ACCOUNTING STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF ACCURATE AND ZAHIR DIGITAL ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE : A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Improving students' understanding of technological developments can be achieved through digital accounting application-based learning. Currently, various accounting software programs are used in practice, including Accurate and Zahir Accounting. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages, leading to differing perceptions of their use. This study aims to analyze the differences in students' perceptions of the Accounting Study Program at Insan Pembangunan Indonesia University regarding the implementation of Accurate and Zahir Accounting digital accounting software based on four main assessment categories: ease of use, feature completeness, interface appearance, and learning relevance. This study uses a comparative descriptive quantitative approach. Data were obtained by distributing questionnaires to 150 students who had taken courses on both software programs in the learning process. Analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics, the Shapiro Wilk normality test, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test, and effect size calculations using JASP software. The descriptive statistics results show that the median and mean values ​​of Zahir's perception (Median = 42.00; Mean = 39.12; SD = 6.582) are higher than Accurate's (Median = 39.00; Mean = 37.73; SD = 7.503). The normality test showed that the data were not normally distributed (p < 0.001), so the Wilcoxon test was used. The Wilcoxon test results showed a significant difference between the two perceptions (W = 0.000; Z = −8.193; p < 0.001) with a large category effect size. These findings indicate that each software has advantages in different usage contexts in digital accounting learning. The results of the study provide implications for universities in designing digital accounting software integration to support student competency improvement in facing the demands of a technology-based workplace