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Recession needed to increase accounting grads; Amber Setter on improving the CPA pipeline; 2023 tax season officially starts; tech layoffs hit accounting tech
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- (00:00) - Thank you to our sponsor, Keeper
- (00:20) - Preview : Accountants are prestressed for busy season
- (00:56) - Blake is in Tucson; Welcome Amber to the show
- (04:29) - Who is your ideal customer for coaching?
- (06:42) - Remote workers save an average of 72 minutes per day
- (14:49) - Thank you to our sponsor, Keeper
- (16:22) - YouTube Live comment from Sam on working from home
- (18:07) - WSJ says the job market for remote workers is shrinking — but the demand is still high
- (19:37) - Will tech layoffs lead college students to accounting?
- (22:17) - Is it realistic for someone in tech to transition into accounting?
- (25:43) - Thank you to our sponsor, LiveFlow
- (27:03) - George Santos was involved in an alleged $17 million Ponzi scheme in Florida
- (29:46) - Moody's is working on a scoring system for stable coins
- (31:09) - Wash sales represent up to 77% of trades on unregulated crypto exchanges
- (32:56) - The IRS released guidance on crypto check mark on 1040s
- (33:56) - Are accountants more optimistic for the 2023 tax season
- (37:53) - Thank you to our sponsor, Anchor
- (39:42) - The IRS has opened an online portal where businesses can file 1099s
- (42:08) - A few QuickBooks updates
- (43:45) - AccountingWED article summarizing all the accounting tech layoffs
- (46:42) - ChatGPT updates
- (48:41) - Rocket Lawyer has launched Rocket Tax
- (53:15) - Listener mail from Greg on his firm actually looking for more clients
- (58:39) - Message from Jared about Right Tool
- (01:01:33) - Wrap up, where to reach Amber, and one new review
- (01:04:17) - Client Hub
- (01:04:54) - RightTool
- (01:05:16) - Federal Tax Updates Podcast
- (01:06:30) - How to advertise in these classifieds
Show Notes
New Xero data sees US small business sales slow as consumer spending tightens
KPMG Vice Chair Hopes All the Tech Layoffs Will Scare College Kids Into Accounting
TurboTax Tax Trends Report
The Argument for Accounting
Accounting Software Maker IRIS Sees 30% Growth
IRS clarifies crypto question on tax form
This forensic accounting startup in Seattle is helping lawyers solve ...
Bookkeeper Job Description
The Largest Accounting Firm in Kentucky Thinks a Tower Will Win the Talent War
Important Changes to QuickBooks Related 1099 Filing and Billing for 2023
Over 2 in 3 small business owners already feel burnt out in first week of 2023 Intuit QuickBooks research shows
IRS opens 2023 tax filing season
Small businesses lament Sage's monthly subscription changes amid rising costs
Rocket Lawyer Launches Tax Prep Tool for Small Business Owners
State Corporate Income Tax Rates and Brackets for 2023
3.4m still need to file tax return
Melio Launches Integration To Sync Payments Data with Xero
Firms Hope to Win With Receipt Data Solutions but Implementation Issues Abound
Moody’s Developing Scoring System for Stablecoins Based on Attestations
The Decline of Voicemail
Remote work saves 72 minutes a day
TurboTax Tax Trends Report - The TurboTax Blog
The CPA pipeline includes the present
Connect with Amber Setter
Website: http://conscious.cpa
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ambersetter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/intentionsetter?lang=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ConsciousPublicAccountants/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amber_setter_coaching/?hl=en
Get in Touch
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Classifieds
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Federal Tax Updates podcast - https://federaltaxupdates.com/
Client Hub - https://clienthub.app/
RightTool for QuickBooks Online - https://righttool.app
Federal Tax Updates podcast - https://federaltaxupdates.com/
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Full Transcript Available Upon Request: info@cloudaccountingpodcast.com
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Creators & Guests
Guest
Amber Setter
Chief Enlightenment Officer | Conscious Public Accountants - Amber Setter is the chief enlightenment officer for Conscious Public Accountants, whose mission is to guide accountants back to their wholeness. She is a national expert on building coaching cultures within the accounting profession. Her professional experience includes serving as an internal and external coach, facilitating and coaching within leadership development experiences, and building a nationally recognized learning and development function. She holds a Masters in Leadership Studies from the University of San Diego and a Bachelors in Business Administration, Accounting from San Jose State University. She is a graduate of Accomplishment Coaching — an ICF accredited Coaches Training Program — and also completed their Advanced Leadership Program as a Mentor Coach. She is an inactive CPA and an ICF Professional Certified Coach, and was recognized by CalCPA as a Woman to Watch in the Experienced Leader Category.
