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Why AICPA's 12-point plan won't solve the CPA crisis; Earnings reports from Intuit, Sage, and Xero; Ramp adds AI features to spend management platform; why grads are ditching jobs at the Big Four; 70% of Gen Z employees would switch jobs for better tech, and more!
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Chapters
- (00:00) - IRS Loses $10 Billion In Debt Ceiling Deal & Proof ChatGPT Massively Increases Productivity
- (00:52) - Welcome to the show
- (04:52) - Potential debt-ceiling deal cuts IRS funding by $10 billion
- (07:38) - Chat GPT made workers 37% faster at completing tasks
- (11:44) - Accounting Today has ChatGPT retake the CPA exam
- (16:36) - Number of people taking accountancy exams drops to lowest level in 17 years
- (19:23) - WSJ article on the accounting industry’s low starting pay problem
- (23:35) - The AICPA's 12-point plan to solve the accountant shortage
- (35:13) - Thetab.com article on why grads are ditching jobs at Big Four firms
- (38:13) - Update on the IRS's Free File tax system
- (41:18) - Let's talk about the Intuit earnings call
- (46:38) - Sage had their earnings call
- (48:43) - Ramp announces "Ramp Intelligence"
- (53:31) - Employee satisfaction reached an all-time high last year
- (55:33) - Gen Z employees would change jobs for better tech
- (01:01:34) - Wrap up and where to reach us. See you at AICPA Engage!
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Show Notes
New MIT Research Shows Spectacular Increase In White Collar Productivity From ChatGPT – JOSH BERSIN
ChatGPT retakes CPA Exam as v4.0, passes | Accounting Today
AICPA Council approves CPA pipeline plan | Accounting Today
70% of Gen Z Employees Say They Would Switch Jobs for Better Tech: Weekly Stat
AICPA details plans to boost CPA pipeline | Accounting Today
Overworked and underpaid: Why grads are ditching jobs at the Big Four
The Future of AI in Finance is Here | Ramp Intelligence
Numbers taking US accountancy exams drop to lowest level in 17 years | Financial Times
Avii Announces Significant Uplifts to Financial Modules In Avii ...
Overworked and underpaid: Why grads are ditching jobs at the Big Four
Sage Intact Launches Native AP Bill Automation to Cut Down on ...
Intuit Inc. (INTU) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Intuit (INTU) Reports Q3 Earnings: What Key Metrics Have to Say
ChatGPT retakes CPA Exam as v4.0, passes
Xero reports 28% year-over-year growth https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/xero-reports-28-year-over-year-growth
Pentagon Says Accounting Mistake Leaves U.S. With $3 Billion ...
AICPA details plans to boost the CPA pipeline
AICPA releases expanded plan for addressing CPA pipeline ...
IRS to pilot free tax prep system in January
Why Graduates Aren't Hot on Accounting Careers: Low Starting Pay ...
Software giant Sage strikes deal for US construction platform Corecon
Plan to accelerate talent pipeline solutions | Resources
QuickBooks Connect Returning to Las Vegas in 2023
AICPA Council approves CPA pipeline plan
Intuit's (INTU) Q3 Earnings Beat Expectations, Sales Miss (Revised)
The Sage Group plc (SGGEF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Financial results announcements | Sage Investor Relations
Sage Group 1H Revenue Beat Consensus as Underlying ARR Rose -- Earnings Review
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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.
Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!
Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] I mean, what do you think is the number one reason that people don't want to go into accounting? If you ask me, just based on what I've observed from talking to people and looking at forums online, it's the work environment, right? It's the low pay for the long hours and the really hard work. And honestly, a lot of people in big firms who are just total jerks to work for. Right. Hello and welcome to the Cloud Accounting podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.
David Leary: [00:00:38] And I'm David Leary.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:39] And we are coming to you live from the OnPay recording studio for another episode this week. We're doubling it up because we spent so much time talking about GPT and AI with Ashley Francis that we needed to get to the news. Totally worth it. Spending all the time with her. Check out that episode. She is on the cutting edge of GPT and AI as a tax practitioner, so don't miss it. David, good to see you again.
David Leary: [00:01:04] Good. We delayed it day, right, because it was breaking news that happened last night. We were sleeping.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:09] That's right. The politicians in Washington have been busy and we have a debt ceiling deal. Thank god. Man was starting to get worried. You know, like, can we just stop doing this? Can we just figure out a way not to have to do this every year, it feels like. But the good news is we do have a debt ceiling deal and there is a tie in to accounting, which is that the IRS funding, that extra $80 billion took a little hit in the deal. They are losing $10 billion of that funding. It is now going back into non-defense discretionary spending. And there was a question on Twitter.
David Leary: [00:01:47] Okay. So so the agreement to make this happen, one of the concessions was you got to cut some of the IRS budget.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:54] Well, yeah, because that's been hugely unpopular. And so the Republicans have been saying, we got to take this away. Right. We don't want all those IRS agents with guns. And so this is a concession that will allow them to go to their base and say, look, we we got back some of that money. Now, it's not is this.
David Leary: [00:02:12] A concession that was like rumored to be on the table or is this something that was like. Because like, where's the where are people trying to fight against this? I feel like this is like a total surprise to me.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:24] I think it just it was just part of these negotiations and, you know, it wasn't like part of the big national discussion. Yeah. I mean, um, yeah. So the question on Twitter was, is this going to affect the money that was allocated for enforcement versus for IRS services? And the answer is we don't really know because the original bill that gave the IRS the $80 billion, the extra 80 billion over ten years, while it said where Congress would like the money to be spent, it didn't actually require the IRS to do exactly that. The IRS still has discretion to do whatever it wants With the $80 billion, they can spend it on enforcement, it can spend it on services. It can do whatever it wants. So now they've got 70 billion to play with. So it's not actually, in my opinion, going to affect any of the enforcement that IRS wants to do, because if they really want to do enforcement, they could just take the money out of other stuff. Right. They can reallocate however they want. So the political messaging will be this is coming out of enforcement. In reality, it's going to be whatever the IRS wants it to be.
David Leary: [00:03:36] And and really, it's like the last year and a half of this decade of funding.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:41] Well, yeah. And and I don't even think they were going to be able to spend it all anyway because there just aren't enough accountants to hire. Yeah, right. The the plan to hire, you know, tens of thousands of agents like they haven't even been able to meet their existing hiring targets. So, you know, I wouldn't worry about this. Right. But it does take some of the pressure, I think, off of the IRS and that the Republicans did score a win. So good for them. Now, the question is whether McCarthy will actually be able to get his party to pass the debt ceiling extension. But it would be kind of crazy if they didn't because it would be a massive recession. Right? That would be the result of a debt crisis in the US. I think everybody agrees on that. So that's the good news for our Memorial Day weekend.
