One of the industries that has seen the most growth is the accounting industry. Some of these trends were already morphing before the pandemic hit. From 2019 to now, the pandemic has simply been the catalyst that has sped up these disruptions.

With new government initiatives and regulations, 2021 was the year for addressing unprecedented accounting challenges. The accounting software evolution has shifted to digital a lot more rapidly due to its ubiquitous position across all businesses, and was absolutely necessary due to remote work.

With those changes here to stay, 2022 has become the time for accounting industries to capitalise on these digital opportunities, with an emerging focus on strategic long-term planning to ensure businesses can thrive in this new climate.

The Latest Accounting Figures in 2022

• $416.23 million is the estimated value of the US accounting software market by 2024. (Source: Capital Counselor)
• The most popular accounting software on the market currently are (Source: The Balance Small Business)
  • FreshBooks
  • Xero
  • AccountEdgePro
  • Sage Business Cloud Accounting
  • Wave Accounting
  • Zoho Books
• 94% of accountants have adopted cloud accounting at this current day. (Source: Capital Counselor)
• Accounting statistics suggest that companies with cloud-based accounting are able to generate 15% more revenue, compared to only 4% growth for accounting firms that are not cloud-based. (Source: Xero) This has become essential in line with the trend of remote working as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Cloud-based software allows teams that are physically dispersed to collaborate and accomplish critical financial processes, such as month-end close from anywhere with a computer and an internet connection. And it seems these changes are here to stay.

These are the top services undertaken by accounting firms (Source: Finance Online)

• 79% is Accounting / Bookkeeping
• 25% is Payroll
• 24% is Tax
• 20% is Compliance
• 17% is Advisory
• 15% is Assurance / Audit
• 5% is Outsourced CFO
• Research on cloud accounting software reveals that almost all accountants are adopting cloud solutions. The public cloud accounting adoption rate is 91%, while the private one is 72%. (Source: Go Remotely)
• Businesses that use cloud accounting systems have 5x more customers than businesses that don’t. Cloud accounting statistics show that businesses that utilize cloud accounting systems add five times the amount of customers to their customer base that traditional firms do. (Source: Xero) Not double, not triple the number of customers—but five times the number. The increasing digitalization and automation of many services is not only cost-reducing but also brings in new customers. (Source: Go Remotely)

The Key Takeaway

Current accounting trends highlight one key thing, digital disruption has been as impactful in the accounting sector as it has been everywhere else. Although 2021 was arguably the most transformative year for industry growth due to the sudden implementation of remote work across the board, 2022 has been the year for refining and streamlining processes to allow continued profitability and scalability with these new changes.

It is clear that those accounting industries who’ve embraced shifts to more cloud-based softwares and technologies are leading the way and reaping the benefits. Industries are relying on the accounting industry to help them save costs through automation and streamlining the old-school time-consuming everyday processes to compensate for initial damages and havoc incurred by the pandemic.

With data analytics and reliable cloud softwares in place, the accounting industry is in a very good position to further streamline their own operational efficiencies and feed those benefits through to their clients.