By MARK WEBSTER

Long gone are the days when the highest technology your neighborhood CPA or tax preparer were likely to have were a landline telephone and a desktop calculator printing out narrow strips of paper with numbers on it.

Modern-day bean counters are more likely to be counting those beans on a powerful, dual-monitor desktop computer; that is, when they're not on a laptop, smartphone or client web portal. Shawn Frier, CPA, director at Freed Maxick & Battaglia P.C., is a prime example of area professionals who have embraced modern technology.

"I think it's keeping people connected," he says. "It's keeping clients connected (and) it's keeping employees connected and updated on what's going on."

Frier, with a Droid 2 smartphone on his hip, practices what he preaches. He says in recent years he has been using text messaging as a key way to communicate with  equally tech-savvy clients. He also is a proponent of social media as an essential part of the 21st-century CPA's toolkit.

"You have LinkedIn, you have Facebook, you have Twitter," he says, citing the current "big three" of social networking. "People are using LinkedIn for business development to create opportunities and just to see the groups that get set up in order to be a part of those to find out information. Facebook is our corporate identity."

Joseph O'Donnell, meanwhile, is chairman of the accounting department at Canisius College. He says college accounting students - some of whom are just months away from becoming the young end of the workforce spectrum - are almost certain to keep that trend growing. Even so, he says he understands why some area firms continue to tread cautiously.

"Part of it is the risk component: having company information in social networks. So there's a lot done in terms of looking at the risks to the organization. But (students) are very comfortable using those sorts of technologies," O'Donnell says.

While student bean counters expect social media to play a significant role in their professional lives - not to mention their social lives - one thing some of them haven't counted on is the fact that services such as Facebook are a two-way electronic street.

Linda Hall, associate professor in the department of business administration and accounting at SUNY Fredonia, says that's a lesson students had better learn quickly.

"We try to tell our students that if you're out there in the job market and you're going to be on Facebook, you need to clean up your Facebook (page)," Hall says, "because if you're going to look up their firm, my understanding is that that they can look you up, too."

How extensive is social media use in the accounting industry? A 2009 survey by the Bay Street Group found that 54 percent of CPAs are on LinkedIn, 48 percent are on Facebook and 21 percent are on Twitter.

Alongside social media and dozens of specialized software packages, however, there are technological mainstays of the industry - perhaps none more than a program you probably have on your own computer: Microsoft Excel.

"it's still really big," says O'Donnell. "Not so much for record-keeping but for analysis. We work with our students on being able to extract information from large systems and then being able to break it down into Excel and do the analysis."

Interestingly, he says Excel is viewed by some in the industry as a risky program for certain applications. That's due to its lack of "development controls" compared to most accounting-specific platforms, such as Oracle or SAP.

According to Hall, Excel is still used extensively in training Fredonia students, as well, along with other long-standing programs such as QuickBooks and Peachtree. The latter, she notes with a laugh, "was around when I was doing accounting 30 years ago."

But increasingly, the emphasis is not on the past but on a future that will continue to emphasize technology generally — and the Internet, specifically — to get the job done.

Frier of Freed Maxick says Skype videoconferencing is seeing increasing usage in his office, as well as Web-based file sharing for clients.

"We're sending things back and forth via the Internet on a secure site that we couldn't live without because the emails can only absorb so many megabytes," he says. "So that's a great tool for us."

O'Donnell says he knows he and his fellow educators will have to keep working to make sure they - and their students - stay ahead of the ever-evolving technology curve.

"We still teach debits and credits," he says, "but there has to be an understanding of database technology and storing information. One thing we hear firms talk about for a new professional is to be able to really leverage the technology and use it the best."

White echoes that sentiment, adding she hopes her students don't lose the ability to function without computer assistance.

"They're more reliant on technology, and I sometimes worry whether they can think without it. Yet we have to give them the tools that are being used right now."

Mark Webster is a freelance writer and former research director for our sister publication, Business First.