David Leary: [00:04:31] Well, we have some other news from the Pentagon and accounting mistakes. So apparently the Pentagon discovered there's an accounting mistake. We actually have $3 Million more to spend on Ukraine.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:45] How did they, like lose track of $3 billion, David?
David Leary: [00:04:50] Well, this is the Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh said in a statement. Quote unquote, In some cases, replacement costs rather than net book value was used, therefore overestimating the value of equipment drawn down from US stocks, end quote.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:06] What replacement value as opposed to book value was used.
David Leary: [00:05:10] So let's say we bought an F-16 for $40 million a decade ago. Okay. It's probably been depreciating it. And so now it has a book value, right? We're going to give them that F-16. And before they were calculated at $40 Million, now they're going to calculate it at 12 or whatever the book value is. And look at all this extra money we have now. We can give them more things.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:31] It's just all accounting maneuvers. Yes.
David Leary: [00:05:35] Yeah. But the crazy thing about this is if we're going to want to replace this jet for ourselves, so it's actually it's not actually any extra money. It's just a game. Right?
Blake Oliver: [00:05:47] Right. It's not cash. It's just on their balance sheet. But I mean, does it really matter? Because I don't think like the Pentagon. Right. The Pentagon never passed an audit before. They've never completed one. It's still like most of the money that goes in is just in a black box, right?
David Leary: [00:06:07] Well, they well, yeah, yeah. Historically, like the Government Accounting Office is just like reported military accounting problems forever. But if you think about this, though, the Pentagon has earmarked 44 billion in military aid to the Ukraine. And, you know, yeah, we're talking for the IRS 70, 70 billion now for a decade.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:29] It's like and they've spent how much on Ukraine?
David Leary: [00:06:32] 44 billion.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:33] Wow. And that's what and how long has this been going on? Like a year.
David Leary: [00:06:36] That's what they earmarked. That's what they earmarked.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:38] Okay. Wow. That's amazing. Puts things in perspective. 44 billion in a year. Well, that includes future appropriations. Like is like. That's what their budget is.
David Leary: [00:06:50] Yeah, it says it's been earmarked. Right.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:52] Okay.
David Leary: [00:06:53] And that's since since February 2022. Wow. But but look, now they can crank it up to 47 billion with this extra 3 billion because of the accounting games. But but but then why not just change the book value down to a dollar and you could give them everything. We could give them our entire 100% of our every every piece of military equipment we own. Well.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:18] I don't know how to pivot from that to what else I want to talk about. So I'm just going to do a hard pivot here, David, and I'm going to talk about a little bit about ChatGPT And this study that I saw. New MIT research shows spectacular increase in white collar productivity from ChatGPT. The results ChatGPT made. White collar workers. 37% faster at completing tasks 17 minutes to complete versus 27 minutes with roughly similar grades level of quality. And as the workers repeated their tasks for improvement, the ChatGPT group's quality went up significantly faster. In other words, ChatGPT did make work speedier, with no sacrifice in quality and then made it easier to improve work quickly using the tool.
David Leary: [00:08:08] So I have a question Is this real work or is this an experiment they did in a college campus, in a in a lab where people had some tasks and some people had. Or is this like real observations of real work? Because I just don't know if that many white collar people are using ChatGPT yet.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:26] So. So this was 444 white collar workers and they had them do writing and editing tasks along the lines of marketing, grant writing, data analysis and human resources.
David Leary: [00:08:37] So it's pretend work. Okay. Just wanted to make sure.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:40] Yeah, I mean.
David Leary: [00:08:41] It's fake.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:41] Work. Yeah. You can't really have them do real work for a study, but it's, it's similar to the kind of work that people might do in real life. Yeah. And so the chart is, is pretty cool to look at this figure one and they show the time taken decreasing between the the group that had ChatGPT they call that the treated group and then they had the control group and you can see the line on the treated group the the AI powered group just the time went way down like and the average grades increased and then the time distribution these green bars show that, you know, the the folks who got to use AI were able to complete the tasks significantly faster on average than the control group.
David Leary: [00:09:28] I mean, it makes sense even if even if all you do is eliminate your first rough draft because ChatGPT can create it in 11 seconds for you. Yeah. And you can just start from there, your hours ahead of somebody else just getting even if it's a crappy rough draft, you're still hours ahead because it would take you hours to write a crappy rough draft. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:50] And I just got access to plug ins as we were talking about in the last episode. So now I can connect ChatGPT to Wolfram Alpha, which is a calculator and statistical engine. I can connect it to kayak to book travel. I'm going to be experimenting with that. I can connect it to Zapier. And once you connect it to Zapier, you could do all sorts of things. And one of the things that I've set it up to do is create drafts in my Gmail account. So now I can be chatting with ChatGPT and ask it to draft an email into my account so I can send it later. So, you know, we're starting to extend this beyond just what you can paste into ChatGPT now we're able to interact with apps and as we were talking about with Ashley, with Windows Copilot launching, having that chat bot right there on the right hand sidebar everywhere you are in every app, being able to interact with all of those programs, it's going to be very powerful.
David Leary: [00:10:51] Yeah, everything they sold us on a decade ago, remember that Microsoft launched Cutera? Or you could argue Siri and okay, Google and I'll make sure my phone doesn't go off. Okay, Everybody's listening. So don't go off. And you know, you have Alexa and all these things that just have never delivered the promise. Now we're truly going to have this assistant that was promised to us a decade ago when we discovered we can only set timers and alarms with that was about it. Maybe. Maybe play, you know who let the dogs out? That was my kids favorite. Yell that to the speaker. But did you see, though, they gave ChatGPT a chance to retake the CPA exam? And guess what? Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:30] It passes as we said it would.
David Leary: [00:11:33] We said it.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:33] Would. So this is you're talking about accounting today and.
David Leary: [00:11:36] This article was in accounting today.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:38] Correct. So so the big misinformation of the last month was accounting today gave the CPA exam to ChatGPT, but they gave it to version three. And of course, it failed as we all knew it would. And then they gave it to well, they didn't do it. Another group of researchers did a study with GPT four and it passed and it did great.