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!
David Leary: [00:00:00] Are you running your bookkeeping firm or cast practice on spreadsheets and email? What if you could give your clients one place to answer questions about Uncategorized transactions, send in their bank statements, track KPIs and read reports you customize just for them. Stay tuned to hear more from our sponsor Keeper later in the episode.
Amber Setter: [00:00:20] I was on a panel last week with the Center for Accounting Transformation, and they did a poll, you know, a CPE poll, and they asked people, as you head in to the busy season, like tell us about your stress levels. What do you anticipate? 27% said severe stress and 58% said moderate. So a total of 85% are going in with moderate to severe anticipatory stress.
David Leary: [00:00:48] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio, this is the Cloud Accounting Podcast.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:57] Welcome to the Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.
David Leary: [00:01:00] And I'm David Leary. And we're physically touching.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:02] In person in your house. David My house in Tucson?
David Leary: [00:01:06] Yep. You drove down last night?
Blake Oliver: [00:01:08] I did.
David Leary: [00:01:09] We had a nice dinner. We had a beer. Sure. A little bit of Tucson this morning. I drove you out to a 715 odds theory fitness class.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:16] Yeah, I've been hearing about this for years. And finally, I got to experience the wonder that is Orangetheory Fitness.
David Leary: [00:01:24] And then you came down for a reason.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:27] Yes, I did. So we are getting interviewed this afternoon. We've got two professors coming from, I think, as Utah Valley University to interview us about a new course that they are writing or coming up with a curriculum for to modernize their accounting program. And they asked.
David Leary: [00:01:46] For both their undergrad and master's program, I think.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:49] And they asked to speak with us about it. So finally, we're going to have an impact.
David Leary: [00:01:53] And we also have a guest today joining us, Amber Setter. She's the chief enlightenment officer for Conscious Public Accountants and all that. Her. Explain what that is in a moment. The reason she's here, but because a few weeks ago, there was an article I saw in accounting today, and the title of the article was the pipeline includes the present and I talked about on the show a couple of weeks ago, but it was really about being conscious of who's coming in the bottom of the pipeline. And she calls out that like, you can't even pay a state board. You know, with Venmo, you have to use paper checks. Well, millennials don't generally gen I guess, Gen Zers, they don't have paper checks and examples like she's like, don't share your war stories. Like, don't tell somebody newly come in the profession how you used to work 80 hours a week and you never got to take a day off on a Saturday, Sunday. So it's a lot of tips like that. So, Amber, I'll let you kind of explain a little bit more of what you do and then we can talk about the article and we can talk because I think it all ties to the things we've been building up to. Even me getting fired from a firm is this lack of talent in the industry. Why this is there?
Blake Oliver: [00:02:48] Welcome to the show, Amber Setter.
Amber Setter: [00:02:51] Hey, so good to be here and so wild to be interviewed by two people sitting side by side. The first for me. Thank you.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:00] Tell us a little bit about your background. You know, we'd love to hear how you got to where you're at. Chief Enlightenment Officer.
Amber Setter: [00:03:06] I started my career as an accountant. I graduated December 2002. It was a delightful time to be looking for a job in the Silicon Valley and accounting because the tech bubble had just burst and Enron had just happened. Like I interviewed it, Anderson, I thought I nailed it and I was shocked. I didn't get an internship offer. But anyway, I have about 20 years of experience in the profession now. I opted to not go the Big four route, worked for a local California firm for ten years, which was an amazing experience. Did tax there campus recruiting, learning and development eventually routed my way to coach training, professional coach training because I knew I was helping everyone in the firm. But I really wanted to work with people in a deeply profound way and 1 to 1 coaching provides that. I've been coaching for about ten years on my own. I was an internal coach at See coaching high potentials there and more recently just expanded from a me to a we and I have a team of coaches and we're all about helping accountants, not just CPAs, but accountants in general really grow their career without losing their soul because as you know, it's a demanding profession and you have to really be strong inside of your own self and know who you are and what you want out of life in order to build that. And that's what we do with people.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:30] At what point in my career would I start working with you? Do I start when I'm right out of college, when I'm like mid-career, when I'm a partner? Who is your ideal customer?
Amber Setter: [00:04:40] Yeah, it is at all different junctures of one's one's career. And so you might think of it of like, when are we going through a challenging time or a new time? So as an example, we have a program for helping people to pass the CPA exam. We're not talking about anything technical, we're talking to them about why do you want to do this? What's in it for you? What's in the way of you studying When you say you want to and not doing it.
David Leary: [00:05:06] You're giving the emotional and mental support you need on this journey, not just here's an exam, of course.
Amber Setter: [00:05:13] Yes, exactly. So whether we're coaching staff, accountant, a manager, a partner, someone with 25 years of experience, really what we're doing is helping them in the domain of relationship and not the technical task. Because I can tell you from, you know, earning a degree in accounting and studying for the CPA exam, no one ever taught me like how to lead other people and how to be effective and how to do relationship. And so really that's the majority of the conversations we end up in is how do people connect with themselves and connect with others, whether it's their client or it's their colleague.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:52] As our listeners know, this show is a wide ranging discussion. Anything and everything at the intersection of accounting and technology. So we look forward to getting your take your input on everything we have to discuss today.
Amber Setter: [00:06:06] All right.
David Leary: [00:06:07] Before we jump into, you know, the news and all the articles.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:10] And by the way, for everyone, I just want to let you all know we came through, I think with the professors are here, so the door is being answered right now by Norma. Yes. Who is one of the hosts of the Accounting Twins podcast, who's David's intern. So they're going to go talk to her. And then after that, we're going to talk to them so the.
David Leary: [00:06:27] Livestreams can have a small disruption, but we'll cut this out of the reel.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:30] We might. We might not. We'll see what happens.
David Leary: [00:06:31] So sorry.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:33] Sorry, David.
David Leary: [00:06:34] I'm actually, to be honest, I don't know how many people even came. There might be eight professors. Let me make sure.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:39] I'll continue while David goes. So I saw this story this week. This really caught my attention because I'm a big fan of remote work. Average time saved by remote workers, 72 minutes per day. This was in accounting today, and it comes from a recent study highlighted by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It surveyed workers all over the world and found that in the US, workers save about 55 minutes per day on average working remotely. And I was thinking to myself, it's kind of crazy that we have firms that are not permitting remote work or that want to pull employees back into the office when they save that much time. And I'm thinking that's that's like how long it took us to do the workout this morning when we did your orange Theory. David Yeah, like this could be like remote work. Is the solution to accountants not being able to get their family time, their, their workout time, whatever time you need outside of work?
David Leary: [00:07:37] Well, in general, it says a lot of people, 40% of the people are just using that time to do more work. Right. So that could actually solve firms capacity problems, let them work remotely. And now they can handle this extra 20% more of clients that nobody knows what to do with. And people keep firing.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:52] Yeah, right. I mean, we can't emphasize that enough people actually use that extra time. They're not commuting to work more. And yet firms have a problem with that. I think that's a huge disconnect for me.
