adopt cloud services to automate their processes, AAT (Association of Accounting T echnology) is encouraging each and every business to adapt the technology to give them an edge, to streamline their processes and to provide them a competency. Many small and large businesses are outsourcing the foreign agencies who have an expertise in this domain and realising this many local players are themselves developing an expertise in this domain. The main players in this domain in Australia are Intuit, MYOB and Xero. These three players have a huge dominance in this market and encourage every business to adopt their software package and get rid of the traditional way of bookkeeping. Xero has evolved from New-Zealand, and has invested hugely on developing its software. It invested almost $250 million on developing the software and till the date Xero has almost 4 lacs of running customers in almost 180 countries and processing $240 billion in transaction and 95 million invoices. Xero is a huge competitor and is market leader in Australian market having almost 65% market share. Xero is constantly investing huge amount on streamlining their software so that they can maintain their core- competency. Intuit is an US giant, market leader in the US market in accounting domain. Intuit entered the Australian market and has been able to make its name. Intuit has almost 20% markets share and is capitalising on the key success factors and is constantly growing. In recent times Intuit has shown its intentions to grow by increasing its manpower to 60 in the country and acquiring two local information extraction companies. In recent times, MYOB is one of the largest accounting software provider in Australia, and has almost 1,16,000 cloud subscribers (Boulianne, 2014). MYOB has also in recent time tried their best and are investing a lot in acquiring the external companies and on internal development too. In 2015 MYOB was listed on top 50 most innovative company in the world because of its innovative practices. In recent time MYOB board approved investment of $40 million in developing cloud technology and an investment of $100 million over the three years in developing automated data entry system in bills and invoicing, mobile applications and payment methods. Gaps faced by customers Some of the gaps faced by the customers of the accounting software are compatibility, flexibility, internal control and reporting capability. If the software is not compatible with the organisation then there is a huge scope for failure (van Dijk, 2014). Timely providing the accurate information plays a very critical role in correct and strategic decision making. But compatibility is one of the main issues faced by the users of accounting software. Thus timely provision of correct and update information should be objective of any information technology software. Flexibility is another bottleneck in the appropriate functioning of the accounting software, which is leading to major customer dissatisfaction. Flexibility in the functionalities of the software is very important. Flexibility is an ability of software to deviate a bit from the predetermined way to increase the customer ease. It is way more important when it comes to accounting software and such be according the customer's will and according to the business requirements. Internal controls are the important controls and instructions adopted by the business person or any stakeholder to protect assets, provide accurate and current information, to enhance the productivity of each and every operation of the supply chain (Akkeren,2013). Internal control totally depends on the accuracy level of the information passed on to the decision maker by the information technology and so the accuracy and the quality of the data generated by the accounting software is of utmost important in this situation but sometimes it is a gap in the expected and desired results (Marand, 2013). Recommendations Analyzing that these are some of the general gaps of accounting software, so the content focus should be how to enhance the quality of the software for the user. The software should include some of the general features, ease of use (Pan, 2012). A beta version of the software should be first implemented on the site of large customer to know all the ins and outs of the business requirement and then a customized solution should be presented so that the software is able to fulfill every expectation of the user. The software should be made a bit general and should have some flexibility in adapting the business of the final users. Moreover the accounting standards are not the same everywhere in the earth, so these big companies should follow adaptation strategy and should standardize some of the processes but some processes should also be localised depending on the businesses environment present there. References Akkeren, J.V., Buckby, S. and MacKenzie, K., 2013. A metamorphosis of the traditional accountant: An insight into forensic accounting services in Australia.Pacific Accounting Review,25(2), pp.188-216. Boulianne, E., 2014. 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