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Cloudify, chunktification?
Doug your apology for ruining life for us with PCs is accepted.
I now think an apology re your use of the English language is required.
I must have been somewhere else
So Doug are you saying that if, 10 or 30 years ago, Dr Who had landed and shown you today, you'd have advised everyone not to buy a state of the art PC, or the software that ran on them, but rather stick with pencil & paper for a few more decades cos things were going to get so much better?
I bought my first PC in 83 and have moved on to the next advance in technology as it came along, ending up, today, with almost all 100% Cloud. Thank goodness Dr Who had other more exciting things to do.
The fact that some people hold on to existing technology is not necessarily a problem, it's what works for them and their clients that matters.
Ironically, I now dream of being able to switch off the electricity for a month or three and get one of my fountain pens and lovely paper note pads out of the box in the cupboard and write someone a proper letter.
Adaptation
It seems to me that the only real danger, in any walk of life, is an inability or unwillingness to adapt.
I'm not in practice so I can't comment there but a lot of things do change in life. Some changes you can ignore, some you can't. If a change is significant enough to threaten the way you currently do things (in work, home etc.) then one way or another you'll probably have to adapt to it. I don't think it's ever quite as drastic as some people like to make it out to be though.
But hey, that's just me. An idiot with an opinion.
Get out of it!
Without the PC I think it is quite unlikely that there would be hundreds of 6 foot Russian and Ukranian 20 year olds asking me to marry me. It's been a big step forward.
De-Skilling:
All technology is disruptive; as Vin Cern one of the architects of the internet and ICT stated at the beginning of the explosive growth of the PC revolution.
PCs displaced dedicated WP systems; WP systems displaced typewriters; typewriters displaced biros and fountain pens, which themselves displaced quill pens.
Obviously, using a WP system and now a PC network to create leases, wills, deeds etc has saved lawyers huge amounts of time and thus money: previously, such lengthy documents had to be copy-typed and mistakes meant junking the document and starting again.
Knowledge-Based systems now provide the ability to suggest precedent clauses, rather than the practitioner having to search through endless large tomes.
Filing Tax Returns, which themselves have been prepared by a low-level Knowledge-Based, quasi-"Expert System" (i.e. the process calculates the populated values according to the current tax codes) saves time and money. As does the package by automatically populating client details if an existing client.
Having been deeply involved in ICT since 1980 (and previously cut my teeth on System 360 IBM mainframes), in a fit of despair (Or pique?), I described the actualisation of technology in mid-1980s Britain as "People who don't actually understand what they are selling, selling to people who haven't a clue how to use them properly!"
I do agree with Doug, reference client and indeed, businesses generally, using bookkeeping software when they firstly, haven't bothered to understand what they are doing! Time after time they confuse capital items with revenue items: and enter credit card bills as a debit on their VAT account...
We suffered a ltd co client a couple of years back and the director's son, had been studying AAT at the local shambolic and also proudly stated he had his Sage "sustificate": yet clearly, hadn't a wee clue what the Hell he was doing. Shambolic? Rather understates the case.
Sadly, since the beginning, the big guns such as IBM have been selling software well before it was ready for market: Microsoft followed suit. Snake Oil Salesman Syndrome.
And this is precisely how the UK government and particularly, HMRC and Treasury have been duped: time and again. Government's new vision for HMRC is now frightening!
Makes zero difference whether clients use cloud-based record keeping systems, or dedicated stand-alone desktop solutions.
The old IT acronym still holds: G. I. G. O.
Garbage In: Garbage Out.
What a nonsense headline (sorry OP!)
My memory of the profession when I started in 1989 was : -
1. Casting and cross-casting hand written cash books and final accounts (for those too young to know, it means checking the addition).
2. Calling over accounts (for those too young to know, it means reading out loud the hand written accounts of a partner or manager to another junior, who would check that the typed up accounts agreed).
3. Writing out working papers on 16 column and 8 column analysis pads. Since I was something of a perfectionist, if the analysis got too messy, I would re-write the schedule to consolidate some of the analysis columns.
4. Each manager's room had at least 3 large filing cabinets of paper files. If I had no other work to do, I would be assigned to do the filing.
5. Most correspondence would be by letter, often dictated for a typist to type up. At the end of the day, the letters would be taken to the post room for franking, by a girl who had a huge chip on her shoulder about something (I never found out what).
6. Many of the mangers' rooms would have a stack of shelves, upon which newly arrived carrier bags of accounting records would arrive ... and sit there for 3, 4 or 5 months until a junior or semi-senior got assigned to the job.
7. For the first couple of years (until he left) I never saw the surface of my manager's desk as it was strewn thick with papers and files.
And this was a very technologically advanced firm that prided themselves on their million pound mainframe.
I'm nostalgic about some things, but not the working practices of the profession in the 1980s, which someone from the 1880s might have recognised.
PCs saved my sanity.
spot on Locutus
the younger generations don't know how lucky they are ! the only thing I would add is procedural audits, always seemed nonsense to me
I feel that I too must apologise to the accountancy profession
For using a pocket calculator in 1977 to add up my working papers rather than doing it in my head as the senior partner wished. Other juniors soon followed suit.
I realise now that this seemingly innocuous act has caused an entire generation of accountants to be unable to add up without a mechanical aid.
For this, I humbly apologise.
Ask....
For using a pocket calculator in 1977 to add up my working papers rather than doing it in my head as the senior partner wished. Other juniors soon followed suit.
I realise now that this seemingly innocuous act has caused an entire generation of accountants to be unable to add up without a mechanical aid.
For this, I humbly apologise.
A majority of younger people to work out calculations using the arithmetic discipline of proportion, using a calculator! (e.g. Expressing ratios as percentages).
Unless they understand the core principles, then they can press percent keys until the cows come home....
Let's not forget; in the 1950s office staff (trained young women usually), used comptometers. Next came the the very simple glowing neon tube calculator...
In my growing collection of redundant collectibles of yester year, I have two of the original Texas Instrument calculators: very simple. I also still have my last slide rule.
For using a pocket calculator in 1977 to add up my working papers rather than doing it in my head as the senior partner wished
Being an antique myself, now, when I started training, I kept A-K personal ledgers: great thick Kalamazo loose leaf binders. And it was £ S D and 1/2d and even 1/4D.
Casting at least kept the brain alert.
We even had a very early NCR mechanical bookkeeping machine: resembled a huge uber-wide carriage typewriter. The delightful young women who came to set it up and train staff, carried what turned out to be a critical service tool in her briefcase: a 2 lb hammer! This was used to free the carriage when it stuck right at the end of its travel and the machine sat and made a loud buzzing sound. Whereupon she picked up her hammer, gave the carriage a healthy whack and it seemed fine again. Until the next time..
So nothing much has changed!
Black & Red
Mind you, at a recent meeting with an external supplier, four of us (including the supplier) all had matching Black & Red A4 hardback books to make notes in - so we haven't gone completely techno..
J Griffiths
none of us are surprised , as you appear slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun