Benefits of Cloud-Based Accounting Software for Qantas Airline

This report explores the benefits of using cloud-based accounting software for Qantas Airline and recommends MYOB as the most suitable vendor and software package. It discusses the company's business activities, key processes, and the software features and functionalities needed. It also compares MYOB and XERO accounting software packages and identifies MYOB as the best choice for Qantas Airline.

Accounting Information System
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Executive Summary
This report has been developed for the purpose of demonstrating the benefits that can be
achieved by an ASX listed entity with the use of online accounting software applications such as
XERO, MYOB or SAP. In this context, the report has examined the potential benefits that
Qantas Airline can achieve with the use of cloud-based accounting software applications. It has
recommended the use of MYOB accounting software application for the airline to enhance its
operational efficiency and maximizing the profits attained by seeking customer attention through
better pricing of its tickets.
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Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Description of Company & its Business Activities........................................................................................4
Key Business Processes................................................................................................................................4
Software Features and Functionalities to be Considered by the Company as per the Business Activities. .5
Selection of Two Accounting Software Package Vendors & description of the Vendors & Products..........6
MYOB.......................................................................................................................................................6
XERO........................................................................................................................................................6
Comparison of MYOB & XERO Cloud-Based Accounting Software Packages...............................................7
Identification of the most suitable vendor and accounting software package for the Client Company......9
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
The business entities are largely integrating the use of cloud-based online accounting
software for managing their accounting and financing transactions. It enables the businesses to
easily record and maintain their accounting data that can be accessed at any point of time and at
any location. This report is developed for evaluation and analysis of cloud-based accounting
software to be used within an ASX listed company. In this context, it has examined the software
features to be used by the company as per its business activities. It also provides an examination
of the two selected accounting software package vendors and products among SAP, XERO or
MYOB. It also provides a comparison of the two selected accounting software and
recommending the best software to be used by the company. The company selected for analysis
purpose is Qantas Airways, a flag carrier of Australia it is regarded as the largest airline in terms
of size of fleet and carrying out international flights. The overall analysis is conducted from the
perspective of a management consultant providing recommendation to the CFO of the client
company regarding the use of cloud-based accounting software.
Description of Company & its Business Activities
Qantas Airways Limited is regarded as a leading airline of Australia that is regarded as
one of the oldest international airline and is headquartered within Australia. The airline has
developed a strong reputation among the airline sector of the country due to providing excellence
on safety, reliability and customer’s service. The main business of the airline is providing
transportation services to the customers with the use of its two complementary airline brands,
that are, Qantas and Jetstar. The airline operates regional, domestic and international transport
services to its customers with the use of its employee base of about 30,000 people.
Key Business Processes
The key business process of the airline includes handling of passengers, baggage, aircraft
handling. The handling of passengers and baggage is different in varying countries and
depending on domestic or international context. The sales process is also an important business
process of the airline that involves realizing profits from ticket sales to domestic and
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international customers and also realizing revenue from the airport freight system (Qantas
Airline, 2019).
Software Features and Functionalities to be Considered by the Company
as per the Business Activities
Qantas Airlines is emphasizing on improving its operational efficiency and flight control
management system. The major problem that is being faced by Qantas Airlines is managing of
inventory and recording the financial data in relating to its sales process. The airline operates its
business in a highly competitive and customer-oriented airline sector at an international level. As
such, it needs to place high importance on maintaining operational efficiency for providing
higher quality services to its customers and maintaining market share within the airline sector.
Therefore, it needs to improvise its operations and reduce the cost of its operations so that it can
offer best price on its tickets and able to achieve customer attention. The airline is facing major
problem in managing huge volumes of its data with the use of it’s traditionally based Enterprise
Resources Planning (ERP) systems. The airline has to incur large number of resources in
developing and monitoring of the ERP systems. The airline requires the implementation of a
cloud-based accounting software that is able to meet the changing strategic goals and priorities
and meeting the customer expectations effectively. The use of cloud-based platform will enable
the airline in maintaining of a new and agile ERP platform for recording of the accounting and
financial data. It would enable the airline in reducing the cost of its operations by streamlining
the operational processes through better tracking of inventory, sales, expenses and revenue
(Kosalge and Ritz, 2015).