David Leary: [00:12:01] And what I liked about this article is that it really talked about how the research was done right. And they used these this concept of like zero shot or ten shot type scenarios. So a zero shot. Basically the model is provided with a prompt and a question and high level instructions, but no training on a task. So no account, there's no framing it as like, Hey, you're going to answer some accounting questions, right? There's no training whatsoever. And then when it did that, it chat. Gpt four did a little bit better than 3.5, but it still failed. It only had an average score of 67.8. Then they did a quote unquote, a ten shot scenario where they primed it with ten sample accounting questions. First and then that site changes to the other settings via the API and the web client. But then that one scored 74.4 across all sections, right? Then they did a little bit more on a quote unquote change of chain of thought, prompting basically what that is. That's a decomposing larger problems into several intermediate steps. So instead of giving it the problem, they would give it a little bit of help along the way. And then after that, it's pushing it up to 84.3%.
Blake Oliver: [00:13:09] They'd break it down just like a human would into multiple steps, like, you know. So this is prompt engineering. That's what they were doing. They were just setting it up to succeed by giving it questions. In the way that it needs to be given questions right now. And I imagine.
David Leary: [00:13:27] If you went to a test prep session and they would give you those those strategies, they give it some strategies to attack these questions, but not only did it do better on the CPA exam, the CMA, it averaged 86.6. The certified internal auditors averaged 85.5, and enrolled agent average test was 83.8. So so it's not just the CPA exam that it's getting into the 80 percentiles now.
Blake Oliver: [00:13:53] And this is not a bad thing. I want to reiterate to our listeners the fact that ChatGPT and just generative AI can do this stuff is going to make our jobs so much better. It's going to finally free us up to.
David Leary: [00:14:08] Like, well, if you if it doesn't pass the exam, would you want to depend on it in your firm? It's kind of like, right.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:15] But but now that it can, right. Like, I mean if it can pass the exam, then that means it can start to do tasks that an intern might do or that a staff accountant might do. And we're all going to be using GPT chat bots in our in our firms as first year associates basically.
David Leary: [00:14:32] So it's A Big Four I think reported KPMG is going to put $1 billion or whatever they're going to put in the next three years, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:14:39] Well, they're going to give everybody an hour a week on their time sheet and that adds up to $1 billion.
David Leary: [00:14:44] Well, I'm just trying to like think a little longer, slightly long term here. Not too long term, though, right? They figure out how to build an army. A bot to do a lot of this sort of work. Now they don't need the Ponzi scheme funnel from the universities of shoving people to the bottom of the pyramid. That means yes, we're always short accountants, but does this like start impacting the educational system even more? Do we even see less people going to accounting if the Big Four figure out how to?
Blake Oliver: [00:15:10] He did not need staff.
David Leary: [00:15:11] Eliminate the people.
Blake Oliver: [00:15:12] Eliminate the first year, second year staff. Yeah. I mean, that's going to totally disrupt the traditional education pipeline. Absolutely. And I mean, if you just broadly look at like us, higher education people have been talking about a bubble in higher education for years now, not just accounting, just overall. There are too many universities and colleges and not enough young people who want to go to college. There's more alternatives every day. These schools are way over priced for what they give you and. Now that companies are starting to see this, that you don't need to hire people with a traditional bachelor's or master's degree to get what you need. That could all collapse. And I. I totally see that, you know, coming. I mean, you can get really good jobs now with certificates in particular skills and you don't need a bachelor's degree. It's not what it used to be. So I think there's a there's a reckoning coming for traditional education and especially in accounting. And on this thread, we've got a story that just came out seven hours ago in Financial Times numbers taking us accountancy exams dropped to the lowest level in 17 years. Accounting firms in the US are being urged to revamp their business models to attract more young people after the numbers taking exams to enter, the profession plunged to the lowest level in at least 17 years.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:42] These are new figures from the AICPA. And the numbers actually worsened in 2022, even though they were projecting a rebound from Covid. So get this. Here's the chart. You can see that the number of people taking CPA exams in 2022 was just over 67,000, down from 72,000in 2021 and short of the EPA's forecast of 74,000. This is the lowest level since the beginning of records for the modern exam in 2006. So the exam. Changed in 2006, and that's when they started keeping records, I guess. Is that when it went digital? I don't know. But yeah, it's lower than since the exam changed massively in 2006. It fell 10% year on year. And I think AICPA was projecting a 10% increase. So this is like you want to talk about like a numbers miss and earnings miss. Right. This is bad. This is really bad. Ima also saw a decline in candidates, but it was 5% instead of 10%. Institute of Management Accountants.
David Leary: [00:18:01] So one of the reasons to on this so The Wall Street Journal is going after accounting careers again. So there's an article in the Wall Street Journal in the title of the article is Why graduates are not Hot on Accounting careers and it's colon, low starting pay. And I put a link in the the chat there if you want to bring it up because there's a horrible graph in there that compares starting salaries.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:25] Is this kind of.
David Leary: [00:18:25] Teeny, this.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:26] Potential earnings chart here?
David Leary: [00:18:28] Yeah. So it basically compares accounting versus tech versus data science and it starts with 2010. And the starting salary in 2010 for accountants is just below the 60,000.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:43] Mark, 58,000 it looks like 858.
David Leary: [00:18:46] And then the one if you go for data science. Data science.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:49] Was 67 or no, 69.
David Leary: [00:18:51] 69. If you go all the way out now to 2023. Yeah. Or 2022 date, we're still not what data science was in 2010.
Blake Oliver: [00:19:03] So so basically data science and tech have increased at a much faster pace than accounting. So tech went from 77,010 years ago to $101,000. So that was in 2021. So basically 101,000 starting salary. That's amazing. In tech and data science, 97,000 and accounting is 66,000. There's I mean, yeah. And when you account for inflation, I believe that it's static, right? If you like, if you adjusted these lines down for inflation, it would probably be flat for accounting.
David Leary: [00:19:46] Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:19:47] This is a problem.
David Leary: [00:19:49] Yeah. So basically accounting is basically gone up 14% while in the same period like they've gone up 30 and 40% for the same time period. But one of the in the article that it did have a quote which I thought was kind of interesting. So this is Sandy Torchia, vice vice chair of Talent and Culture at KPMG. The 150 credit hours required to sit for then pass the CPA exam represented a big barrier to entry for the profession, says KPMG is Miss Tachira. This is really important element of our industry, but it is a barrier that other industries don't have. So even. The obviously this is like an HR role. Talent and culture. Kpmg is admitting maybe the one 50 hours could be in the way.
Blake Oliver: [00:20:34] I imagine that she has a bit of experience with this, right? This being a barrier. Yeah. And we the.
