There is a great deal of apprehension of how some of the emerging technologies will impact the accounting profession. The very notion of the blockchain and distributed ledgers would seem on the surface to be aimed directly at the accounting profession. It will no doubt have a huge impact going forward but this is not the first time that accountants have had to adapt to changing technology. Tax prep software did not eliminate tax accounting and the advent of the blockchain will not eliminate auditing and neither does online banking eliminate the need for debt counseling or financial advice, but like all technological it will change how work is done. This was true for the adding machine and personal computer and it will also be true for the blockchain.
According to a recent study 57% of global corporations are planning to implement some form of blockchain into their business. It is coming and the accounting profession has so far been very slow to adapt to this change. Which is not only the accounting professions fault, they have been waiting for guidance from other authorities that can’t even decide if Bitcoin is a currency or a commodity. So if even these fundamentals have yet to reach a consensus it is difficult to expect that the accounting profession would have developed accounting rules for their treatment, but your clients are going to want answers nonetheless. It should not stop you from preparing yourself by learning more about this technology and how it is likely to affect your clients and in turn your practice.
While how to treat cryptocurrencies seems to attract a lot of attention it is the distributed ledger portion of the blockchain that will have an even greater impact on accounting. It holds the promise of being able to automate many processes within the business and because it uses internal smart contracts can be relied to carry out complex tasks without any human intervention it will be widely implemented across industry. Because it is distributed it is impervious to interruption and because it is self validating it can be trusted, it has all the makings of becoming the accountants new best friend except for the fact that none of the accounting software firms seem to have a way to seamlessly integrate it into legacy accounting software.
As with other technological changes that accounting has faced over the decades the best way to deal with it is increased training for accountants in the technology itself. While we may have seen amortization tables replaced by the online personal loan calculator, it did not eliminate the need for trained accountants. Just like your predecessors had to learn to give up the paper ledger for an electronic spreadsheet you are going to have to learn how to work with distributed ledgers. One area that should be of particular note is that as smart contracts become ubiquitous there will be increasing demand for accountants that can actually read the smart contracts and understand what they will do under particular business conditions. Probably as good a place as any for your education to start while you wait for the rest of the profession to catch up.