As such, airline needs to implement accounting software for handling of its financial
operations such as management of inventory, taxation and financial reporting. The use of cloud-
based accounting software within airline can enable it in maintaining high inventory and having
a continuous check on financial data and transactions incurred. The airline authorities can take
quick decisions by analyzing the financial data at any point of time. The continuous tracking of
cost and expenses will assist in taking effective steps to keep cost under control for maximizing
the profits realized. It would also assist the airline to manage its foreign exchange transactions as
it conducts its operations in an international context. Therefore, it involves managing of multiple
transaction currencies and therefore the use of cloud based accounting software will help the
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airline to adequately manage its complex foreign exchange currency transactions (Brewer,
Sorensen and Stout, 2014). The cloud-based accounting software would also help in securing the
confidential financial data that can be used for taking important decisions regarding fostering the
airline growth and expansion. Therefore, it can be said that the implementation of cloud-based
accounting software within airline would help in developing right policies, achieving cost-
reduction and maintaining the profitability in the competitive market scenario (Hossack, 2015).
Selection of Two Accounting Software Package Vendors & description of
the Vendors & Products
MYOB
Mind Your Own Business (MYOB) is an Australian multinational company that is
involved in providing accounting and taxation management software applications to the business
entities within Australia. It is providing software services to about 1 million businesses within
Australia and New Zealand. The different accounting and financing solutions provided by the
vendor includes management of payroll services, reporting, inventory, processing of sales and
purchases, tracking of receivables and payables and taxation services. In addition to this, its
different business management solutions include managing customer relations and helping with
point of sales process of the companies. The accounting software provided by vendor is suitable
for business of every size, shape and sector. The varying products offered by the vendor can be
stated as follows:
 MYOB Accountright: It is involved in providing online and offline accounting services
such as job tracking, inventory and managing multi-currency transactions
 MYOB Accountedge: It is designed for managing complex accounting and financial
transactions
 MYOB Advanced: It provides customizable cloud-based business management solutions
to the customers
 MYOB Payglobal: It enables in managing accounting functions such as payroll
processing and managing complex workforce (About MYOB, 2019)
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XERO
Xero is an ASX listed public company that is involved in providing cloud-based
accounting software solutions for businesses operating within Australia. The accounting software
enables the businesses to reduce time involved in managing the accounting and financial data.
The different accounting and financial services provided by the company includes invoicing,
inventory, multi-currency, creating purchase orders and tracking the expenses and meeting the
bills obligations in a timely manner. The clients can easily access to the financing functions of
the software and also ensure the back up of data by protecting it with multiple layers of security
and thus maintaining the data confidentiality. The different products provided by XERO include:
 XERO Practice Manager: The accounting software helps in streamlining the workflow by
maintaining invoices and recording and monitoring the staff performance
 XERO Work papers: It provides work papers for importing data and assisting in
development of financial reports. In addition to this, it also provides assistance in storing
the important accounting and financial documents and provides the feature of easily
dragging and dropping the files at the relevant place.
 XERO Ledger: Provides the feature of importing client bank transactions and managing
the accounts of the client
 XERO Cashbook: Managing the cash inflows and outflows and monitoring the client
accounts (XERO, 2019)
Comparison of MYOB & XERO Cloud-Based Accounting Software
Packages
The important point of difference that is present between MYOB and XERO cloud-based
accounting software packages are discussed as follows:
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Comparison Basis XERO MYOB
Efficiency XERO possess after losing
time and enables the users to
open multiple task at a time to
conduct different transactions
Its loading time is higher as
compared to XERO and can
perform only one task at a
time. Therefore, it increases
the waiting time of the users
as they have to wait for a
transactions to complete
before starting a new one
Cost
XERO is costly for installation
as compared to MYOB
MYOB is cost-friendly as
compared to XERO and have
lower cost subscription plans
Installation It possess fast and easy
process of installation
It can only work on windows
for requiring more advanced
features such as inventory and
job management
Reporting
It is able to report multiple
reports at a time
It runs only one report at a
time
Inventory tracking
All plans of the system
include tracking of inventory
features
Only advanced software
possess the features of
inventory tracking
Foreign Currency Foreign currency transactions
support is available on the
premium software application
It does not provide support to
manage foreign currency
transactions
(Lane, 2018)
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Identification of the most suitable vendor and accounting software
package for the Client Company
The Qantas Airline is facing the problem of improving its operational efficiency for
maintaining its competitive position within the airline sector. It requires the installation of online
accounting software that is able to adequately manage everything from billing of ticket to
managing inventory and monitoring financial transactions. In this context, the best recommended
accounting software to be adopted by the airline is MYOB. This is because MYOB can be
customized as per the needs and requirements of the business. The adoption of MYOB
accounting software will enable Qantas to meet its strategic goals and expectations. This is
because it will enable the airline to overcome its operational issues by streamlining inventory and
vendor management, decreases cost of operation and improving the agility and flexibility in its
overall functions by creating a centralized accounting database. The consolidations of all the
business processes of the airline such as procurement, supply chain, human resources and
financial reporting will enable in improving the co-ordination among the individual departments
and leading to maximizing the operational efficiency (ERP in News, 2019).