David Leary: [00:20:42] Other thing is there was a professor from Washington University and he said only a quarter of his accounting majors actually go into accounting jobs. So even if we get more students, they don't even want to work in accounting. Which leads us to should we talk about the pipeline plan from the CPA?
Blake Oliver: [00:21:02] Oh, yeah, absolutely. Actually, before we do that, can I go back to the article I was sharing from Financial Times?
David Leary: [00:21:07] Yeah, sorry about that.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:08] No, it's all right. There were some quotes since since the pipeline. Some since you're sharing some quotes. Dennis Whitney, senior vice president of the Ima, said it is becoming a crisis not just for accounting firms, but for companies. Accountants are the backbone of companies, not just for financial reporting purposes, but for helping them make decisions. And then there was a quote from Allen Whitman, who ran Baker Tilly for seven years until March. Allen Whitman said, With the length of time it takes to become a partner, the length of time it takes to achieve financial success, The financial model of CPA firms is archaic. Firms need to work on improving the attractiveness of the profession through a variety of ways. The most important being reimagining the operating model and career progression. And the AICPA said that it's increasing scholarships to help candidates and encouraging firms to offer competitive salaries. You've got a generation that is looking for a shorter ROI, said Mike Decker, AICPA vice president. So now let's talk about the CPAs plan to solve the CPA crisis.
David Leary: [00:22:17] And so they have a plan, but they actually have approved a resolution supporting the plan now. So this was decided Wednesday during their spring meeting in Washington, DC. So the governing body approved the resolution to support the pipeline acceleration plan. So I sent you a link that at least has the slides. You remember before the town hall was an eight point plan?
Blake Oliver: [00:22:38] Yeah.
David Leary: [00:22:39] So it's a 12 point plan now. Now. So if you scroll down, there's a slide.
Blake Oliver: [00:22:43] 50% better, right? So wait, are we. I'm looking at this article. Aicpa details plans to boost CPA pipeline. That's it I.
David Leary: [00:22:53] Think. Is that the one that has the graph? There you go.
Blake Oliver: [00:22:55] Bam. Well they've got they've got this bullet point list.
David Leary: [00:22:58] Yeah. So it's great that the slides in the Accounting Today article, but the actual site with the plan is no longer working at the website. It just says the site's under careful construction. Visit Zoom for exciting new features and it linked to a PDF with a lot of details. So I have. I just happened to have the PDF still open on my computer, but I don't know how to get anybody to this pdf other than my hard drive. But deep down in there it talks about the collaboration between. The AICPA and the state societies, and it has all these initiatives. So all 12 initiatives are listed out in a table and it has a column rule of AICPA and a column rule of state society. And over and over again, it's all the work is on the state society. So like the so for example increase high school engagement, accounting, opportunity, weeks, career program awareness, etcetera the role of the AICPA, develop promotional communication materials, presentation materials, speaker training, etcetera the role of the state society, recruit presenters and match them with teacher and school projects, prospects, customized materials as necessary, oversee implementation and provide ongoing feedback. So over and over again, the state societies have in their column have the word implement and over and over again the role of CPA is to kind of like develop, provide some like I'm it's amazing how much is being pushed on the state societies. Guess when I look at this.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:27] That's a good insight there so we just quickly go through the 12 points Yeah. On this list. Okay. So pipeline acceleration plan addressing root causes one experience learn and Earn program. So I believe this is the this is the initiative that's happening in New Jersey where you can join a firm instead of going for your fifth year. And then while you are working, you take classes online to earn the 30 semester credit hours while you're working at the firm.
David Leary: [00:25:02] So you still have to pay, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:25:04] You still pay.
David Leary: [00:25:05] $150 a credit hour. You still pay for the credit hours.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:09] And this is a point of contention between the universities and AICPA, which is like AICPA wants them to charge less and the universities don't want to charge less. So you still have to pay. Yeah, that's a problem.
David Leary: [00:25:23] Well, we go through these. I actually have in the PDF, it actually talks about when these are launching. So the pilot is fall of 2023 and the pilot Post-It or post pilot phase is going to be as a midterm initiative we'll be launching in 2024.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:38] So number two is addressing firm culture and business model challenges. So that has to do with, you know, the overwork, the business model of CPA firms like the quote.
David Leary: [00:25:50] You just said, Archaic.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:51] Archaic. Yeah. That was the former head of Baker Tilly. Yeah. And, you know, we all know what that means, right? That means the the billable hour model and, you know, hiring staff and working them 60 hours, 70 hours a week and not giving them PTO and just basically terrible working conditions. Right. Which. I mean, what do you think is the number one reason that people don't want to go into accounting? If you ask me, just based on what I've observed from talking to people and looking at forums online, it's the work environment, right? It's the low pay for the long hours and the really hard work. And honestly, a lot of people in big firms who are just total jerks to work for. Right.
David Leary: [00:26:41] Like why would you plan on doing is highlighting firms that are doing things differently. Yeah. And treating their staff correctly and having different business models. Like that's their plan is to to raise awareness of those types of firms. That's on track for July of 2023.
Blake Oliver: [00:26:56] So then moving on, I'll try to get through this a little quicker. We've got the 30 hour communication campaign, which is like a marketing campaign around getting people to understand the 30 hours. I don't know how that's going to help. Number four, extending the 18 month exam window, which they've already started doing with Nasba. So now you have 30 months or you will, if the states adopt it, have 30 months to pass the exams instead of 18 examining uniform Accountancy Act variances. So that's just making things more consistent across states. I don't know if that's like really a big problem right now, but I guess maybe it is high school and college strategies. So that's trying to improve recruitment, stem recognition.
David Leary: [00:27:36] It's the TikTok strategy.
Blake Oliver: [00:27:37] Tiktok Yeah. Get well, that's what we were doing at Expensive Con David We were helping so I hope AICPA retweets are you know reels and tiktoks from from expensive con stem recognition getting accounting part of Stem science, technology, engineering and math in school AICPA foundation and scholarships. So basically providing more money to students.
David Leary: [00:27:58] To tag on to that Stem one another part of that is AP courses with College Board. Oh yeah. Potential launch like an AP business principles course in 2025. So it's still a ways off.
Blake Oliver: [00:28:10] Number nine expansion of 529 funds to CPA exam costs. So I guess using your 529 savings account for college costs on CPA exam costs. A government audit and finance collaboration. I don't know what that is. Best practices for offshore talent. So they actually bringing offshoring into this plan, which I have a I cannot believe that they are actually doing that. So they're going to like here's the quote from the article Asia is looking into the need for best practices and other potential resources that would help small and mid-sized firms partner where needed with offshore talent suppliers. That's in addition to expansion of the administration of the CPA exam in India and South Korea, as well as looking into offering the CPA exam in the Philippines. So like the the problem is so bad that they're going to include helping firms find talent offshore as part. But but like the whole, isn't the whole point to increase CPAs like here in this country Like shouldn't that be the priority? And then lastly, it's the 12 CPA image campaign. They are looking into creating a campaign to create positive awareness of the profession with middle and high school students.
