RPA is the tool I use for automating AP invoice entry to reduce manual keying of data.

Accounting firms are using up-and-coming technologies with the potential to change the business landscape forever. One technology gaining interest is robotic process automation (RPA), a tool that computerizes mundane, repetitive tasks and completes them far faster than humans could do manually.

Greg Fritsky, practice director – intelligent automation solutions at EisnerAmper LLP, spends much of his time evaluating clients’ processes and introducing them to emerging technologies, including RPA, which is already used extensively by his firm. In one case, he said, RPA automated a client’s process that previously took 160 human hours a month to achieve but now takes minutes to complete.

Other large public accounting firms have also adopted RPA. Deloitte and PwC, for instance, use RPA software internally and within clients’ organizations.

RPA “is something people should be learning and teaching,” said Fritsky, who is based in New Jersey. “Accounting is changing and it is changing fast, and this is a tool worth more than a conversation.”

Accounting faculty have taken notice, and many now believe that students should learn RPA, or at the very least, be familiar with what the technology can do. Students adept at RPA get “special opportunities to work in special groups” within accounting firms, particularly the Big Four, said David Wood, Ph.D., an accounting professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. “Firms want technical skills, and RPA right now is one that is in particular demand.”

BYU’s School of Accountancy advisory board, made up of representatives from large public accounting firms, “encouraged us to put RPA into the curriculum,” he added. Read On: