Digital Chartered Accountant - Need of the Hour?

Chartered Accountants play a major role in the Indian Economy by ensuring transparent, fair trade and business practices, helping organizations and companies run smoothly, and utilize their financial expertise for the betterment of the nation with various economic and financial measures.

In addition Chartered Accountants also play a key role in the field of Auditing, Accountancy, Taxation, Cost Accountancy, GST Compliance, Share Valuation, Investigation etc. With many Digital tools available a Chartered Accountant can efficiently and accurately discharge various tasks.

Auditing

It is time to digitise the way of audit through automation and innovation. There are exciting new technologies to help capture data, automate procedures, analyze information and focus on the real risks. There is also a great ecosystem of auditing tool vendors that make technology available and accessible to all. The opportunity is in understanding how technology can help and then applying it to auditing challenges.

Investment in technology across the profession has largely been focused on developing and using tools to automate and enhance existing processes, such as data analytics and collaboration and sharing tools, which help to drive quality in audits today. With many advanced technologies available, it may also enable in evolving the scope of the audit.

Taxation

The drastic changes in digital tax compliance and digital governance has led to an evolving role for the stakeholders involved, such as businesses, the government and tax consultants.The introduction of e-assessment, e-compliance, business-to-consumer (B2C) QR code requirements, GST annual returns, GST departmental audits are all the various facets of digital technology in taxation.

On the business front, enterprises would have to realise that they need to be on their toes to match up with the speed of the technological revolution. Some key areas that would need immediate attention are:

• Upskilling tax teams in key technology areas;
• Exercising control over data management;
• Setting up processes that tie tax with technology; and
• Comparative analysis between building in-house tax technology teams, or outsourcing it to experts.

Accountancy and Analysis of Historical Data

With Cloud Accounting Software, the Accountants can now prepare financial reports and provide financial forecasts more accurately and in a short span of time as collecting the required data is less tedious and less time consuming. With digitalisation, the accountants can make the entire accounting process free of errors.

It also enables them to access and analyse historical financial data to make important business decisions like business expansion, investment planning etc.

With so many developments in the field of technology, a Digital Chartered Accountant is the need of the hour. This also requires CA Firms to develop the right set of tools to implement Digital Technology and also train their employees in this journey. While implementing any technology it is important to keep in mind the requirement of the Firm or Company.