Some individuals argue that accountants should focus on producing financial statements and leave the design and production of managerial reports to information systems specialists. What are the advantages and disadvantages of following this advice? To what extent should accountants be involved in producing reports that include more than just financial measures of performance? Why?

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Some individuals argue that accountants should focus their efforts on producing financial statements and leave the design and production of managerial reports to information systems specialists. I somewhat agree with this statement, but dont wholeheartedly believe it should be an accountants only focus for a few reasons. I do believe that information systems specialists may have more knowledge in terms of utilizing graphics and incorporating visual aids into the reports, but I dont feel that they have accounting industry knowledge to properly assemble such reports. There are no specific advantages to accountants focusing solely on financial information and leaving design mechanisms to others; however, if IT specialists were involved in the creation of financial reports, it would encourage usage of formats that are understandable and easy to use while containing all relevant financial information. The integration of management tools such as an enterprise resource plan reflects increased regulation and the need to reduce costs of compliance, while improving coordination and working towards avoiding task repetition (AICPA, nd). In addition, although much of the traditional world of compliance is qualitative, it is progressively being implemented by automated systems yet IT specialists do not know accounting jargon. A downfall to this segregation idea would be having to use two separate systems as accountants must maintain financial information and documentation for auditing purposes, but would then need to relay that information to the IT specialists to produce a clear and appealing report.

IT specialists would be more apt to use laymans terms combined in a structure that is more comprehendible for an average consumer, but may not include all necessary information for a financial statement user such as an investor. Another disadvantage of this idea would be that accountants understand exactly what material should be included and how it should flow in a financial report, but an IT specialist may jumble information and transactional data into random sections or confusing manners. I believe accountants should be fully involved in producing reports that include more than just financial measures of performance to the extent where their input remains relevant to improving compliance and processes. Accountants should be trained in how to design systems to maximize reliability and should be significantly involved in helping isolate important information by providing business intelligence, internal data and problem solving details to key decisions makers. If relevant information is not produced, the reports may be considered unreliable due to improper training and/or lack of proper knowledge. Allowing accountants to create managerial reports would provide meaningful information in a logical approach to decision makers because accountants are already familiar with business functionalities due to maintaining general ledgers and are in a good position to provide insight regarding areas of opportunity for process improvement (Gartenstein, 2019). This helps managers decide whether ideas should be maintained going forward or if they should be abandoned.

Required:

Agree with the above post by building upon their points or challenge their opinion and provide reasoning for the disagreement.