2021 could go down in accounting history as “The Year of the Remote Firm” as the COVID-19 pandemic drove a widespread shift to remote working. It is also creating a new breed of accountants, whose members share the desire and work arrangements that can best be described as “untethered” from a traditional physical office. For these individuals and the firms they work for, physically dispersed accounting teams using cloud-based software to collaborate and accomplish critical processes is growing to be both a major advantage and a growing trend in the market.
Another key trend driving this shift in the way accountants work, aside from those related to the pandemic, continues to be a desire for more flexibility. As reported in NetSuite’s recently released whitepaper, “9 Developments Shaping the Future of Accounting”, some 81% of accounting firms saying they expect to offer more remote work opportunities after the pandemic to adapt to the changing needs of the available workforce.
In this context, accounting firms will need continued access to collaborative communication tools such as Zoom, as well as functional collaboration tools for e-signature and cloud-based file sharing. Cloud-based accounting software and mobile accounting tools bring obvious advantages, too. For example, month-end close can be completed from anywhere with a computer and an internet connection using these tools. In this new future of accounting, a cloud-based system is especially important to support remote accounting teams, giving them secure access to reliable, real-time data, no matter where they are.
Similarly, mobile accounting tools are growing more important as millennials fill more of these roles, bringing with them an expectation of consumer-grade technology that will only expand with the continued rollout of 5G networks. This generational shift will push accounting to become more mobile and flexible.
Remote work offers many advantages to firms, such as reduced overhead and employee satisfaction, but it also brings critical challenges to accounting teams, which must adapt after decades of handling tasks such as month-end close at the office. Remote work also exacerbates the risk of cyberattacks, with IBM finding that 70% of companies saying that the pandemic-driven move to more remote work will result in increased data breach costs.
Given this, accounting firms must rethink their financial controls so that they’re ready to holistically support a dispersed workforce. Consider applying a risk assessment framework to determine where the biggest risks exist for your firm. Once this is done, you should take steps to actively address any critical areas as well as communicate best practices to staff and any other third-party providers to mitigate them.
Accounting professionals are facing a number of changes that are pushing the profession from its numbers-crunching, sit-at-your-office-desk roots toward a more fluid workforce that brings cybersecurity and resource management trade-offs. In order to address these potential risks, firms must first prepare a cloud-based infrastructure to ensure remote employees can be both productive and protected from cybersecurity threats like ransomware and phishing. These are just two of the key trends emerging on the horizon as the “Year of the Remote Firms” begins to draw to a close and the new breed of untethered accountants create new risk profiles for their firms and, in some cases, their clients as well.
Make sure to register for the upcoming CPE webinar, "9 Developments Shaping Accounting’s Future" on November 18th where we'll go into a deeper dive into this topic. You can register here.