David Leary: [00:29:19] Yeah, like like the on campus pro culture.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:24] So here's the thing. Quote unquote. A lot of this is marketing, right? A lot of this is like the high school and college strategy image campaign. The Stem recognition. The communication campaign like so much of this is just is is messaging and marketing, but it's not going to actually change anything, in my opinion, because the number one reason that people don't want to be accountants is because the hours are long and the pay is low. And until AICPA and Nasba acknowledge that and do something about it work to really change the pay or change the hours, it's it's not going to none of this is going to do it. It's not going to reverse it. It's not going to even stem it. It's just going to get worse and worse. Like this is not a this is not a plan that is going to deliver results.
David Leary: [00:30:16] Yeah. If you think about this plan, right in this PDF, so it's 20 page PDF and arguably the smallest part of this is the addressing firm culture and business model challenges. Yeah. Like that's the. Smallest piece of this, but arguably the most important piece.
Blake Oliver: [00:30:33] Daniel, says. A colleague of mine, an adjunct professor at one of the more prominent CCNY Business Schools for Accountancy in New York City, said their enrollment is at an all time low compared to the last several years. Those in the actual teaching roles are not crazy about AICPA because at the end of the day, it's still not putting bodies in the seats. Students are extremely aware of the rise of AI being disruptive now and. Yeah. It's not putting bodies in the seats. Until. Until you fix the big firms. Remember, let's not forget two thirds of accounting graduates go into audit at larger firms. So as long as those firms are treating those people like. Machines and not like human beings. People are not going to want to go work for those firms and they are not going to enroll in accounting programs. And I really think that AICPA needs to hold those firms accountable, make a plan with them to improve work life balance and improve work environment and reduce hours and increase pay. Like that's the solution. But that is what they are not willing to. Confront. And it's because I believe the AICPA is like it's because of the partners at those firms who run the AICPA, essentially who control it. Don't want to change.
David Leary: [00:32:04] Financially, control it. Right.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:06] They financially control it. Right. I mean, how much of AICPA funding comes from the big firms? I'm really curious to know that, and I think that has something to do with it. So until the big firms want to change. Um, none of this will will make a difference. Where do you want to go from here, David?
David Leary: [00:32:25] Um.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:26] There was an article. We can stay on this. There was an article on the tab.com, which is a UK publication. Overworked and underpaid. Why? Grads are ditching jobs at the Big Four. Like they're spelling this out for us.
David Leary: [00:32:40] Oh, I saw this article. It's just. I almost felt like to to doom and gloom and I was like, I don't want to talk about this on the show. It's pretty harsh. This is a very, very harsh article. And this does not help get people to work in accounting in any way shape.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:53] But this is this is spelling out the problem. So if you if you want to actually solve the problem like read, you know, the people in positions of power should read this. In the final year of university, the race is on to get a job. Careers fairs across campuses are rammed with panicked students searching for their calling. And amidst the leaflets, free pens and tote bags, one corporate quartet has serious clout. The big four KPMG, Deloitte, PwC elite grad schemes are the ultimate goal, often before you even know what these companies do. Accounting, you know you want to pass the online test to work their glistening skyscrapers, high powered clients, huge pay packets and after work drinks with other young hot professionals are the whispered hopes and dreams of applicants from Russell groups across the country. But could long nights, low pay and rushed firings be the more likely reality? The Tab spoke to Big Four grads to find out. And the headline is You're all in the torture together. When I got the job, I was buzzing, said James, who worked in audit at the Big Four after graduating from the University of Exeter. Before starting office work, he was whisked away to live in a hotel and study in college with other new grads.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:59] To get a base level of accounting knowledge to do the job. But here, amongst the fun and camaraderie, the pressure started after between 2 and 3 weeks of college, rigorous testing begins. You can be put through up to three exams at once, said James. They're challenging. It's one of the biggest drop off points. There's a big group of people who fail. Then you have to do the reset two weeks after their first exam, and if they fail the reset, they have to leave essentially two strikes and you're out with very occasional extenuating circumstances. Then they go on to the busy season. During busy season, James was working more than 12 hours per day. It was realistically 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., he says. They're nice enough to give you a paid Uber home, but then you go straight to bed, wake up again at 6 a.m. and get in the tube all over again. Plus you work maybe five hours on Saturdays as well. It doesn't get easier. Get out now. I mean, this is like this article.
David Leary: [00:34:50] Also talk about like there's a pool like anybody who has a boyfriend or a significant other, like you'll break up.
Blake Oliver: [00:34:57] Wave goodbye.
David Leary: [00:34:58] He's going to break up first.
Blake Oliver: [00:35:00] Wave goodbye to your evenings and weekends. One office smelt like sewers. I had managers calling me at 3 a.m. I mean, they were taking bets on who would break up first. Yeah, that was the one you said. I was just crying all the time. Like, this is awful, right? And that's okay. But isn't, you know, the Big Four is the Big Four, right? Globally?
David Leary: [00:35:22] Yeah, it's it's a little shocking. I think we can jump into app news, but this is like a pivot a little bit. Did you see the IRS? Remember in the inflation Reduction Act, the IRS was like $10 million or 20 million to do a study on creating their own E file. I don't remember the exact amount, but there were some money earmarked to do a study. Yeah, well, apparently the study's already done. And not only that, they have already they've already built something and they're going to start testing it. So basically the system is built by the IRS and the US Digital Service, a technology consulting agency that works for the White House. They've been quietly testing the software before opening up in a pilot in January to a small set of tax payers, and they plan on trying out its own direct software with a limited group of tax payers next season. So it went quickly from a study to it already exists, like everybody who's made anything with code. You just don't it doesn't happen that fast. So this is already being worked on for 2 or 3 years. This is just the excuse to. I saw that.
Blake Oliver: [00:36:26] Unwrap it. Did you see the quote from the TurboTax guy in the article?
David Leary: [00:36:30] No.
Blake Oliver: [00:36:32] Just like control f it and find find the guy from Intuit. Some PR person like Intuit backed out of the free file thing and set this in motion. Right now the IRS is going to do their own, but they're still trying to undercut it from the bleachers. And I just couldn't believe that they that the guy said that, like basically. Did you find it?
