Just fewer than half of UK finance professionals have reported increased stress levels, a report by global recruitment consultancy Robert Half has revealed - and excessive technology could be to blame.

Accountants could be spending more time 'crunching the numbers' as they have too many systems to correlate with business intelligency software providers Design Bi has said.

Design Bi said operational systems can cause more work as accountants have to link customer relationship management software and credit rating systems as well as billing and invoicing technology to create the numbers.

The company has also suggested accountants continue to 'hand-craft' financial reports in an understandable format for its clients and are not given flexibility with numbers creating added work loads.

David Harmer, managing director and chartered accountant, said: 'I see lots of companies and it’s the same story everywhere – teams of people downloading data into spreadsheets, adding rules, and presenting it back to managers in an acceptable form.'

'IT departments will often need to prevent finance users from having free reign to run queries and reports to find it because the performance of operational systems would degrade if they were to do so' a company spokesman at Design BI said.

Another time consuming element for accountants includes tracking financial reports that have been sent out and ensuring the data has not been corrupted when it is.

CIMA has suggested business intelligence is something accountancy firms should be looking at in the regulatory climate to improve performance.

A statement by CIMA said: 'Business intelligence could help to release accountants from the reporting cycle to provide the decision support expected by progressive businesses.'

Further reading:

The Accountancy Age Guide to Turning Technology to your Advantage in a Downturn