Examining the attitudes of professional accountants towards digital transformation based practices: The case of Bartın province

Rapid developments in information and communication technologies have triggered digitalization and digital transformation processes, causing changes in accounting processes. The digital transformation process has reshaped accounting practices; electronic tools such as e-invoice, e-ledger, and e-declaration have enabled accounting records to be kept in digital environments. This process has brought innovations such as automation, data analytics, and cloud computing technology to business processes. Accounting professionals play an important role in the use of digital transformation-based applications. Applications such as e-invoice, e-archive, and e-ledger provide accounting professionals with time, cost savings, etc. in their business processes. Therefore, the attitudes of accounting professionals towards digital transformation-based applications are very important. This research was conducted to understand the attitudes of accounting professionals towards digital transformation-based applications. The descriptive research model, one of the general research models that aim to reveal the current situation, was used in the research. 18 women and 58 men from the profession registered with the Bartın Chamber of Certified Public Accountants participated in the research. The focus of the study is to determine the effects of factors such as gender, age, education level, professional title, professional experience, e-document type used, number of e-invoices, e-invoice scenario type and e-invoice application method on these attitudes. The data obtained in the study were analyzed using the SPSS 25.0 program. Descriptive statistical methods such as frequency, mean, standard deviation and percentage were used to perform descriptive analysis of the data. In the evaluation of the participants' scale scores, t-test for unrelated (Independent) samples and single-factor analysis of variance (One-Way ANOVA) for unrelated samples were used. When a significant difference was detected as a result of the variance analysis, Tukey HSD test was used to determine which group the difference originated from. At the end of the research, no significant difference was found in the attitudes of the professionals registered to the Bartın Chamber of Certified Public Accountants according to the variables of gender, age, education level, professional title, professional experience period, e-document type used, number of e-invoices, e-invoice scenario type and e-invoice application method. In terms of the professional experience variable, a significant difference was observed between the groups with 16-20 years and more than 20 years of experience in the attitudes of the participants towards the usefulness of e-applications. It was observed that the accounting professionals with 16-20 years of accounting experience had a more positive attitude than the accounting professionals with more than 20 years of experience.