David Leary: [00:36:57] No, I'm trying to see his quote here.
Blake Oliver: [00:37:01] Here it was in an NPR story, and I'll find it for you. A direct to IRS file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem, said Rick Heineman, a spokesman for Intuit, the company behind TurboTax. That solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars and especially harm the most vulnerable Americans. It's like, come on. Yeah, stop with the bullshit, You know, just stop it.
David Leary: [00:37:28] So. So I think in the and we can talk about the Intuitive's earnings and this is just a quote deeper in and we can talk about the rest of them. But basically in the earnings call somebody asked them about the IRS making their own free software. Yeah and you know one of one of the quotes in there is, you know, remember, it's really not free. It's going to cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Right? So to create this system. So it's really not free. But then the other thing is Intuit just doesn't care. The total addressable market for people that DIY their own taxes is only $5 billion. They're going after another 30 billion, 20, 20 billion being customer consumers that already pay somebody else to do their taxes and 10 billion business tax. They are chased. They don't care about DIY. I think they made a decision when they let go of free, right? They were going after this 40 or $30 billion opportunity and letting go of this $5 billion opportunity.
Blake Oliver: [00:38:26] So stop, stop trying to derail the IRS on this thing, right? Like just let them do it and go after the bigger opportunity. Yeah. So so let's talk about the Intuit earnings. You've been following this.
David Leary: [00:38:37] Yeah. And what's the good parts are in the inside the the earnings calls always so TurboTax Live continues to go up right Even though the number of IRS returns declined. Now one thing that they said there's like a 1 to 1 ratio. So when the IRS, the number of returns increase, TurboTax revenue increases by 1% as well. But because IRS returns are down there, expect they're going to have a $200 million negative impact to TurboTax bottom line this year.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:09] So you're saying that like so TurboTax TurboTax revenue is down and they got that. That was unexpected. But why was that? Because of because.
David Leary: [00:39:18] It's directly tied to the number of IRS returns. So if IRS returns are down, it's it's the same percentage. Oh, if the IRS more people.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:27] Filed because of pandemic stimulus.
David Leary: [00:39:29] There was a lot of that's why.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:30] Got it so.
David Leary: [00:39:33] And then they talked about I a little bit so so they have 100 million customers on the platform the the so they're currently using 400,000 customer and financial attributes and 55,000 tax and financial attributes for per consumer to power 58 billion machine learning predictions a day. So they're doing 58 billion machine predictions a day right now, which this is where this AI starts to stack, right? Like you have to have the data, right? And they have the data to to do these things. One interesting thing on the relationship between Credit Karma and TurboTax, so credit Karma, is their credit reporting personal? It's kind of getting that personal finance consumer side of this. But I don't know if you remember before they let people if you want to get an instant rebate from TurboTax, if you open up a Credit Karma bank account, you can do that. And what they're seeing is that that's grown over 45%. But the most amazing thing is when people do that, they get their money, no fees deducted, they just get the money in the account that they can access within minutes after filing the return. And then Intuit makes money because then they have a debit card and they use it.
David Leary: [00:40:39] And then Intuit gets money on the arbitrage and the fees on that part. B2b payments. They said that they've now rolled out early pilots of their bill pay solution, so they've built their own bill. Pay in desktop ecosystem continues to grow, but longer term it's going to be the online ecosystem. So they keep raising the price so the revenue grows. But it's not it's not truly growing. And then they get into more of the QuickBooks and chat could be your business assistant, right? They know everything about your business between on the MailChimp side all the way through the other side. And that's why I think this QuickBooks Connect, we're probably going to see stuff that we can. Yeah, like real stuff. I have a feeling we're going to see some real amazing chat stuff. Don't miss QuickBooks Connect. Speaking of which, it got its a day earlier. They changed the date. What are the dates? Your flights. Check your calendars, check your hotels, QuickBooks Connect. If you go to Accountingconferences.com, it should be on there. Yeah, it.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:34] Is November 13th to 15th in Las Vegas at the Aria.
David Leary: [00:41:39] Yep. And then the last one that's going to blow your mind is two TurboTax is live. You know the full service.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:48] Turbotax.
David Leary: [00:41:48] Turbotax live always had high, high net promoter scores TurboTax live quote unquote full service. You know, the commercials don't do taxes, right? Had an 84 net promoter score this year which is the highest net promoter score across anything the company has ever done.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:05] Yeah. Wow.
David Leary: [00:42:05] And it actually surprised Intuit like we surprised ourselves in terms of the product market fit and we're going to be really intentional on doubling down on that next year. See, they don't care about squeezing people for $35 on a, you know, getting somebody from free file to spend 35 or 40 bucks. They're going to go for real returns in the market. Probably the people that get fired, people like me, they get fired from firms. Yeah, right. I mean, I'm probably in that target market where they're at on this. Also Sage announced their earnings. There isn't really much super interesting in that. But then I did look at their conference call. The real interesting thing is remember we they have their Sage inbox and it's going to manage all the AP coming into your business.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:50] Yeah. So it's like one place where you have everybody send their bills. You know, it's a shared AP inbox that your team can manage and process and get everything where it needs to go.
David Leary: [00:43:03] And they released some numbers on that now, which and so they basically have processed over 200,000 invoices for around 3000 customers. But the interesting part is they did it across Sage Intacct in the US, Sage 50in France and Sage accounting in the UK. So three different products are using the same AP AI tool. Which to me, I see that. And I'm like, Oh, that means maybe it could be cross-platform compatible because. Because Sage Intacct, even though they all have the Sage 50 in France and Sage County in the UK, even though they all have the word Sage, those are different products by far different different code bases, different everything. And so that means it's, it's cross-platform compatible. It's like now do they open that up to the QuickBooks and the Zeros and the Oracle Net Suites and the FreshBooks of the world? I don't know. And then the only other people. So the earnings for Zero came out. And the only interesting thing I think in zero earnings was their US numbers. So they added in North America, they added 30,000 subscribers in fiscal year 20 three half because they reported on the half year and then they're projecting out they now have a total of 384,000 subscribers. So there's still not a half a million in North America yet, but they keep growing. I mean, they're growing it. What's that, 10 to 20% a year? You know, they're it's solid. I still say even if Intuit wins the whole thing, the second place of the cloud accounting pie is way bigger than QuickBooks Desktop ever was. So, yeah, it's being in second place is a very good position.
Blake Oliver: [00:44:34] Not bad. Is that it? For earnings?
David Leary: [00:44:37] I think that's it for earnings. All right. App News.
Blake Oliver: [00:44:40] Well, yeah, I do actually. So ramp I saw that ramp released what they're calling ramp intelligence. The future of finance is here and is running on ramp and ramp is an expense card a competitor to expensify an alternative in terms of spend management. There's so many of them out there ramps one of the bigger ones and I thought this was interesting like what they're going to be doing or what they are doing now with GPT. And I'll just go through some of these examples. You can see them here on the screen if you're in the live stream. Oh, and I forgot to welcome our live stream viewers. Thank you, Heather and David Hall and Daniel, for joining us. Everybody who's watching, they've been commenting. Thank you. Great to see you, as always. A reminder that you can subscribe to us on YouTube and get notified when we go live and see our faces and look at our screens and chat with us. We love that. So please do. But back to ramp. So price intelligence in their new feature is going to use millions of ramp transactions to help you understand whether you are paying too much for software. So when it comes to software where you have to negotiate the subscription fees, Ramp is saying that they're going to analyze how much you are being quoted versus what other ramp customers are paying. I think that's that's valuable intelligence there.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:09] I mean, people pay companies like Gartner a bunch of money to do that for them, right? If you're a ramp customer, though, you could just get that insight for free. Yeah. So it's crowdsourced data. You get instant comparisons. You can see cost per user detail that is fascinating. Smart accounting to speed up the monthly close, keep accurate books with ramps, auto coding process, thousands of transactions and review flagged expenses only. So they're showing here an animation of a ubercharge that's out of policy because it was on the weekend and it wasn't during work hours. Let ramp2. Your expenses, auto generated receipts and categorization categorization powering error free expense submission so automatically categorizing expenses into the proper account. And then they've got a smart assistant called Copilot. It uses AI to answer your questions, build approval workflows and suggest ways to reduce costs. So I think that is a big opportunity for spend. Management platforms is especially when everything's a subscription now, it's very easy to as a business as you grow, just acquire all these subscriptions. You and I, David, deal with this and we're a very small company still. You know, we're like half a dozen people and, you know, we're trying to keep track of all this stuff. So I would love it if my spend management solution would tell me, Oh, hey, here's a subscription you might not be using. Right?
David Leary: [00:47:36] And it makes sense for this to take place in the spend management apps because there's there's apps that exist that only do this right. You connect them to your bank account and they look at your bank spend and then they figure out what apps you have and then can help you cancel them. So it really makes sense. Like you don't need to get separate apps for this. It's just you're right, they have the data this report it out and have it in there.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:00] So that was my big story from. App News.
David Leary: [00:48:05] Have you heard of Avi? Avi, I.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:10] No.
David Leary: [00:48:11] So there's an article in Business Wire. It was Avi. Avi announced a significant uplifts to financial models. And I've always kind of watched this from the side because I was exposed to them through the legal software space. So I always thought they were kind of like legal billing software. But then I went to their website and I put the link in there.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:31] Avi I.com. That's correct. Okay. I've got it up on the screen here.
David Leary: [00:48:35] Look at what this says in the orange text at the top.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:38] The most automated workspace plus portal for accountants and their clients.
David Leary: [00:48:44] It's like they've completely pivoted away from law or something. So. So I think this is just something for everybody to keep on your radar. Like. Like there's another cloud accounting player that's going after accountants now.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:55] Another portal, another workflow software. Well, we know that there is not a single accountant workflow software or portal solution that has captured even 1% of the market. I think when it comes to cloud based products, right, there are maybe the legacy ones, there might be more, but I think even carbon is still very small compared to the whole market.
David Leary: [00:49:18] And it's deep because I think they built all this for law firms and now they're like, Oh, we'll just roll this out for accounting firms instead and then tie in some tools for their clients.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:27] Here's some good news. Employee satisfaction just hit an all time high in the US last year. I became aware of this thanks to the podcast The Soul of Enterprise. They covered this in one of their bonus episodes, and this chart is incredible. There's so much bad news and you know, you and I are guilty of repeating a lot of it. So I figured, you know, let's let's have some good news. And, I mean, this could be linked to the accounting talent shortage because why is this happening? Right? Let's think about why has employee satisfaction gone up so much? I mean, it hit a low in 2010, 42.6%, and now we're up to 62.3%. It's risen every year since 2010. You know why? Why is this happening? And by the way, it's higher than it was in 1987. It's because we have a supply and demand mismatch where we've got fewer workers than we have jobs. And so people are able to get the jobs that they want and they're getting the pay that they want and they're getting the hours that they want. And so unless.
David Leary: [00:50:31] They're in a county.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:31] Unless they're in accounting and so, you know, this is this is why we've got a problem. So if we want to solve the crisis, we've got to compete. We've got to compete. And they talk in this article about like why people are more satisfied.
David Leary: [00:50:44] So the formulas here for accounting firms like other industries are doing it. I wonder what their percentage is for accounting firms versus this number here.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:54] Yeah, well, you know, I doubt they break it down. Right. So. So this is good news, right? We're happier as Americans. I mean, you could argue also, though, that we've still got a way to go. Right, Because a third of workers are not satisfied. So but, you know, hey, it's better than only 40% where most people are dissatisfied.
David Leary: [00:51:13] What was the dip?
Blake Oliver: [00:51:13] What year was that? 2010.
David Leary: [00:51:15] What was going on in 2010? That was post the 2008 stuff. As it was the bottom of the recession, I guess that's probably yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:51:24] Yeah, right.
David Leary: [00:51:24] Because the recession really hit a lot of people for two years there. 2008, 2009, 2010.
Blake Oliver: [00:51:29] So. What else? What else? Oh, here's another stat. I'm just going to cover some random stories, David, unless you got something. So this is on cfo.com. 70% of Gen Z employees would switch jobs for better tech. This was from Adobe. 70% of Gen Z employees, those born between 1997 and 2012, tell Adobe researchers that they would leave their job for better technology.
David Leary: [00:51:57] So so I'm an accounting firm and I give my employee a Google Chrome book, and the next accounting firm down the road is going to be like, we'll give you a MacBook Pro. They would switch jobs.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:08] Maybe, I guess if that's how they define better technology. I mean, I experienced this frustration when I was working at a big accounting firm where I didn't get to choose the laptop that I had. I was given an underpowered machine. It had kind of a blurry screen compared to like what I'm used to having. And it was frustrating. Every single day I had to turn on this machine and wait five minutes for it to boot up. You know, it's just like, come on. And so here's a chart on the screen that shows that 70% of Gen Z's would leave for better tech, compared to 52% of Gen Xers and 37% of baby boomers. So there's a huge difference between baby boomers and Gen Z when it comes to technology influencing whether or not they'd want to be at a firm. So, you know, what's what's the. What's the lesson here? I think it's like invest in tech. If you want to attract the younger generation, Right? Let them let them give them the best tools.
