Digital Accounting for Biometric Financial Management Efficiency of Accounting Staff in Rivers State Universities

This study investigated use of Digital Accounting for Biometric Financial Management Efficiency of Accounting Staff in Rivers State Universities. The area of the study was Rivers State. Seven specific objectives, seven research questions and seven null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The population for this study consists of one hundred and forty six (146) staff of the payroll unit, Accounts unit and Tax units. There was no sampling as the entire population was used for the study, the reason was that the population size is manageable. A self-structured questionnaire was used by the researcher for data collection, the instrument was titled” Digital accounting systems for Biometric Financial Management by Accounting Staff” The instrument was validated by three experts, one in Measurement and Evaluation and others from Business Education department. The instrument was structured on a 4-point rating scale of very high extent, high extent, moderate extent and Low extent. In order to establish the reliability of the instrument that was used for the study, test re-test method was adopted, scores obtained were correlated using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and it yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.82 which revealed that the instrument is suitable for the study. The data collected for the study was analyzed by the researcher with SPSS version 27 using mean and standard deviation for research questions while t-test was used to test hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study revealed that to a high extent cloud accounting, automated bookkeeping, digital invoicing and billing systems, business intelligence tools, enterprise resource planning system, artificial intelligence tools and integrated accounting system is adopted by accounting staff in Rivers State Universities for enhancing biometric financial management. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that Universities should continue to invest in the maintenance and upgrading of existing digital accounting infrastructure to ensure optimal performance, compatibility, and security. Regular training workshops and certification programmes should be organized for accounting staff to deepen their expertise in emerging features, cybersecurity practices, system optimization and Robust protocols should be enforced to protect sensitive financial and biometric data, including multi-layer authentication, encryption, and regular security audits.