Adaeze Linus Miracle, Moniaye Ayadi, Dr. J. O. Omokehinde
Blockchain technology has emerged as one of the most transformative digital innovations with the potential to improve transparency, security, and operational efficiency in accounting and auditing. Despite these potential benefits, adoption among accounting firms in developing economies remains limited due to concerns regarding implementation costs, technological complexity, and regulatory uncertainty. This study examines the cost–benefit dynamics of blockchain adoption among accounting firms in Nigeria by investigating the influence of implementation costs and operational benefits on blockchain adoption and evaluating the effect of blockchain adoption on operational performance. A cross-sectional survey research design was adopted, and primary data were obtained from 220 accounting professionals drawn from accounting and auditing firms in Lagos State, Nigeria. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and linear regression techniques were employed to analyse the data. The findings indicate that implementation costs significantly reduce the likelihood of blockchain adoption, whereas perceived operational benefits significantly enhance adoption. Furthermore, blockchain adoption exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on the operational performance of accounting firms through improvements in reporting accuracy, transparency, operational efficiency, and client confidence. The findings support the Technology Acceptance Model and Transaction Cost Economics by demonstrating that organisations evaluate emerging technologies based on the balance between expected benefits and associated implementation costs. The study concludes that although blockchain implementation requires substantial initial investment in infrastructure, integration, training, and regulatory compliance, its long-term operational benefits outweigh these costs. The study recommends phased implementation strategies, investment in digital competencies, and the development of supportive regulatory frameworks to accelerate blockchain adoption within the Nigerian accounting profession.
The main objective of this study was to examine the effect of blockchain technology on future of external auditing in Nigeria. Decentralized network and consensus mechanism were the proxies for blockchain technology. Thus, two hypotheses were formulated to guide the investigation and the statistical test of parameter estimates was conducted using least squares regression model operated with E-Views.12. Survey design was adopted and data for the study was obtained through the use of e-questionnaire survey sent to the various Staff WhatsApp Group Platform of the selected audit firms in Anambra State Nigeria. The results of the study reveal that the use of decentralized network has positive and significant effect on the future of external auditing in Nigeria at 1% level of significance. Also, the use of consensus mechanism in auditing has positive and significant effect on the future of external auditing in Nigeria at 5% significant level. Based on this, the study concludes that blockchain technology ensure the future of external auditing in Nigeria. In lieu of the findings of the study, the study recommends for the continual use of decentralized network in auditing as the future of external auditing lies on it. Also, the use of consensus mechanism should also be encouraged as it ensures accuracy and reliability in audit reporting.
PurposeThe enhanced consolidation of cloud accounting models within geographical boundaries of India has established latest standards in financial auditing, reporting, compliance procedures and virtual accessibility. Nonetheless the legal framework in the nation is evolving simultaneously to accentuate audit trails, nationalized storage of data and sovereignity of data. Latest modifications under the companies act 2013; the company’s fourth amendment rules and the new policies issued by RBI for data localization have radically shifted the compliance framework for all the accounting professionals and the service providers in the country. Regardless of the mounting academic discussion on adaptability of cloud accounting around the globe, meagre research has highlighted hoe nationalized legal requirements have modified the framework infrastructure, risks involved and acceptability of accounting professionals in india which will be investigated in this study. This study will further identify the pros and cons for adoption of cloud accounting and will come out with suggestive cloud accounting models for Indian scenario. Design/Methodology/ApproachAn empirical and analytical research design has been adopted for the study and snowball and convenient sampling has been used for primary data collection..A sample size of 140 has been calculated using G-power. The research is confined to chartered accountants of agra district to whom a well structured questionnaire was sent using google forms.stastical tools used in this study is chi square test. FindingsCloud accounting is a tremendous shift towards triple entry system wherein a transaction is verified by a third party using cryptography and blockchain technology thereby increasing authenticity and trust by piling all entries in a public ledger. As a result of this more businesses are adopting virtual workforce models. Introduction of cloud based models in accounting profession has enhanced the roles of key processing indicators in the business.Cloud technology magnifies employees networking and association thereby increasing efficiency and effectiveness. Chartered accountants who will accept this change will have new opportunities open for them and those who will look at this technology with ostrich approach will be left behind. OriginalityThe findings will be valuable for further research work to be done in this area. The findings will help various researchers, chartered accountants, accounting professionals etc to understand the implementation of cloud accounting in developing countries like India and to understand in depth the implementation and adoption of cloud based accounting in the Indian scenario.
