4. Accounting

Before the development of ICT, accountants would keep track of all financial records by hand.

They would enter every payment and receipt into a ledger. This was a full time job for many people.

All calculations had to be performed by hand or by a very cumbersome mechanical machine - electronic calculators were not invented until the late 70's.

It was easy to make a mistake, to add up something incorrectly or even to forget to record something.

The introduction of calculators helped to speed up the work involved in balancing the books and helped reduce some of the mistakes made.

When financial packages and spreadsheets for personal computers came along around 1978, it transformed the way businesses handled their financial accounts.

For large companies, the accounting system typically runs over a secure network and backed up every day to off-site data centres. Losing financial data is not an option for most companies. Imagine if a mortgage company lost your details because of a simple office fire!

The principles of double-entry book keeping remains the same, but it is all computerised now.

With these changes, the role of Accounting Clark largely disappeared. They now had to re-train to use the new electronic spreadsheets and professional accounting packages. The skill of mentally adding up numbers quickly and accurately was no longer required as the computer could do this much faster and more reliably.