Introducing RPA in an Undergraduate AIS Course: Three RPA Exercises on Process Automations in Accounting

This article presents three exercises that introduce the applications of robotic process automation (RPA) for accounting tasks. The objective of these exercises is to provide undergraduate accounting students with an introduction to RPA that provides hands-on practice during class time. The three exercises cover a wide range of RPA applications, including logging into an ERP system, extracting data from the internet, and entering information from Excel to PDF. We have developed three hands-on, step-by-step exercises using UiPath as the software of choice. We also provide guidance and Teaching Notes regarding how to implement the three exercises in an undergraduate accounting information systems (AIS) course.