Do accountants clearly understand the benefits and challenges of using AI? Do they perceive AI as a threat? The adoption of AI in the accounting field has increased significantly in the last few years. Since the techniques continue to evolve, more companies will integrate these solutions to facilitate the accounting processes. Therefore, the accountants’ skills should be adapted to efficiently use these solutions and continue to provide valuable support. This study explores the perception of accounting practitioners regarding the most important benefits and challenges of using AI-based technologies and analyses whether AI is being perceived as a threat that might impact employability. The data were collected during June–August 2021 using a questionnaire addressed to accounting practitioners from Romania. The exploratory research was conducted by statistically analysing the data collected. The results highlight that the practitioners have a clear understanding regarding the main benefits and challenges associated with the use of AI-based solutions in accounting processes, and AI is not perceived as a threat to employability; however, practitioners acknowledge that skills transformation is required and are willing to undergo the changes. By providing a glimpse of the main drivers that encourage accounting practitioners to embrace AI, employers, professional bodies and academia can address the main concerns and continue to support the practitioners in adapting their skills.

For several years, big companies in Romania and beyond have faced various challenges, including digitization. This involves transitioning to new versions of integrated ERP systems, incorporating cutting-edge database trends like in-memory technology and SAP HANA, and adopting Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for modelling the economic processes used, like order to cash or procure to pay. While the deadline for SAP solutions is set for 2027, the preparations for this shift are extensive and require a mixed team of engineers and economists. Consequently, many SAP clients are exploring using auxiliary interfaces and RPA to streamline economic processes. To provide insights into potential solutions, this article presents a study on the strategies adopted by one large company active in fruit processing, from production to sales and distribution. This study aims to show how intelligent technologies can help company departments automate economic processes. The study draws on questionnaires sent to the users from the mentioned company and the authors' own experience in creating interfaces used for economic processes. The research results confirm that it is time when certain stages of the economic process to be performed by a software bot, which will allow company employees to have the necessary time to study and improve work with economic processes. Companies should prioritize the intelligent processing, storage, and distribution of data to beneficiaries, especially regarding repetitive tasks. Every company should prioritize attracting European funds for automation and digitization, as incorporating intelligent technologies into daily work is essential.

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This research is part of a much wider endeavour to determine the best practicesin ethics education and the value of ethics in professional accountants’ lives from the very formation, in their university years to when they are members of professional associations and employees. This particular article focuses on how ethics features in the practical experience requirement (PER) from the professional associations’ Initial Professional Development (IPD). Bodies were selected based on whether they are IFAC members, their size and population of their country of origin. ACCA (Association of Chartered Certirfied Accountants) was selected as a standard given its international coverage and CECCAR (Body of Expert and Licensed Accountants of Romania) was selected because of the authors’ origins or place of study. The exams’ sequence in the route to become a member of a profesional accountancy body was analysed as part of a different article in which a correlation was not found between the size of the association (in the hypothesis that larger associations have more resources to invest in their qualification) and availability of exam-prep materials for the wider public as well as how much ethics is featured in them. Given that for practical experience requirement there were less readily available public materials, the research questions became simpler for PER than in the case of exams hence we attempted an overarching comparison of whether ethics was clearly featured in the PER of chose bodies and also how it was examined or demonstred over the practical experience period. We found that the approach was very consistent across the selected associations with all of them strongly featuring ethics in their PER. Hopefully our efforts will give other researchers, educators of ethics and national bodies themsevles a strong starting point to adapt their curricula and approach on ethics.

Stakeholders usually use net profit as an important indicator in assessing the performance of companies. In times of economic instability, there is a need for additional financial information, so the company's net profit and comprehensive income can be important in stakeholder decision-making. The article is devoted to analysing the relationship between earnings per share, comprehensive income per share and equity per share. The object of the study is companies whose shares were listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in 2019-2021. For this study, companies were selected that prepared financial statements per International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and disclosed information about their comprehensive income. Financial entities were excluded from the analysis. Data were collected by querying the Thomson Reuters (Refinitiv) database, and comprehensive income data were collected manually from financial statements published by the companies on the Bucharest Stock Exchange website. The purpose of the study is to determine whether there is a significant effect of the share price on earnings per share, comprehensive earnings per share, and equity per share. The authors used the linear regression to identify the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The study results show that all variables significantly affect the share price. In particular, earnings per share have a more significant impact on the share price than comprehensive earnings per share, although this difference is insignificant.