The Accounting Podcast

Lots of news to cover in this episode, including how before BigCommerce’s 200% IPO pop, Intuit offered $1.5 billion for the software company, and why AmEx is in advanced talks to buy SoftBank-backed Kabbage. In addition, employers are wary they could be on the hook for payroll taxes due to Trump's executive order, and accountants want clarity, and Trump advisors urge delisting of U.S.-listed Chinese companies that fail to meet audit standards. Meanwhile, New York is suing the NRA for financial fraud, and more.

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Blake Oliver: [00:00:19] If you think about it, really, going virtual is forcing the schools to adapt to the new world of work. The traditional education where you sit at a desk and you have a bell that rings every hour is based on the factory model, and it was designed to teach children to be good little factory workers someday. That no longer exists, so teaching them to be good remote workers on Zoom and collaborate asynchronously, using Google Classroom, that's what we do as workers, so why wouldn't they be doing it as students? 
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This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by ClockShark. ClockShark is the leading GPS, time-tracking, and scheduling system built for local construction and field-service companies that want a simpler way to track time, run payroll, and understand job costs. With the capabilities of crew tracking, scheduling, jobsite geofencing, teams, and project segmentation, automatic labor allocation, budgeting, and reporting, ClockShark has built a robust mobile time-tracking system to handle the unique challenges that face your clients. 
 
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This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by BQE Core. As firms everywhere are positioning themselves to work remotely, BQE Software is committed to supporting you and your employees during this critical time. BQE's Core products operate 100 percent on a native cloud platform that's uniquely able to help you in your efforts to embrace remote work while maintaining your productivity.

In response to the impact that COVID-19 has had on your firm and your clients' businesses, the team at BQE has let us know that Cloud Accounting Podcast listeners will now receive three months of BQE Core for free with an annual subscription package purchased on or before September 30, 2020. To learn more, head over to cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/core. 
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Blake Oliver: [00:02:46] Welcome to The Cloud Accounting Podcast, I'm Blake Oliver.
 
David Leary: [00:02:50] And I'm David Leary.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:02:52] So, David, I had two virtual experiences this week.
 
David Leary: [00:02:55] Two virtual experiences? I only had one.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:02:58] Well, who wants to go first?
 
David Leary: [00:02:59] You can go first because one of my virtual experiences was trying to have virtual experience with you.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:03:03] Oh, all right. So, I think we're talking about the same thing. It was the Boomer Virtual Summit, this week – Sunday through Wednesday. It was a virtual conference on the VirBELA platform, which is like a video game. You walk around with an avatar and you can talk to people. It automatically turns your mic on, so people can hear you when you're in proximity to them. 
 
[00:03:43] We had a virtual booth. People went to sessions, like walked ... You actually walk in the virtual world, from the expo hall into your sessions and into the main expo hall. Very interesting. Apparently, you could drive a boat, and you could also play soccer, but I never made it out of the expo hall; just like in real life, I never got to go enjoy anything.
 
David Leary: [00:03:44] Well, yeah, I asked you to give me an invite, and I was like, "All right, I'm gonna jump in and do this," and I just got too busy. So, I finally jumped in, I think, Wednesday night late. Nobody was there, so I was just in this world by myself. My daughter walks by. She's like, "What are you doing? I'm telling on you! You're playing video games in there!" It's just like a virtual world. There was a fireworks going off. I could explore and climb up to the top of a tower. I was on the soccer field.
 
[00:04:08] I went everywhere because it took me a long time to find the expo hall, because that's all I wanted to see, as I walked around and looked at it ... There was nobody else in the world, when I was there. 100% ghost land. It was still kinda cool to run around, but it has those same video-game problems, like when, sometimes, you get to the edge of a map, or it has hills ...
 
Blake Oliver: [00:04:33] Yeah. 
 
David Leary: [00:04:33] I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna run down the side of this hill," and I'd get stuck, and then I gotta go around until you get out of it. It was a very Roblox, or Fortnite type of ex. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:04:33] Yeah, it was interesting. It was unique. I'm curious how the attendees liked it, but it seemed to go well. It was definitely better than sitting on a Zoom call all day long, like some conferences.
 
David Leary: [00:04:45] The part I couldn't grasp, I guess, was ... People's booths were there, and some of the booths had some static images you had on the booth. Then, some parts of the booth almost looked like it was a presentation or a slide deck. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:04:56] Yes. 
 
David Leary: [00:04:56] Is that something I would walk up, and press play and just sit there and watch and I would hear it through my headphones? I didn't know.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:05:01] No.
 
David Leary: [00:05:02] How do you present something in a conference like this?
 
Blake Oliver: [00:05:03] We were at the booth and you would walk in and then we could advance those slides or share our screen onto that main screen in the booth, just like you were at a conference.
 
David Leary: [00:05:13] Okay. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:05:13] That actually worked pretty well.
 
David Leary: [00:05:15] I think I went into some room that had big round tables in it. They were like hot zones, so if I sat at that table, I could actually just talk to people at that table, like at a real conference. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:05:23] Yes. It would create an audio channel just for the people in that space.
 
David Leary: [00:05:28] Cool.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:05:29] Yeah, so that was the virtual experience on the work side. Then, my son had his first week at kindergarten this week. School is not back physically in session, but they tried to do it via Zoom, the Scottsdale Unified School District. I did not have high expectations given that he's in kindergarten and I can't imagine that his kindergarten teacher has spent a lot of time using Zoom. They spent most of the time learning how to unmute, mute, switch from speaker view to gallery view - all the basic Zoom stuff. Thomas learned it really fast, so I was joking that now he's better at being a remote worker than 75% of American office workers because he knows how to mute and unmute himself on a conference call.
 
David Leary: [00:06:14] Well, I think I saw you posted something on Facebook, but it's a testament- he was just so excited to be first day of kindergarten, even though it was remote. He didn't care. He was just so excited about being ... It kinda puts some perspective on that whole thing. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:06:23] Yeah! Children are so adaptable, and they don't have preconceived notions about the way things are supposed to be. So, for him, he was really excited to get on Zoom with his classmates and learn, and he was paying attention. They obviously didn't do it the whole day. It was like two hours a day because that's the most you can ask kids to sit in front of a screen at this age. That's a lot.
 
David Leary: [00:06:44] Yeah.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:06:45] Although, they've been trained by having-
 
David Leary: [00:06:47] To sit in screens. Yeah, that's all they do is sit in front of screens. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:06:49] Actually, all that screen time we gave him by being bad parents, we're actually good parents because he was able to sit in front of the screen. He was so happy because he's seen Mom and Dad do Zoom calls, and now he's doing them, too, so he feels like he's growing up. He's happy. It was an inspiration to me. Let's try to get rid of our preconceived notions, and let's be open to this. It was good. He did his homework. He learned some stuff. That's all we can ask for, especially in kindergarten. Now, for the older kids, I think it's a little bit harder because there's academic stuff they've got to learn. If he were in second, or third grade, I'd be a little more concerned.
 
David Leary: [00:07:25] The school districts are kind of, "We'll either Google ..." There's Google School, or whatever they call it, or it's the Microsoft Teams platform. That's kind of the two platforms all the school districts and schools are using. You're either in one or the other. Really, now, thinking about it, after experiencing that virtual world at the Boomer conference, why are they not using that for these kids? They could go and play and goof around a little bit in an area; they could pretend to go outside with their friends; they'd get to sit at a table and talk to their friends only. It just seems to make so much more sense.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:07:55] Yeah, actually, that's a great idea.
 
David Leary: [00:07:57] They should just create a virtual school. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:07:58] Yeah. 
 
David Leary: [00:07:58] Why is nobody doing that? It would be ... Actually, if I had to guess, the kids would embrace that way better than accountants and bookkeepers would.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:08:06] You're right, actually. That's a brilliant idea. All those kids of a certain age, like eight through 12, who are playing Minecraft ... The whole 3-D virtual world is completely natural to them- 
 
David Leary: [00:08:17] Yeah, and they could sit a table with your friends [crosstalk] at the table, and you instantly get a microphone connection. You can talk to them, and you can walk away. Maybe there's areas outside, and it's got guns and ... You know, all the typical video-game stuff, right? [crosstalk] 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:08:30] Guns? Yeah ... That's one of the things that we don't have in virtual school that I think is a good thing, right? 
 
David Leary: [00:08:36] Okay, but you know what I mean. There's other stuff ... There's things to do. I don't know. It's just interesting ...
 
Blake Oliver: [00:08:39] Yes. 
 
David Leary: [00:08:39] The schools are basically putting- they're turning kids into little corporate worlds. "We're on Microsoft Teams, and all your work is in here; upload your documents here." Then, in the meantime, we're doing conferences with us playing in a Fortnite environment. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:08:55] If you think about it, really, going virtual is forcing the schools to adapt to the new world of work. The traditional education where you sit at a desk and you have a bell that rings every hour is based on the factory model. It was designed to teach children to be good little factory workers someday. That no longer exists, so teaching them to be good remote workers on Zoom and collaborate asynchronously using Google Classroom, that's what we do as workers, so why wouldn't they be doing it as students?
 
David Leary: [00:09:25] That's right, so we're training them early now. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:09:26] Anyway ... 
 
David Leary: [00:09:26] We should probably get to the news, huh?
 
Blake Oliver: [00:09:29] Let me go through my highlights. BigCommerce and Intuit - Intuit tried to buy BigCommerce, but then they went public. That was really crazy. What else do I got? Oh, we have to talk about the Trump payroll-tax deferral. We kinda skipped that last week because it had just happened, but I wanna talk about that, and the executive action there, and the questions that accountants have. We should talk about some fraud stories. I got some follow-up on Wirecard. Also, the NRA is now involved in a lawsuit about financial fraud.
 
David Leary: [00:09:57] I got fraud. We have Michael Mann, and MyPayrollHR back in the news. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:10:01] Yes! 
 
David Leary: [00:10:01] The one I think that doesn't fit in, but it does fit in - TikTok. Everybody wants to ban TikTok. Well, not everybody, but Trump wants to ban TikTok. I don't know why- I'm trying to understand why Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is weighing in on this. He officially went on CNBC, and he came out against the social media sharing app. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:10:24] Really? What was his argument?
 
David Leary: [00:10:27] Well, he said that President Trump has decided it cannot be allowed to go on as it's been. I get it, fine, if Trump's administration and Trump wants to go after it, but I just don't know where the Treasury fits into this.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:10:37] The reason that the Trump administration is concerned with TikTok is because - and this is a legitimate concern - the app is owned by a Chinese company, and it aggressively collects data on American citizens, when you load TikTok ... There have been people who have said ... Before all of this happened, independent security researchers were saying, "Do not install TikTok because it is mining your data worse than Facebook, even ..." 
 
David Leary: [00:11:05] And it's owned, basically, arguably, by the Chinese Communist Party, essentially ... 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:11:08] Right, because ... Maybe that's a little aggressive way to put it, but every company in China that's big enough, if the Chinese government asked them for data, they're gonna give it to them, right? It's an authoritarian country. So, yeah, that's a big concern, and that's legit. The Treasury Department has a Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., and that is the committee that has the power - an incredible amount of power - to force a business to either stop doing business in the U.S., like a foreign business, or to be sold, like this Microsoft situation.
 
David Leary: [00:11:42] So, this does roll up to him, then. He does have some say and control over this. Okay. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:11:45] Yeah, it's a committee in his department that has the power to regulate foreign businesses like this. They can basically force TikTok to either stop doing business or to sell. It's a national security thing [crosstalk] 
 
David Leary: [00:11:59] -Mnuchin, and the SBA, as well, didn't jump on TikTok to communicate and release everything about all those PPP guidance things they keep releasing on Friday nights. They could've just done it on TikTok.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:12:10] Yeah, exactly. Right? You wanna talk about app news? 
 
David Leary: [00:12:12] Yeah, why not? There's a lot. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:12:14] So, we talked last week about how Intuit has agreed to purchase TradeGecko, the Singapore e-commerce company, but apparently before that, they were going after BigCommerce. This was a report in CNBC; that's where I saw it first. BigCommerce just went public. They had their IPO. They're an e-commerce platform that targets a lot of medium-sized businesses. They've kind of gone upmarket since they started as a small-business e-commerce platform. I guess the big news out of the IPO was that they just popped way up from their initial price- 
 
David Leary: [00:12:54] They were up 200%.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:12:55] Intuit, I guess, tried to buy them before that, right?
 
David Leary: [00:12:58] Yeah, tried to buy them. It looked like some internal leaders at BigCommerce did wanna take the deal, but the founder really pushed- or the CEO pushed against it and took the big gamble because if Shopify is out there ... Shopify has been kind of the darling over the last four years. Combined with the amazing run Shopify has had on Wall Street, and then combine that with so many more people, because of the pandemic, are shopping online, he really took the bet and said, "You know what? We're gonna go and IPO instead."
 
Blake Oliver: [00:13:26] I bet he and the other investors are really glad they did that, because the market cap, as of at the close of the market on Friday, August 14, was over $5 billion. So, it's now valued at 45 times revenue and Intuit's offer of $1.5 billion was only 11 times revenue. They basically made four times as much money versus the acquisition, on paper anyway.
 
David Leary: [00:13:52] Yeah. The more I'd like to think about ... Intuit's sniffing in this a little bit, looking at BigCommerce and trying to go down that path. It really strikes me with what Hector Garcia- he sent me a text, or a Facebook message, four or five weeks ago, like this whole concept of Shopify buying an accounting platform, and specifically FreshBooks, because they're both neighbors, essentially ... Then you start thinking about how big Shopify is now. They're 20 times bigger than BigCommerce, and they're still growing faster than BigCommerce.
 
[00:14:21] It really is like, okay, if Intuit's interested in acquiring - "Hey, we need to have a full e-commerce suite underneath our accounting app" - it makes me wonder, well, you know, obviously nobody's gonna buy Shopify, at this point, but does it make sense for Shopify to buy an accounting system? This just keeps ... Every day, it's constantly in my head; at least once a day, I think about it. That's gonna be game-changing if that happens.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:14:47] Your theory is Intuit is worried about a threat from Shopify expanding into accounting, since it already handles pretty much everything else for e-commerce sellers. That's why Intuit is interested in BigCommerce. Didn't achieve that, but it got TradeGecko. Even if they don't integrate it into QuickBooks, it's a good investment because e-commerce is growing so much right now. Shopify, by the way, is bigger than Intuit. I don't know if people realize that. In terms of market cap, Shopify is at $119 billion, and Intuit's around $80 billion. Put that in perspective. I don't think most accountants are aware of just how massive Shopify is now.
 
David Leary: [00:15:26] Yeah, Shopify is starting to become a threat to Amazon. That's how big Shopify is, at this point. They probably look at BigCommerce and laugh now, maybe, because they used to be kind of identical, and they were almost at equal footing before. Shopify has just completely taken off. I think a lot of this comes down to, especially Intuit's motivation, owning the customer. Whoever owns the customer is gonna win.
 
[00:15:48] If the customer is spending 12 hours a day inside of Shopify running their business, they're not in front of Intuit. They might still use QuickBooks; they might be a QuickBooks customer, but ultimately, they're not spending their time there, which means now you can't push a loan product on them. Shopify loans is gonna be more successful. Shopify will have a bank. This is all about owning the customer. You're seeing that Intuit is really- every time you turn around, they're buying another app from the ecosystem.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:16:12] Right. You wanna be a business management platform, not an accounting platform, because-
 
David Leary: [00:16:16] Or a bank, yeah. You don't wanna be a bank either.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:16:18] Yeah, you don't wanna be a bank. Well, let's talk about banking. Square is continuing to push into this banking world. In their Cash app - the app that you can use to, as a consumer, pay people money, get paid - they now have a feature that allows users to borrow up to $200. I can, in the app, borrow 200 bucks and then pay it back over time, like a payday loan- 
 
David Leary: [00:16:43] It's exactly a payday loan. You can get as little as $20.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:16:47] It's about 60% APR, if you work out the fees, but that is lower than your average payday loan-
 
David Leary: [00:16:54] Which there, I think, pushing the 300% range, right? 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:16:55] I think with this low amount of $200, they're testing the waters. They could easily offer more, and they know so much about their users - they see the whole payment history - they could probably very easily increase that amount. Then, like you said last week, they're are also going into the business. They're gonna start letting people use Cash app for business transactions.
 
David Leary: [00:16:55] Yep. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:17:16] People have been doing it informally, but now it's gonna be formally business. I think, then, why not let people borrow $2,000, $20,000, depending on their credit worthiness, right?
 
David Leary: [00:17:25] Oh, I can see the connection to that. Really, if you look at ... There's an Australian startup called Afterpay that's starting to roll out in the U.S. Essentially, it's finance. You wanna buy that fancy guitar, Blake, and you go there to the guitar shop to buy it, but it costs $2,000. They offer, "Hey, you can Afterpay," and somehow, you use Afterpay to pay for it, and then you have a loan [crosstalk] 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:17:47] Installment payments, right? 
 
David Leary: [00:17:49] Kind of installment payments, yeah, but the way it's done, it's done at the point of sale, almost instantly. I haven't seen it, or used it, but it totally makes sense. You're gonna go to pay for something at a Square cash register. It's gonna be expensive, and boom, your Square app's gonna give you the option to finance it instantly.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:18:06] There's a payment service that's targeted towards CPA firms that I've seen that does this, where you can offer your customers the ability to pay in installments, and they'll take on the risk of this. This is like a big popular thing for big purchases. I can't remember the name of that. What is that app? 
 
David Leary: [00:18:22] It's QuickFee. They sponsored us, if you remember, before, when they came to the U.S.[crosstalk] Essentially what they do is instead of you having to create an installment agreement with your client and keep track and get them to finish paying you and chase the money, QuickFee will just give you the money and then they'll handle chasing that down and set up the payment structure with the client. Yeah, QuickFee's very specifically focused on accountants, and I think they're going after lawyers a little bit. The Cash app, and these types of services are really for retail, right there at point of purchase. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:18:53] On the same line of thinking with the apps becoming banks, Gusto sent me transactions       mail. It's a feature called Cash Reserve. I had to actually log in to Gusto to see what this looked like, to see the information about it. It is a feature where an employee can choose to have a percentage or set amount withheld from their paycheck every pay period and put into a bank account that Gusto manages for them with a partner bank. It is a bank called NBKC Bank, and it's FDIC-insured. They can transfer the balance into their other accounts whenever they need it. Interest of 0.45%, unlimited transfers. You can create and track personalized goals. It's called Cash Reserve.
 
David Leary: [00:19:37] All right, so I have a company; I have employees, and I've been writing them checks, and now they're like, "I really don't want checks anymore, but I don't have a bank." You could just be like, "Hey, good news! You're just gonna get an instant bank through payroll. It gonna be automatically set up for you. Here's your debit card, and you just got a bank." Every app's gonna offer a bank service here, soon, because it's all ... The APIs, the banks, Visa, MasterCard - they've all set this up in very easy ways for apps to build on top of these. So, yeah, every app is gonna have a feature of, "We'll open a bank account for you." That's my prediction - every app's gonna have a bank account. We'll stop talking about this because it won't be news soon. Every app's gonna have its own bank account built in. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:20:10] Some news from the UK: FreeAgent has launched a service called CoPilot in the UK. It looks like QuickBooks Live - an expert accountant right by your side in FreeAgent. CoPilot is a revolutionary, ordinary way of working with an accountant directly within FreeAgent. Apparently, you work with this certified accountant directly in the app. They will help you manage it and you'll get their expert advice. You're assigned a CoPilot accountant. It sounds like it's not a team approach; you actually get somebody.
 
[00:20:41] It's very, very, very cheap. For 0-2 employees, if you're a sole trader, it's like £30-£45 a month. If you're a limited company, it's £60-£75. This is really cheap. It caps out at £75 a month. I'm curious if any of the accountants in the UK who listen are threatened by this, or if it's just not something they're too worried about. It seems like really low pricing to get an accountant on demand.
 
David Leary: [00:21:09] It's interesting because I think Intuit, this week, I saw, just rolled out ... They kind of raised the level of connecting with your accountant and getting support at a higher level in QuickBooks Online. I know on Facebook, and Twitter, some people got a little upset about it, but in the grand scheme of things, even with all the news and how much Intuit's pushing QuickBooks Live, I'm really not hearing this massive exodus of people leaving their bookkeepers and accountants that they already have to go to QuickBooks Live. You're right, it might be people getting more upset about this than they really need to be. Maybe it is really a non-issue. They've definitely moved it up in the menu to make it more easier to get to.
 
[00:21:43] I have a couple more articles on apps, if you wanna jump into those; just couple of quick ones. FreshBooks is launching a mileage-tracking app, just like QuickBooks did two years ago. You can get a FreshBooks mileage-tracking app, which is interesting because that tells me FreshBooks is now ... Their sweet spot used to be a lot of people that just did professional service - I'm a website designer - things like that. This means they're starting to get people that have to do things in person more, possibly, and they need to track that mileage. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:22:10] They're expanding out. Yeah. 
 
David Leary: [00:22:12] Yep, expanding out. Routable ... Routable does B2B payments, services, and accounts payable automation type services. They just took a $16 million- they took a $12 million round, and now they've raised $16 million overall. What I thought was interesting is their quote from their founder. It's really clear where they're going. He really talks about sending 1,000 business payments a month is different than somebody sending 10,000, or 100,000. The rest of his quote's like, "Finance departments deserve the best software and support as they scale ..." It's very clear Routable's going up market, right? They're going for teams of people that need to automate thousands of bill payments a month.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:22:52] One thing that amazes me about the B2B payment space is just how much competition there is in there. It seems like there are just dozens and dozens of options for payments. Why is that? I guess it's just such a big market, right? crosstalk 
 
David Leary: [00:23:05] Maybe in the app space, though, it's not just that. I mean, forecasting and dashboard apps ... Every slice of the market has like 70 or 80 competitors. It's crazy.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:23:20] Xero has released a chart of accounts templates in Xero HQ. This is for accountants only, it looks like. So, I logged into my Xero HQ, and I saw there are now templates for C Corps, S Corps, legal, LLCs, not-for-profits, partnerships, retail, services, and sole proprietors. When I create a Xero account, I can select one of these, just like the old QuickBooks Desktop editions, right?
 
David Leary: [00:23:47] Yeah. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:23:47] I can select a chart of accounts for those industries and apply that and then customize further.
 
David Leary: [00:23:52] That's always been a best practice. You get your templates, and you have those ready to go, and you import them into QuickBooks. People have been doing this for years, but you're right, why doesn't the accounting software just provide it?
 
Blake Oliver: [00:24:03] Yes, exactly. That was one of my number-one ingredients in my secret sauce, when I had my practice, was I had some really good templates set up. We kept those in a CSV file, and we could import them into Xero, and it made things so much easier.
 
[00:24:17] The thing I don't like about this, and I hope they add it, is you can't customize this at the practice level. They're just locked in place. If you don't like them, you have to then customize them every single time for your clients. Maybe give accounting firms the ability to create a custom version of this and then have it available at the practice level for people to install. Because if they don't do that, then ultimately, we're still gonna have to do this CSV-file upload. 
 
David Leary: [00:24:40] We've talked about, in the past, Revolut. They are the online bank that kind of started in Europe and has been rolling out, and now they're starting to come to The States. They spun out. They have a business division, Revolut Business. They have now partnered with Bullet. It's accounting software, AI-powered accounting software. It's an Irish company. 
 
[00:24:57] Here it is, it's one of the new banks. They know they need accounting software, so you're starting to see ... This is another example of this, that basically they're going to help the Revolut Business customers reduce their tax bills and automate their company accounts. It's just a bank play, essentially ... It's a new bank; it's not a traditional bank, but they're making a play at accounting services-
 
Blake Oliver: [00:25:21] Yeah. I wonder how Revolut is doing in the pandemic, because I spotted a story this week about how their losses tripled in 2019 due to their rapid expansion. They had a loss of $139.6 million (£106.5 million) for the year ending December 31, which is up significantly from 2018.
 
David Leary: [00:25:44] It was hard to read those articles. They just blame everything on growth, so it's hard to know, is this a real issue that they're down, or is it just they're growing in too many different directions too fast, and it's just blowing money. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:25:55] The data is so stale. I guess this is because of the pandemic that we're only getting this 2019 financial information in August. 
 
David Leary: [00:26:03] Three times, I kept going back and looking at the article - is this really an article from this week? I did that three times on the news. Okay, good, it's not just me who questioned that. We talked a little bit about OnDeck getting acquired last week, and there was a hint, or rumor, or something about Kabbage. It looks like American Express now is definitely in advanced talks to buy Kabbage for just under $1 billion. American Express would then become a huge lender to mom-and-pop shops. They already are the largest U.S. provider for credit cards at those same shops. Basically, you get your business credit card from Amex, and now, you start taking loans from them.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:26:40] Interesting, interesting.
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Blake Oliver: [00:27:58] Well, that's it for app news. Let's talk about politics, David. Let's talk about economics, payroll tax, the Trump executive actions. As our listeners undoubtedly know, Congress has been at a stalemate over further stimulus. They can't come to an agreement on unemployment. They can't come to an agreement on bailouts for states. Nothing. They're just stuck. So, President Trump issued executive actions that have been controversial, to say the least. There is the unemployment-insurance executive action, where he has reallocated money from the pandemic to provide $300 in additional weekly benefits, if the states also contribute $100. 
 
[00:28:44] So, there's that, but the big issue I wanna talk about is the payroll-tax deferral. Starting September 1, in 15 days - we're still a very hazy on the details - employees are going to have the option to defer their payroll taxes until some unspecified date. That is how this executive action is working. It's not actually cutting the payroll tax. It's just saying to the Treasury Department, and the IRS, "Allow employees to not pay their payroll tax." They'll still owe it because the President doesn't have the power, according to the Constitution, to just cut a tax. Congress has to do that. He can change, though, the collection date. So, it's just gonna be deferred indefinitely and then collected at some later date.
 
[00:29:27] I guess the strategy here is that Congress will then decide to forgive this, and actually cut the tax, and people won't have to pay it back. What if they don't do that? Employers are worried. The Wall Street Journal had an article about how employers are wary that they could be on the hook for these payroll taxes because employers are on the hook for uncollected employee payroll taxes. It's a huge liability. If you don't do it, you can be personally held responsible, and it can follow you forever as a business owner. So, the question is, what's gonna happen if an employee leaves the company, or gets terminated, or something? Anything? Who's gonna be on the hook for paying these taxes? 
 
[00:30:10] There's questions about then are they gonna have to pay it back, because there's actually not a deadline. The AICPA sent a letter on Wednesday asking Assistant Treasury Secretary David Kautter, and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig to provide guidance to address these concerns. Who's an eligible employee? Does the $4,000 limit apply separately to each employer of an employee, or is it collective because if it's collective, I don't know how they're supposed to figure that out? [crosstalk] How are the employees gonna pay back those taxes? It's a huge, ambiguous mess, and it's all supposed to start in two weeks.
 
David Leary: [00:30:41] So, instead of an employee taking initiative, getting a W-4 form, and saying that they have 99 dependents, and turning that in, and then basically getting no taxes withheld from their paycheck, they're making this to where, from a media and marketing play, now employees are just gonna go to their employers and be like, "I don't wanna pay taxes," and employers are gonna be like, "All right, I guess I'll off, or I'll change it to zero every week on your paycheck." Ultimately, you're right, if there's not another ruling, you're just kicking the can down the road, and you're gonna have to owe those taxes when you file at the end of the year.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:31:11] Right. If Congress doesn't act to forgive this, then the tax is still owed. Then, there's the question of, well, are we gonna be in this situation, around Christmas time, when employees don't get a check because they haven't been paying payroll taxes, and now, it's all got to be paid back all at once? Again, the big question is who's on the hook for the taxes, if something happens to that employee, if they leave? Who is going to pay back these taxes? Is the employer gonna be held responsible? Because that's the way the law is, right now, is employers are responsible for withholding this tax and remitting it to the government.
 
[00:31:44] Just the implementation of this ... I feel so sorry for two groups of people. One, the accountants who are manually doing this for their clients because there's a lot of firms that still do payroll, and they do it the traditional way, calculating it, and doing all the forms. I feel bad for them; or there's business owners who do that still. Then, the payroll services - the ADPs, the Paychex, the Gustos, the Ripplings - have to figure out, suddenly, in a very short amount of time, how to put in a mechanism for employees to opt into this, for employers to opt into this, for the taxes to be deferred, for that to be tracked, for it to be repaid. I mean, what a disaster this is gonna be.
 
David Leary: [00:32:29] Well, I mean, ultimately, this is a bigger disaster of our leadership in D.C. If you really step back and look at this, this is just small businesses being stuck in the middle of this-
 
Blake Oliver: [00:32:38] Battle! 
 
David Leary: [00:32:38] -pandemic relief. Now, they can't come to an agreement because the pandemic bill has all this other stuff in it. There was an article in Politico about the Paycheck Protection Program. There's some small revisions that they think everybody agrees on, in the Paycheck Protection Program, they wanna put in, but it's stuck in the middle of this stupid, bigger bill. The small business owners aren't getting the relief they need and the guidance they need.
 
[00:33:02] The same thing with this, right? Because of them having a stalemate, Trump does executive order, and then small business owners are now caught in that. Things like the automatic grant - essentially, if a PPP loan is under $150,000 - they pretty much agree on that. That's just stuck in this bigger discussion. The Democrats want a $3 billion package- 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:33:22] Yeah, they're at like $3.5 billion, and the Republicans are at $1 billion, and they can't meet in the middle. It's like they can't ... One of the big sticking points is that relief for state governments, and they're not getting anywhere.
 
David Leary: [00:33:36] The one thing they're all in agreement on, a little bit, is the PPP stuff, and they can't get that out the door because it's stuck now in all the other stuff. So, again, small business owners are getting screwed. Not only that, the banks are very aware of this now. Some of the banks are discouraging clients from rushing to file their applications, even though the SBA started accepting the applications on Monday.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:33:55] Oh, yeah. 
 
David Leary: [00:33:55] Vice President, or Vice Chairman Cynthia Blankenship of Bank of the West, she said they are, "Encouraging our customers to wait for any possible Congressional action that might streamline the forgiveness process." So, they just are basically telling their customers, "Don't apply for forgiveness."
 
Blake Oliver: [00:34:10] I'm saying to everyone, "Just wait as long as possible to do this because it's gonna change, and you don't wanna have done all this work and then have to redo it."
 
David Leary: [00:34:19] Can you refresh my memory on one thing here? So, there's article on CNBC, and it's talking about how owners that took the PPP loan and the $10,000 emergency loan grant, the EIDL? 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:34:28] Yeah. 
 
David Leary: [00:34:28] Apparently, that $10,000 goes against your PPP loan. It's not like you get your PPP loan, and you get another 10-grand forgivable, right? You can't combine the whole thing ... I think from day one, it's always been like that, but the way this article ... It's acting like this is a surprise to small business owners now. I feel like if any communications about these two loans have been clear, it's you can't have both. One's gonna offset the other one. Apparently, small business owners now are confused by this. The article's really written up like this is some sort of surprise being popped on everybody now.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:35:04] Well, you know, this stuff's complicated. I mean, maybe it doesn't seem that way if you've been living it like we have, but if you're a small business owner, you're not listening to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. If you are, that's great. Thank you for listening. But most aren't, right? It's just not- they're not interested in the technical details of compliance and all this stuff. It's way too complicated.
 
[00:35:24] What else do we got here in the politics world? The Trump administration is urging delisting of U.S.-listed Chinese firms that fail to meet audit standards. David, you know, I don't agree with the Trump administration on a lot of stuff, but I'm on board with this. This is really interesting. We talked about Luckin Coffee, that massive $300 million fraud - at least that - in China with that startup that was challenging Starbucks, and it turned out that they were faking $300 million in revenue with essentially what were gift cards that never got used or were never even sold.
 
[00:35:56] Well, part of the reason that kind of stuff happens is because audit requirements in China are not nearly as strict as they are here. So, the Trump administration is saying if you wanna be listed on a U.S. stock exchange, and you're a Chinese company, you need to submit to inspection by U.S. regulators. The idea being, hey, let's actually make sure that companies are on equal footing. U.S. companies have to abide by GAAP. Chinese companies should have to do so as well and have rigorous audits. I thought that was really interesting. Big news in the international audit world, if that actually comes to be.
 
David Leary: [00:36:30] That's ultimately the problem, and we can transition over to Wirecard, right? 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:36:33] Yeah, let's talk about fraud. 
 
David Leary: [00:36:33] I don't know if it was completely like a lack of standards, but it was a lack of quality auditing. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:36:41] Oh, yeah. They didn't even bother to do bank confirmations. The most basic audit technique in the book is send a letter to the bank, make sure that those accounts are real, and the amounts are accurate, as of the date of the financial statements. They didn't even do that.
 
David Leary: [00:36:55] So, just like Trump's saying that those companies can't be listed on a U.S. exchange, the DAX Index, which is like the German blue-chip index, they happened to have made a ruling, now. They're gonna start taking out insolvent companies out of that; so, they're gonna be dropped from the DAX Index; Wirecard will be. Did you see the other Wirecard news? 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:37:11] Well, there's quite a bit that I've saved up because we haven't talked about it for a few weeks. Maybe you're gonna talk about this, Jan Marsalek, he has fled to Russia. Did we talk about this?
 
David Leary: [00:37:20] He was missing, but now you've tracked him down, Blake? 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:37:23] Well, I mean, I didn't track him down, but this newsletter that I subscribe to tracked him down, apparently. He was thought to have been in the Philippines. That is not true. Apparently, they were faking that so they could find out if he had an Interpol record, which would get him arrested at the border. This is all speculation, but after he had somebody run an immigration check in the Philippines, he went to Russia. Apparently, he has brought significant sums of money into the country in the form of bitcoin from Dubai, and he's hiding out in Russia with the help of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency. He's got a private house in Moscow and stuff. Now, Interpol is trying to find him and get him out of Russia, but good luck with that, right?
 
David Leary: [00:38:05] Well, in the article I had, he's now on Interpol's Red Notice list. He is one of the most wanted criminals by Interpol.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:38:11] That's amazing. By the way, the reason this guy is so wanted, he's the COO who was in charge of the third-party relationships that are at the heart of the $2 billion fraud. He's only 40 years old. He joined the company when he was 20, and he's been there the whole time; made it up to COO, as they grew. He has this reputation for just dropping insane amounts of money in restaurants. He sounds like a typical tech-
 
David Leary: [00:38:36] Well, it's not tech. It's a typical criminal. All these guys. It's all the same thing. You hear about these crazy cocaine parties they were doing. They steal this money and they just go crazy. Here's your conspiracy hat. Another former executive of Wirecard, who lived in the Philippines - younger guy; he's 44 years old - he conveniently died July 27, in the hospital in the Philippines, due to natural causes-
 
Blake Oliver: [00:39:03] Yeah, right.
 
David Leary: [00:39:04] -just conveniently. Basically, him and his wife ran a tour bus company and another company called PayEasy. They were involved in some of this moving the money around stuff. They're tied to this, even though he downplayed it. He's like, "I don't have any influence. I'm on the board. I don't do any of the day-to-day management." They're part of the investigation. I just find it interesting; you know, he just happens to die of natural causes.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:39:31] So, one last piece of string to add to our Board of Conspiracies around Wirecard. Visualize this:  guess who invested $1 billion last year in Wirecard.
 
David Leary: [00:39:40] Softbank?
 
Blake Oliver: [00:39:41] Yes, our favorite, Softbank. They seem to come up- in every single bad story we've got, there's a Softbank investment. I mean, either they're throwing so much money around there, in everything, or they're just making really bad decisions. So, yeah, they invested $1 billion last year, which apparently helped to quiet investor concerns about Wirecard, before the collapse. Think about this - it's a $2 billion fraud, right? $2 billion are missing, and Softbank gave them $1 billion right before this all went down, so they're on the hook for half of this. 
 
David Leary: [00:40:10] Speaking of frauds, you wanna talk about MyPayrollHR, or do we still have more Wirecard fraud?
 
Blake Oliver: [00:40:16] No, no. Let's talk about MyPayrollHR. Let's go to a relatively small fraud. What's new with our friend, Michael Mann?
 
David Leary: [00:40:22] Yeah. For those who may be new to the show, if you go back, this was last September/October timeframe, I think. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:40:29] Yep. 
 
David Leary: [00:40:29] All of a sudden, there were reports around the country that people's paychecks were being opposite-withdrawn from their bank accounts [crosstalk] -then the company pulled the paycheck back out of your bank account. This was a domino effect. The company that moved the money around, Cache Financial Services, they're the ones that would deposit the money in your bank account. They provided that service for payroll companies. They had the money taken out of their account, so they panicked and started taking it out of other people's accounts to recover their $16 million. Now, they basically had to go bankrupt, but this was all a domino tied to this one guy, Michael Mann, who had- 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:41:08] He ran a payroll service-
 
David Leary: [00:41:10] Well, that was one of his many fraudulent things. So, he had a payroll service, and it's just dominoed. He basically has committed $100 million of fraud, and the dominoes have just impacted ... The amount of people that have gone bankrupt, or had to be folded now, because of this ... He was actually in court this week, and he pled guilty. The Times Union has a really good article that breaks down the whole web of it. We don't have to cover the whole thing here. It's 12 pages of this this web and the breakdown of it, in the document.
 
[00:41:38] Essentially, it was just creating fake documents; creating bogus companies. But he had inside people at some of these other companies, and he was able to get like this 20-year-old kid ... This 20-year-old kid's probably facing a 20-year prison sentence now. He paid them off with $11,000 in Amazon gift cards. This guy's helping somebody ... Think about it. Okay, Blake, I'm gonna help you create ... I'm gonna help you cover tens of millions of dollars of fraudulent invoices. I'm gonna help you in this scheme, and I'm gonna agree to $11,000 in Amazon gift cards? Not even a million bucks? 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:42:10] Yeah, not worth the risk. Yes, definitely, you should ask for more money.
 
David Leary: [00:42:14] It's that dumb criminals thing, right? Golly! So, he's going to jail. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:42:18] Let's get on back up to larger frauds. 
 
David Leary: [00:42:22] Okay. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:42:22] I don't know if you'd heard that the NRA is being sued by the New York Attorney General. They are accused of- well, the executives; one executive in particular - CEO, Wayne LaPierre - is accused of draining $64 million from the nonprofit in just three years. Regardless of how you feel about gun rights, let's separate that. This is a not-for-profit that is supposed to advocate for people who believe in gun rights. Just setting aside the politics, they should be exercising fiduciary responsibility for this money that people are donating, right?
 
[00:42:55] Well, the accusation is that LaPierre was making a ton of personal expenses. The way he did it was he had their PR agency spend the money, buy him tickets. He went to the Bahamas on private jets. He went to Europe, all sorts of crazy stuff; like I said, $64 million, right? Then, the PR company, or the advertising agency, whatever you wanna call them, would invoice the NRA, like a one-line invoice with no detail, and the NRA would pay it.
 
[00:43:28] Just the fact that that was happening, if that, in fact, was happening - this is alleged - I mean, that just is shady. If these expenses were legitimate, then you would simply expense them as normal. You would not route them through your PR agency. That, to me, indicates that there's something shady going on here. It's kinda crazy. This is such a huge, influential organization, and it could be taken down by really what is a ... I mean, not petty, but just expense-report fraud, essentially, by the by the president of the organization. 
 
David Leary: [00:44:03] Is the NRA- are they nonprofit. I'm assuming they have a board, right? [crosstalk] 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:44:06] They're a nonprofit. That's the thing - there has been a lot of infighting, apparently, in the board. I think it was Oliver North was the president of the board, and he was forced out by LaPierre, after he pressed for an internal financial review. So, they've been arguing about this quietly, and now it has blown into public view. 
 
David Leary: [00:44:26] So, a criminal charge to that, okay ... This is not a political showing, a political hunt. They had problems internally, and now they're just coming to light to everybody else now. Interesting. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:44:39] Yeah, and the State of New York is pressing to dissolve them completely. That's how bad this could be. It could be like Trump's charity, right, where they completely dissolve them. Of course, they could just reconstitute in another state and everything, but this could look really bad for LaPierre. 
 
[00:44:50] Actually, where they could get them is the income taxes because if you benefit from personal expenses through your business- if you spend money in your business, and it's personal in nature, and not business expenses, that is personal income to you, if the business pays for it. You're supposed to report that on your taxes. If there's millions of dollars of benefit that he got, then that's income, and he didn't report it. So, he could be on the hook for tax evasion and stuff like that. That's where they end up getting these guys. 
 
[00:45:18] So, anyway, I just wanted to bring that up. I thought that was interesting. I guess the lesson here is - if you are auditing - look for these kind of things, because it's a very, I think, classic way to hide expenses, to commit fraud. You have a third party pay for something and then bill your company for it. You benefit from that payment. It's not a business expense. It looks like one, though, because your accounts payable team is getting an invoice from your PR agency that looks totally legit and they pay it.
 
David Leary: [00:45:44] Should we wrap up on an awesome feel-good story?
 
Blake Oliver: [00:45:47] Yeah, and we also have a listener voicemail that we gotta get to. 
 
David Leary: [00:45:51] Oh, yeah. Do you wanna do the voicemail first, or do that ...? 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:45:52] Let's do that voice mail. We actually have a number that you can call, and you can leave us a message. Somebody did, believe it or not, in response to the story last week about hourly billing.
 
Will Akers: [00:46:08] Hey, Blake, and David, my name is Will Akers, I am in Knoxville, Tennessee; got a couple of partners that own the firm in Knoxville with a couple-hundred clients, a few dozen employees. Just recently listening to your episode on when time-based pricing works ... Before I go into that, thanks for what you do, by the way. Love what you guys do; really entertaining, and love staying up to date with the news you guys present. 
 
[00:46:35] I just had some thoughts on this. We are a remote-based firm, cloud accounting; 99.9% in cloud-accounting software, and do everything on a recurring basis. We are more fixed fee, if you twist my arm, rather than value-based, so that's part of my voicemail, and part of my question. I just wanna ask the question of how you guys differentiate between value versus fixed fee? Because I feel like value is kind of in the eye of the beholder. 
 
[00:47:01] It kind of reminds me of squares versus rectangles, in the sense of all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. That would mean that all value-based billing is fixed fee, but all fixed-fee is not value-based. You know what I mean? [inaudible] understand where he's coming from; understand where you guys are coming from, as well. Every now and then, we run into projects where we can't possibly know how big of a dumpster fire this is, and we still try to quote it. We don't bill by the hour; we don't do any of that, but it doesn't mean that it's not right.
 
[00:47:33] Sometimes, we come across those projects and it's very scary to know, did I price it right? Anyway, this is an interesting conversation, but there could be a blurry line between value and fixed. Just really interested to see what you guys think about it, and would love to hear when to use ... Number one, how you differentiate between those two-
 
Blake Oliver: [00:47:55] Thank you so much, Will, for listening. That's a really, really great question - fixed versus value, what is the difference? David, I've got my opinions. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this.
 
David Leary: [00:48:07] I feel like in my brain, fixed is- you have packages, like, "Hey, pick one of these packages. Here's the services I'll provide you, and this is the fee." You kind of stick within that guideline. You're buying the value meal #1 at McDonald's, and you're gonna pay this much for it, and that's it.
 
[00:48:25] But I think of value pricing as, really, how much is that worth to me? If I haven't ate in three days, McDonald's could probably charge me a lot more for that value meal. It's gonna have more value. For me, when I think about quoting a value price, really trying to figure out not what my costs are- almost like, how much is it worth to them, and maybe figure out what their costs are. Well, maybe they have- if they wanna do this thing, they'd have to hire two employees on their staff. That means, right there, it's worth $200,000 to them. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:48:56] For a different company with a different cost structure, maybe that number is different. Maybe they're paying different salaries. I like, Will, what you said about all value pricing is fixed pricing, but not all fixed pricing is value pricing. I think, generally, that is true that a fixed price is we're setting the fee in advance, and we're gonna tell you the price in advance before we do the work.
 
[00:49:21] That's very different than hourly billing, where you may tell them your hourly rate, but you don't tell them what they're going to actually pay until after you have done the work and you present the bill. In some cases, people will just do the work and not even tell the client the hourly rate and then, they're really surprised. Fixed fee is you set that in advance, and generally, I think it's the same for everybody.
 
[00:49:40] That's the sort of thing where you could put it on your website. You could say, "I charge $1,000 per month for this," and everyone who comes to me pays the same price. With a value price, you don't put that on your website because it could change for every customer depending on the value that they place on it. Maybe it's the same set of services, and you give a different price to different customers based on their ability to pay, or their industry, or the value that they perceive.
 
[00:50:03] There's so many different ways you could do it, and that's what makes it so hard. Value pricing isn't always fixed in that I might attach a percentage to a value-pricing engagement where I could say, "If I increase your revenue by X dollars, I'm gonna get 2% of that, or 5% of that or something. Make it more like a- 
 
David Leary: [00:50:20] Or it could be an equity play. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:50:22] Right, equity. 
 
David Leary: [00:50:22] You could have your fixed fee for your base services you provide, but there's this whole extra stuff they really can't afford to pay you for. Maybe you exchange out equity, and you're just helping them grow through this. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:50:34] Yeah, and that's definitely not fixed. Although, I guess the percentage relationship is fixed, so I'm not sure if technically that would qualify, but yeah. That's-
 
David Leary: [00:50:42] It's still a debate. If everybody else wants to leave a voicemail on this ... 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:50:46] Yeah, let us know what you think. If you're doing value pricing effectively in your firm, let us know. I would love to hear an example of maybe a time it worked; a time it didn't work, too. Hey, I'm a big fan of value pricing, but I do agree there are times when it fails spectacularly. Let us know. What is that number, David? You have that handy?
 
David Leary: [00:51:10] Yes, the number is (202) 695-1040. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:51:11] (202) 695-1040. Give us a call. It's a Google Voice number. You can leave a message; it goes straight to voicemail. We get that as an MP3 file. We'll listen to it. It caps out at about three minutes, so do keep it ... What is the word? Pithy? Pithy is a good word. Try to keep it short and love to hear from you. If you wanna connect with us online, we're happy to do that, as well. I'm on Twitter. I am @BlakeTOliver. How about you, David?
 
David Leary: [00:51:40] And I'm @DavidLeary. I do wanna end, though, on this one feel-good story.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:51:45] Let's hear it.
 
David Leary: [00:51:45] It's arguably the best story I read this week. It's so great. This was on Going Concern. Let me ask you a question, Blake. Have you ever gotten anything from Kickstarter before, or have you ever put money into a Kickstarter? It's always like crazy things, like it's a wallet that folds six ways, and it's also a butter knife connected. It's always crazy [crosstalk] you don't need. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:52:04] Yeah. So, I've wanted to; I've been tempted to. I don't think I've ever actually done Kickstarter because I've heard of so many never delivering that I just am afraid of it.
 
David Leary: [00:52:13] I think I found one for all of us to get behind. There's an article in Going Concern, and arguably, this is one of the better Going Concern articles I've seen in a long time. They discovered this Kickstarter project and they give the background story on it. There's so many little things I love about this story. So, Dave Lemke, they describe him as a public accounting grunt. When he started a few years ago at his Big Four job, they gave him a laptop. What do laptops- what are they missing? 10-key. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:52:41] Oh, yeah, 10-keys. Yes, a lot of them-
 
David Leary: [00:52:43] You don't have a 10-key. Nobody has a 10-key basically on their laptop, right? You either take out an old keyboard, plug it in your computer- you can buy an external 10-key pad. He just was upset with it and he realized, "I'm an Excel all day." So, he designed, on a piece of paper, a 10-key for everything he needs to do for his job. Just by dumb luck, his brother was good with the 3-D printer, and they built a keyboard. They actually LemKey, L-E-M-K-E-Y. Remember, his last name was Lemke. He just happened to have a name - key - in this thing.
 
[00:53:18] So, what he basically did is he ... You can do everything from this. You have your dollar sign, your equal sign, so that way you can start your 'if' statements right from your 10-key. F2 and Escape, so you can get in and out of cells. He has an Alt key on it, so you can [inaudible] access to other tools, and switch tabs, and change ... You never have to use your left hand [crosstalk] you just use your 10-key. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:53:36] It's an improvement on the 10-key that would, by default, come with my keyboard because it's designed for accountants.
 
David Leary: [00:53:43] That's correct.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:53:44] Oh ... Cool. 
 
David Leary: [00:53:45] It even has the section symbol on Windows, so you can set tax codes. It's everything you need to do, as an accountant, or bookkeeper, in a 10-key.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:53:55] Well, David, I think that we should help support this Kickstarter as the podcast because it's got like $6,500 pledged of a $10,000 goal. 92 backers, 27 days to go.
 
David Leary: [00:54:07] Well, here's the best part - you can get it branded. You can put your own logo. We could have Cloud Accounting Podcast 10-keys. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:54:11] Oh, that's awesome. 
 
David Leary: [00:54:11] I think I'm gonna order one because I've been kicking around the idea of having a 10-key anyways. This actually makes so much sense to be able to have this.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:54:23] That's awesome. 
 
David Leary: [00:54:23] It's almost in a way ... You can get those separate gaming 10-keys now, for gamers, and they're ergonomic. We're in an environment, building something like this and getting it out to market's not hard. It's just nobody's ever considered the needs of accountants, or bookkeepers. A 10-key, we would probably be number-one consumer of the 10-key functionality.
 
Blake Oliver: [00:54:40] So, if you wanna support this Kickstarter, you can find it on Kickstarter. It's the LemKey 10-Key, and the link will be in the show notes. 
 
David Leary: [00:54:50] As soon as we get done recording here, I'm gonna go on, and put in my credit card, and buy one. 
 
Blake Oliver: [00:54:54] Sounds great. David, so good to talk to you as usual. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I'll see you here next week. 
 
David Leary: [00:55:00] Bye. 
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Creators & Guests

Host
Blake Oliver
Founder and CEO of Earmark CPE
Host
David Leary
President and Founder, Sombrero Apps Company

What is The Accounting Podcast?

The Accounting Podcast (formerly the Cloud Accounting Podcast) is the world's #1 accounting, bookkeeping, and tax podcast! Join us weekly for a roundup of accounting news, analysis, and interviews. Plus, earn free NASBA-approved CPE credits for listening with the Earmark app. Learn more at https://earmarkcpe.com.