Question

Conduct research into the use of spreadsheet applications in reconciling and monitoring financial accounts. Discuss your findings

Answer 1

Now a days use of spreadsheet in reconciling and monitoring financial account has been inceasing because it generates various types of benefits for a firm. That is why we can say that most of the firms & companies are using spreadsheet in reconciling and monitoring financial accounts.

Use of spreadsheet will result into following benefits;

1. Centralized visibility & control;

Use of spreadsheet will help in centralized visibility because human based controlling and monitoring system can not give cenralized visibility but spreadsheet helps in maintaining cenralized visibility of financial statements. Appart from this controlling of financial statements also become more controlled because all desired financial information are kept in desired way.

2. Proper monitoring;

With the help of spreadsheet, proper monitoring of financial statements can be done for the organization because when an organization have timely updated financial information in centralized form then proper minitoring of financial statements can be done.

3. Improvement in efficiency;

As we know that human based reporting system leads to some inefficiencies thus use of spreadsheet will result into some efficiency in the financial reporting.

4. Improvement in productivity;

With the help of spreadsheet productivity will be higher in compare to human based financial reporting.

5. Reduction in operational costs;

Spreadsheet requires low amount of operational costs because this system based financial reporting requires less numbers of employees hence operational costs will be reduced.

6. Less expense on auditing;

As we know that human can do error but IT technology does not do such minor errors. Hence we can say that when we use spreadsheet then less expenditures on auditing will be required.

7. Minimization of risks;

Spreadsheet will also help in minimization of risks because it helps in maintaining centralized financial information hence all types of risks can be minimized.

But we also know that use of spreadsheet also has some major limitations;

1. Technological failures is a major challenge in case we use spreadsheet for financial reporting system because whenever there will be a technological failure then all important information will be lost.

2. Security is another big challenge. As we have seen in the past that due to some risks there may be a big challenge for the security of important financial data.

3. Human can not be completely replaced by the modern technology.

4. If any person want to manipulate important data of the organization then he or she can easily manipulate whole data in very short period of time etc.