Discussion Response 2A

Respond to the discussion post below with your educated opinion in 3-4 sentences:

The development of reports is a complex process that benefits from the involvement of users and business people.  There are few advantages to not involving accountants in development.  Developers can often get too involved with the project and fail to recognize the end goal of creating the report or system (Zuber, 2014).  This can result in the exclusion of important information or features or the inclusion of unnecessary items (Zuber, 2014).  The involvement of accountants and other users can assist the developer in creating a useful product that will provide appropriate and timely information.  Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of not involving accountants and other users is the possibility of the users not using the system because they were not involved (Zuber, 2014).

Accountants should be involved in producing reports that include more than financial information.  Accountants are well versed in the analysis and utilization of reports so it makes sense that they would be able to provide useful insight into the development of non-financial reports.  Again, accountants can provide a set of fresh eyes that can identify and suggest improvements that report developers may not have noticed.