The surprise might not be that small accounting firms do not keep up with technology. The surprise in the results of the first Annual Accounting Firm Operations and Technology Survey is more in just how few of the most widely discussed technologies are not being used in the accounting profession."Contrary to what the messaging has been in the profession 'don't get left behind', it should have been 'be a trailblazer,'" says Leslie Garrett, whose Insight Research Group conducted the survey, along with Randy Johnston of the Network Management Group.
Technology in accounting firms remains split among the haves and have nots and this generally reflects the division of the profession into a large number of very small firms and the rest. Since just under half of all respondents (49.8 percent) were sole practitioners while 73.5 percent have one location. It's probably not surprising that most aren't using tablets or cloud technology in any great numbers. And the dominance of sole practitioners helped produce a high proportion - 66 percent – of decision makers out of the total. One subject shows the split clearly; only 17 percent of solo practitioners had higher technology budgets for this year, while 34 percent of small firms, 41 percent of mid-sized firms, and 42 percent of large firms reported an increase over the previous year
Garrett says she was surprised that more firms are not using document management systems, email delivery of tax returns, Windows 8, portals and those are just part of the 15 findings that she said were surprising.
Despite the wide range of products available in the market, the survey found that firms use very few brands. Microsoft Office, of course, is overwhelmingly the choice for word-processing and spreadsheets. But the use of hardware is also highly concentrated; Dell and HP were used by 61 percent for their primary server. Desktop computers from Dell were the choice of 50 percent while HP had 25 percent in that category. Scanner use is also concentrated with 45 percent owning Canon or Fujitsu units.
Some software categories were also lopsided. Garrett says she and Johnston had previously underestimated how dominant QuickBooks is; QuickBooks Pro from Intuit is used for write up by 69 percent while QuickBooks Pro or QuickBooks Accountant for internal accounting by 62 percent. No other accounting package had more than a 4-percent share for internal accounting (Thomson's Accounting CS/Trial Balance CS), while another 2 percent used Quicken and 1 percent, QuickBooks Online, both Intuit products, so Intuit's total was 65 percent. Moreover, QuickBooks was also the choice for firm payroll with 33 percent and ADP was second with 16 percent.
The accountant's fondness for spreadsheets for a wide variety of tasks showed when 34 percent said Excel was their choice for engagement management/audit software, while tools designed for that job, ProSystem fx Engagement, CaseWare Working Papers, and Thomson's Engagement CS, were each used by 6 percent of the base.
Preferred tax preparation software covered a broader range. CCH ProSystem was the most broadly used tax application with 22 percent of respondents. However, ProSeries and Lacerte, with 11 percent each, equaled that. And also surprising was about 11 percent of professionals are using Intuit's consumer package, TurboTax. Thomson's UltraTax CS also had about an 11-percent share.
The one technology that has somewhat caught on even with smaller firms is the use of web portals. Forty-seven percent of respondents use portals to deliver at least some returns to clients while 52 percent use portals to share documents and files
But mainly, the answers were "no, we don't use this." A majority, 67 percent, do not support tablets. Seventy percent work away from the office less than 25 percent of the time, so they probably do not see a great need for mobile and cloud devices. Only 35 percent reported their websites as a channel for getting new clients. Replacement schedules for servers are not used by 57 percent; most replace hardware when needed. Less than half, 46 percent, use a centralized-only scan strategy, and do not deploy personal scanners.
Web portals are used by 47 percent to distribute returns to clients, but the fact that so many still email returns should prove worrisome. Garrett says despite the low penetration of cloud products, firms should be more worried about the security and reliability of desktop systems as 11 percent suffered major network or application down-time in the last year.
Multiple monitor use is relatively wide spread. Two monitors were in use on the primary desk of 47 percent of the respondents. 50 percent of the respondents reported that 76 to 100 percent of users in their firm work on more than one monitor.
