ICT and Accounting

Accounting

Before the development of ICT accountants would keep track of all financial records by hand.
They would enter every payment and receipt into a ledger. This was a full time job for many people.

I spoke to my grandad who was an accountant back in the 1950s and he told me, ' when i was working you actually had to be good at maths. Now spreadsheets and calucaltors all do it for you. Really you dont have to understand what you are doing anymore. I studied a math related course at Oxford university. As far as im aware all you need now is basic computer skills and take a college course for 2 years. I studied for 6. It wasnt until later calculators were invented making life easier. Admittedly we did have a machine but it made more mistakes than i did! It was easy to make a mistake, to add up something incorrectly or even to forget to record something.'

Calculators were not invented until the late 70's.

The introduction of calculators helped to speed up the work involved in balancing the books and helped reduce some of the mistakes made.

When financial packages and spreadsheets for personal computers came along around 1978, it transformed the way businesses handled their financial accounts.

With these changes, the role of Accounting Clark largely disappeared. They now had to re-train to use the new electronic spreadsheets.

The skill of mentally adding up numbers quickly and accurately was no longer required as the computer could do this much faster and more reliably



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