David Leary: [00:53:07] Or give them a budget to buy the tech they want to use. Yeah, right. Because it is really it is. I still be assuming grew up in construction. You have your saw you have your hammer you you don't you're not forced to use the tools they give you. Right.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:21] Yeah I would refuse like these days I would not go to work for a company that didn't let me choose my tech. I mean, I understand operating within security protocols and all that stuff, but like, I want to. Choose the computer that I need for my tasks, right. And not be micromanaged in that respect.
David Leary: [00:53:42] If somebody's security is so vulnerable that if you use a not there machine to access the network, they have bigger issues. Well, they have major security problems.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:53] Well, no, to be fair, like you need managed devices. Right. But but you could allow employees to have upgraded machines if they need them for specific purposes. Like, you know, at the firm I was at, we had an in-house, you know, marketing like graphic design, all these people that we would, you know, rent out to clients and they got to have the nice machines. But because I was on the outsourced accounting team, I didn't get to have one. And it's like, you know, an extra $1,000, you know, for that device. And compared to my total compensation and what they were billing me out at, it's like it's immaterial. But it made a meaningful difference to me. Well, did you.
David Leary: [00:54:30] Ever make an argument that you could bill more hours? If you had that.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:33] That would have been the way to approach it, right?
David Leary: [00:54:35] That would be the approach it.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:36] Uh.
David Leary: [00:54:38] Two things about Sage.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:39] I just want to say that hazardous items in the live stream said if I have to work on any type of iOS software, I'm resigning the same week.
David Leary: [00:54:48] Amen.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:49] David's an Android guy. I'm a Big Mac user. And I.
David Leary: [00:54:53] Windows. Windows. Windows? Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:55] Well, now I'm starting to feel like I'm being left behind with the copilot coming to windows and all this stuff happening with Microsoft. And like, I haven't heard a peep at Apple. I really hope they're working on something behind the scenes. But VR glasses, I can just virtualize windows now. You can subscribe to Windows. Did you know that? David We talked about that. I can just use it in a browser, so maybe that's what I'll do. All right. You want to close this out with one more story or.
David Leary: [00:55:18] Yeah, So? So just Sage. So Sage was in the news. So Sage is buying the US construction platform. Kraken. So Kraken, if I had to, like, go back to, like, the old app days, something like a notify, you've probably seen notify at conferences. The notify is going to be like your kitchen bathroom, remodelers, maybe a house. And then you have builder trend, which is going to be for bigger house construction, custom homes, track homes, things like that. And then I always thought Kraken. The way I would describe it is Cranes. Right now, you got to have cranes. It's a much bigger these are bridges, skyscrapers, those types of projects. So Sage is purchasing Kraken, which is interesting. I remember a years ago Intuit bought a construction app a long time ago back in the mid 90s that they're doing that. And but one interesting thing, remember how when we were at like Oracle Net Suite versus Sage Intacct in the observation Net Suite was once they build it in the suite, they don't kind of your as a partner, you're kind of screwed right? If that makes any sense. So in the same week, Sage announces how they're launching their native app built automation built in right there, RPA features built into Sage Intacct. But at the same time, the same week they actually named Stampley, which is an accounts payable solution as their recommended solution. Right? So so they're even though they're building something, the product, they're still promoting apps that are building, you know, these other solutions that add on to Sage Intacct just it's a different you observe that, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:56:46] And that's the right way to do it. That's the right way to do it is yeah, you can build in some base functionality into your suite, but don't exclude competition from outside vendors. Allow them to integrate and if they can build something better, that's great. And the problem is in these big companies like Oracle, you got to stop the sales people from creating a bad experience. And I really think that's like what happened at NetSuite, where they they stopped allowing the payroll providers to come to Suite World. Because they had their own payroll product, which is.
David Leary: [00:57:17] Weird. For those of you that attend accounting conferences. When you walk into a accounting conference, an ADP is not there. It's it's strange, right? Like, how is ADP not had an accounting conference or accounting conference?
Blake Oliver: [00:57:28] It's not it's not the right way anyway. David, this was so much fun. Great doing a double episode with you two episodes in one week. We've caught up. We're a little bit ahead of we're a little bit ahead because we are going to engage next week and I look forward to recording with you on the show floor. And yeah, we're going to have a.
David Leary: [00:57:49] Lot going on that week. I mean, starting Monday morning, 7 a.m., we're doing a session with ShareFile that's about client experience. So if you're engaged, show up at 7 a.m., come come to our session there in the evening. On Monday, we are going to do a toast because we are like we are at our millionth download.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:08] 1 million downloads.
David Leary: [00:58:10] This it could be the person listening to this episode right now. They might be the millionth download. We have no way of knowing. So all of you just pretend you were the millionth download and you can come by. We're going to have a little toast, a little some cake or something and we'll celebrate that milestone. How are you.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:24] Going to announce that? Like, when's that happening? Like, how are people going to know?
David Leary: [00:58:27] I teased it already on a tweet, but it'll be like dates and time.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:32] So follow me on Twitter there.
David Leary: [00:58:33] Follow The Cloud Accounting Podcast on Twitter. Yeah, that's probably the way to go. And then we're taking our whole mobile recording studio, including an engineer, and we are going to record Cloud Accounting podcast. We are going to record some earmark podcasts with some of the earmark talent, and we're opening up our mobile recording studio to all content creators. So if you have your own podcast or video blog thingy and you need to record decent audio on the show floor of FCP Engage, we are going to be able to provide you the equipment to do that and a high quality way. So reach out to me if you want to try to book some time in our recording studio.
Blake Oliver: [00:59:09] You can follow David on Twitter. What's your handle?
David Leary: [00:59:12] David I'm @DavidLeary on all the socials.
Blake Oliver: [00:59:15] So message him on Twitter and he'll get you set up or LinkedIn and I am @BlakeTOliver. Do follow The Cloud Accounting Podcast on YouTube, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, wherever you prefer to utilize social media, we stream live to those platforms and you can catch us on one of our live streams. And if you're at Engage, come say hi. I can't wait to meet you.
David Leary: [00:59:37] We'll be at the Quickview booth so you can find the quick booth and that's where you'll find us.
Blake Oliver: [00:59:41] That's where we'll be recording. All right, David. See you later.
David Leary: [00:59:44] Bye, everyone.