Open access
Innovations and Analysis in Business and Education
The rapid diffusion of digital technologies has fundamentally reshaped the way organizations generate and report financial and non-financial information, challenging traditional audit approaches that rely on manual and sample-based procedures. Building on this context, this paper aimed to provide a comprehensive synthesis of empirical evidence regarding the impact of digital technologies on auditing and to identify the key factors influencing their adoption across internal, external, and public sector audit functions during the 2015–2026 period. Using a qualitative descriptive design and a systematic literature review guided by the PICOC framework and PRISMA protocol, 33 relevant articles indexed in Scopus were selected from an initial pool of 959 publications. The findings showed that the use of various technologies, including computer-assisted audit techniques (CAATs), audit analytics, big data, artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, blockchain, and process mining, generally enhanced the effectiveness and efficiency of audit procedures, strengthened internal controls, and reduced errors and financial statement restatements, while simultaneously repositioning auditors as more strategic and data-driven partners. At the same time, the success of digital audit transformation was strongly influenced by technological infrastructure, data governance and security, organizational capabilities, leadership support, regulatory environments, and auditors’ individual competencies, indicating that digitalization was neither a neutral nor an automatic process. This study provides practical implications for audit firms, internal audit units, supreme audit institutions, and regulators in developing more targeted and sustainable digital audit strategies, while also proposing future research directions concerning the organizational and institutional dynamics of digital auditing.
Abstract Financial time-series forecasting lies between AI and market microstructure, but most studies optimise generic error metrics instead of risk-adjusted economic value under realistic frictions. Unlike NLP and vision, the field lacks a shared, reviewer-enforced standard for data handling and evaluation, leading to persistent problems such as data leakage, backtest overfitting and metric-chasing on RMSE/MAE. This paper introduces QFRS a novel, enforceable by reviewers and editors, seven-standard framework and checklist for evaluating and reporting financial asset forecasting and trading claims. QFRS covers quantitative studies on equities (stocks), forex, cryptocurrencies, rates, derivatives (futures, forwards, options, swaps), energy prices, and commodities (gold, oil and silver) and other asset classes. The seven standards specify an end-to-end experimental pipeline, covering (i) dataset construction, (ii) labelling, (iii) point-in-time feature engineering, (iv) leakage-free scaling or normalisation, (v) time-respecting data splits, (vi) evaluation metrics and (vii) cost and slippage-aware backtesting with explicit execution assumptions and decision rules mapping predictions to positions. To validate the standard’s diagnostic value, a compliance audit of Scopus-indexed forex forecasting papers published in 2025 is presented. None of these papers achieved full compliance across all seven standards, with economic backtesting (12.2%) and causal scaling (31.7%) recorded the lowest pass rates. QFRS underpins a public state-of-the-art leaderboard, ensuring that only studies satisfying these standards are ranked, with the goal of shifting the literature from opaque, error-metric-driven results to transparent, economically meaningful and comparable benchmarks. The accompanying leaderboard is available and updated regularly at http://mkhushi.github.io .
This study examines the current state of digital asset auditing and proposes a clearer future vision through a systematic review of relevant literature and prior studies. It highlights the fundamental differences between digital and traditional assets, explains the classification of digital assets and their close association with blockchain technology, and analyzes the existing accounting and auditing frameworks considering international standards and provides a brief overview of the status of Egyptian legislation. The study also discusses the evolving role of auditors and the main stages of the audit process in the digital environment. The findings indicate that rapid digital transformation requires the development of advanced auditing standards and methodologies, and that the adoption of data analytics, smart contracts, and continuous auditing, together with enhancing auditors’ technical and professional competencies, contributes to improving audit quality, transparency, and risk management related to digital assets.
Open access
Security, Politics, and Digital Transformation
Financial Reporting and XBRL
Innovations and Analysis in Business and Education
Supplementary appendix to the article "Digital Cash and the Governance of Payment Finality." It contains material displaced from the main text for length, referenced at the corresponding points in the article, and forming no part of the manuscript word count. The appendix documents in full the evidence that claims for digital cash treat technical irreversibility as legal finality, with the passages and page references from Böhme, Christin, Edelman and Moore (2015), Cong and He (2018), De Filippi and Hassan (2016), Kiviat (2015), Atzori (2017) and Politou, Casino, Alepis and Patsakis (2019), together with the passages in which several of those authors qualify or abandon the claim. It further sets out the argument that append-only recording does not entail unrecoverable entitlement: the regulatory history of write-once, read-many electronic recordkeeping under SEC Rule 17a-4 and its 2022 amendment; the accounting mechanics by which a chargeback operates as a contra entry rather than an erasure; the equivalence between that mechanism and reversal by subsequent transaction on a distributed ledger; and two limits on the argument, being value irretrievable because no person holds the key, and records whose own existence is the wrong, as with personal data subject to an erasure right.