Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Its Application and the Place for Accountants in the 21st Century

This article explored the Application of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in 21st Century and the place of accountants. RPA is common among firms and accountants looking to increase efficiency in financial reporting. RPA is a concern for economists and scholars as they opine that RPA will render many accountants jobless. This article discusses how the adoption of RPA by firms will not be a cause for job loss among accountants, but rather it will launch accountants to a higher career function. Robots can only process data and offer narrow interpretations, but a wider interpretation of processed financial and data making decisions based on analyses will require human judgement.