The major problem that the use of MYOB accounting software is developing an online
information system for procurement and reducing the lead time which will enable in reducing the
cost of operations. Also, being an international airline it has to recruit and maintain huge
workforce diversity that includes employees from various cultural backgrounds and beliefs to
conduct its operations in dives countries. It is therefore very complicated for the human resource
managers to manage the payroll related data of its huge employee base. Therefore, the use of
cloud-based online software applications such as MYOB will enable the HR managers to
centralize its employee database that would help in easy processing of payroll. The automatic
generation of payroll results will ensures that employees receive wages on a fixed time period
and also reduces the time-involved in carrying out complex accounting calculations for
determining the wages (IT News, 2016).
The reconciliation of the accounting and financial data related to invoicing with the use
of online software will provide assistance to the business managers to access them at any point of
time. The employees of the airline working in distant locations can easily gain access to
accounting and financial data and this can assist them in carrying out their work roles and
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responsibilities in an effective manner. It will also enable in improving the security of payment
processing system of the airline. Also, the cost of MYOB installation is less as compared to other
accounting software package such as XERO and also its after sales support service is much
better. As such, the use of MYOB accounting software seems to be adequate for Qantas to
reduce the cost of its operations and improving the quality of recording, managing and
interpreting its complex accounting and financial data (ERP in News, 2019).
Conclusion
The above report has discussed clearly the implications of using cloud-based accounting
software for Qantas Airlines, an ASX listed entity. In this context, it has been known that airline
can adequately resolve its operational problems and drive its competitiveness with the use of
online accounting software applications such as XERO or MYOB. The report has recommended
the airline to adopt the use of MYOB accounting software for streamlining its business processes
by developing centralized database that records and manages its accounting and financial data
related to its various business processes.
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References
About MYOB. 2019. [Online]. Available at: https://www.myob.com/au/about [Accessed on: 22
May 2019].
Brewer, P. C., Sorensen, J. E., and Stout, D. E. 2014. The future of accounting education:
addressing the competency crisis. Strategic Finance, 96(2), pp. 29-38.
ERP In News. 2019. A New IT Service Model Takes Flight at Qantas. [Online]. Available at:
https://erpinnews.com/a-new-it-service-model-takes-flight-at-qantas [Accessed on: 22 May
2019].
Hossack, S. 2015. Cloud-based accounting and productivity tools for practitioners and taxpayers.
Taxation in Australia, 50(5).
IT News. 2016. Qantas adopts Workday in cloud HR overhaul. [Online]. Available at:
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/qantas-adopts-workday-in-cloud-hr-overhaul-437773
[Accessed on: 22 May 2019].
Kosalge, P.U. and Ritz, E., 2015. Finding the tipping point for a CEO to say yes to an ERP: a
case study. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 28(5), pp.718-738.
Lane, S. 2018. Which one is the best cloud accounting provider? [Online]. Available at:
https://www.listonnewton.com.au/information-centre/xero-vs-myob-which-will-work-better-for-
your-business [Accessed on: 22 May 2019].
Qantas Airline. 2019. Our Company. [Online]. Available at:
https://www.qantas.com/travel/airlines/company/global/en [Accessed on: 22 May 2019].
XERO. 2019. Why XERO. [Online]. Available at:
https://www.xero.com/why-xero/benefits/online-accounting/ [Accessed on: 22 May 2019].
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