No more manual entry of sales and expenses into journals and T-accounts. Those tasks will be automated, and such basic-level accountant roles will be obsolete. Even with all recent advances in technology the data entry-level is bookkeeping a dying profession accounting and bookkeeping clerks still are not obsolete. Despite all the conversations, knowledgeable, experienced accountants with heads on their shoulders should not become obsolete in the coming years.

• I suspect the CPA exam requirement will be more mandatory for accountants in the future.
• We see that CPA firms reduced their hiring of accounting graduates, reducing job opportunities for new inexperienced accountants.
• The point is that hiring clerical staff for many mundane accounting tasks will decline.
• If strategic financial planning is what you’re after, an accountant might be the better choice.
• Think about thousands upon thousands of pages of tax code which is changing often.
• Things are gonna have to change in order to appeal to a group of Gen-Z learners that want to work differently.

There are plenty of things one can do to not only compete with (and compliment) what your ‘competition’ does, but to also compete with automation. After the Great Recession of 2008, jobs for mortgage brokers have just never been able to really recover. Sure, you make an average of about $55,000 (according to AmoMedia), but the job outlook is bleak. The expected decline for this job is 15.9% over the next decade, so it might be wise to look elsewhere. This is a fairly niche job that just requires on-the-job experience and will make you about $29,929 a year, according to Kiplinger. Kiplinger notes that flooring finisher positions were cut by 51% over the past decade, and it’s projected to shrink another 5.5% over the next decade.

Is accounting a dying field? No, it’s not, and here’s why

Sales of all those digital products by many smaller software companies is a business sector requiring accounting and accountants. Big companies pushed many retail family businesses out of existence. Those millions of businesses used to employ hundreds of thousands of accountants. So, the accounting profession declined along with a decline of the small business sector. If you are good at math, then you should understand that even average growth for accounting which employs 1.2+ million people is solid growth.

Big data is also changing the way businesses make decisions. With access to large amounts of data, companies can now make better-informed decisions about their finances. And accountants play a crucial role in helping businesses make sense of all this data.

Why Bookkeeping Isn’t Dying, It’s Evolving

Employment of bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks is projected to decline 5 percent from 2021 to 2031. Do it – they’ll love that you understand them, and can offer them the advice and services THEY need. Find something that you enjoy, that you do well, and that your clients appreciate. Hate the hell of “busy time?” Move into more consultation work. Lots of people in your area need this help, if you enjoy it, do it.

• No more manual entry of sales and expenses into journals and T-accounts.
• Machines can do some of the work, but they cannot prepare financial statements independently.
• You can read industry-specific news sources, attend accounting conferences, and participate in online discussions.
• They lead to the fact that many young people reject accounting as a professional choice.
• I want to study it, but I’ve been talking to people and alot of people are saying it’s about to become too automated and I fear it’s no longer a safe path for me to choose.

Specialists talk about the necessity of distinguishing between accounting and basic data entry for accounting and bookkeeping. Many bookkeeping professionals are essentially just data entry clerks, entering numbers on a computer. The major concern of many accounting students and accounting professionals is whether accounting is becoming obsolete.

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Almost every sector of agricultural, product, and service industries is going to change in the next 20 years. Even university education, where I work (which in many ways hasn’t substantially changed its methods in 500 years) is likely to see significant disruption in the next decade or two. Identifying your true capacities might seem an obvious task, but many find it difficult. The safest path involves making a serious evaluation of your skills. Many people are good at describing the specific tasks they do and their experience with particular processes and skills. That is why people list their job titles, describe a project they were on, and then list apps or certifications on their resumes.

This is what they mean when they say that accounting is dead – mundane simple tasks that can easily be automated. We see a growth of Big Data, data mining, and data analytics, performed by AI and computers. The financial industry heavily embraced these new human-replacement data technologies. Technologies help to save costs, streamline processes and improve operating efficiencies.

How to prepare your accounting firm for the next storm

Audits will still require human review by an accountant or CPA. Risk mitigation accounting is not dead, is not declining, and will not become obsolete in the coming years. Many successful YouTubers, influencers, bloggers, or even tik toc(ers) need to file their taxes too. And if they start making good money they hire bookkeepers, accountants, or CPAs. This is a new type of business that did not exist 30 years ago.

Using excel kind of tool for this purpose will not be very helpful. The tool essentially would calculated all need accruals for a period being closed. And the only other aspect left is doing adjustments or corrections.