Shane’s Garden Tools & Accessories is a wholesale supplierof garden tools and also has a small shopfront that sells householdornaments. Jane Helm has been the bookkeeper for over ten years,and because the company is small Jane performs all daily accountingtasks manually including invoicing and receipting of all monies.Shane, the owner of the company, supervises Jim, the stock managerand Trish, the shopfront manager, but he also spends a lot of histime managing his other business. The wholesale side of thebusiness has a complicated paper trail as many refunds are putthrough. Garden tools are sold to large warehouses, and they arethen sold to the public. If these items are faulty and returned bythe warehouse customer, the warehouse then makes a claim to Shane’sGarden Tools & Accessories, and this then needs to be claimedby Jane from the manufacturer. The warehouses were pressuring Shaneto computerize as there was always a lengthy delay in refunds beingprocessed. With a little guidance from a friend and with no mentionto Jane, Shane bought a new computer system and some accountingsoftware. Only one day was required to set up the hardware, installthe software, and convert the files. The morning the vendorinstalled the computer system, Jane’s job performance changeddramatically. Although the software company provided two full daysof training, Jane constantly complained about the new system. As aresult, Shane decided she should run both the manual and computersystems for a month to verify the new system’s accuracy. Jane thencomplained that she lacked the time and expertise to update bothsystems by herself, and that she did not understand how to use thenew computer system. To keep accounts up to date, Shane spent twoto three hours a day running the new system himself. Shane foundthat much of the time spent running the system was spentidentifying discrepancies between the computer and manual results.When the error was located, it was usually in the manual system.This significantly increased Shane’s confidence in the new system.At the end of the month, Shane was ready to stop using the manualsystem, but Jane said she was not ready. Shane went back to hisother business, and Jane went on with the manual system. When thecomputer system fell behind, Shane again spent time catching it up.He also worked with Jane to try to help her understand how tooperate the computer system. Months later, Shane was veryfrustrated because he was still keeping the computer system up todate and training Jane.

You work for a professional accounting firm as Shane’saccountant, and Shane has asked for your advice with the followingquestions.

What do you believe is the real cause of Jane’s resistance tocomputers, and how should Shane have handled the accounting systemcomputerization? • What events may have contributed to the newsystem’s failure? • What would you recommend Shane do at this point(please justify your answers)?