Cloud–Computing Based Accounting for Small to Medium Sized Business

Abstract

Small to medium sized business enterprises are young and constantly changing their sphere of activities depending on fluctuations of the market. The enterprises daily use accounting information, which is used in enterprise’s financial situation evaluation, correct decisions making, enterprise’s financial situation analysis according to the results received, making plans for future and controlling the whole enterprise. Accounting information systems play a significant role in providing the financial information for decision making within an organization. The systems are simultaneously providing information for a variety of other decision makers in production, human resources, finance, management, marketing, and supply chain logistics. Unfortunately, accounting systems often do not support business properly. The causes may be: systems mostly are too large and complex to comprehend them in entirety and traditional information technologies are not efficient. There is a need to adopt the newest technologies in small to medium sized business. In the paper investigated study showed the newest trends in accounting information systems for small to medium sized business. One of the newest trends in the information technologies world is cloud computing based technology. Accounting transfer to "cloud" is a new and innovative solution that can help save significant funds small and medium-sized enterprises. Small to medium businesses can get a lot of advantages with the newest technology. However, it has its own risks too. The paper indicates advantages and dangers of the newest technology within the business. Investigation of accounting systems for small and medium sized enterprises in Lithuania in the cloud-computing context is a part of the research. Lithuanian companies have a great opportunity to use cloud computing capabilities. But only one developer of accounting systems offered the cloud based accounting program. Results of the research summarized only by main accounting software. Investigation was carried out by using systematic and comparable literature review of accounting information systems faced to small to medium sized business. The investigation also shows that there are not so many scientific papers on the newest cloud computing trends in Lithuania. Accordingly, this research was mostly based on literature review sourced from the internet.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.23.1.1220