David Leary: [00:08:01] I don't know what what do they find out? Right. Kind of.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:03] What do you think, Amber?
Amber Setter: [00:08:05] So fun fact. I've actually been working from home since 2005. I can tell you unequivocally I would never go back into an office five days a week. And I can also tell you that nothing replaces the experience of being together with a colleague like you two going to dinner last night, connecting and chatting, you know, working out together. It yeah, it was 50 minutes at Orangetheory, but I always I used to actually teach a class about this, which was managing your time as if it was your money. So just how we know we can invest a dollar and we can grow it, or we can invest a dollar in like, lose it. And it's a it's a low yield. The same is true with our energy, and I would offer that that time you guys are spending together is really going to enhance your relationship. Have you more connected, more synergy? When the going gets tough, you're more likely to be connected and support one another. So I don't see this as an either or. I think it's great that firms really should embrace having remote work and allowing for that because frankly, sometimes you need a really specialized practitioner that doesn't live in your market and that's like a really key way to get great talent. But I don't think that it's going to work if you're just going to say, Oh, we hired so-and-so, it's like, you know, seven states away, and then you want people to delegate work to a stranger that they've never met and they don't feel comfortable with. And so I think the real opportunity is like, bring everybody together, you know, once, at least once a year, maybe once a quarter. I don't know what that might look like. But how do you how do you do bowls and save time the majority of the time, but also make time for in-person connection when you can.
David Leary: [00:09:49] How does this affect so this this incoming wave of recent accounting grads? Obviously, like everybody wants to work remote. I want to work remote, but how does it affect their career? Like, do they kind of need to be have a closer relationship, be mentored, more like. From my coach. Or maybe. Maybe. Why don't you coach a partner? Like, what do you do with incoming people? Because I can't imagine the experience. If you. If you started a firm on day one, you're just remote and you are seeing people every so many weeks.
Amber Setter: [00:10:16] I completely agree. And so I actually just spoke at a at a tax kickoff with the firm earlier this week. And I shared a couple of things with them. One is, just like you said, maybe two years ago, coached a group of CPA exam candidates in a firm and in getting to know them, I was like, Wow. Their experience of starting in the firm was, Here's your laptop, sent to your house, sit in your house and get your ten billable hours in a day during busy season. And I thought, man, when I was 25, like, No, thank you, that would be horrible. Like, it's hard enough to adjust to becoming a full time employee and adulting and all that stuff. And then the other sort of thing that flew out of my mouth on Monday, which I never know what's going to come, but I was like, Oh, that was a pretty interesting analogy, is, you know, my daughter was which we were in this predicament during COVID where if if I went with the mainstream, she was going to do kindergarten online via Zoom. And I was like, Oh, no, thank you. Like, I just I as a parent, I'm not going to be really good at homeschooling.
Amber Setter: [00:11:23] It's not going to fit my life. So what am I going to do? And I ultimately ended up putting her in a private school. And then first grade came. It was back to normal and she went into a public school. That was a really bad experience for her, and I don't think it was because the is bad. I just think it was the time of transition. And I remember one day she said, Mommy, this school, they treat children like animals. And I said, Well, what does that mean? And she goes, Sit down, be quiet, sit still. And I thought, That's the teacher and what's going on with the teacher? The teacher's got. And this is the same for staff, accountants or first graders. You've got 24 people that the year before had zero. So socialization with other little humans going through that same life transition of going into a new setting. And academically, we're all over the place. You know, some parents were really invested, some weren't. And I think that's the same for staff accountants. They're not being socialized in the way they were before. Maybe that's good, right? Maybe they're like, Oh, I ain't doing a mandatory Saturday. Like, that's a bygone era and maybe there's good things, but maybe there's ways in which they're missing.
Amber Setter: [00:12:32] Like the experience that I had, which was hearing partners talk to clients and just learning through osmosis or being exhausted with your colleagues at 10:00 at night and saying silly things and having running jokes and having that be the glue that holds us together. So I think it's it's a really challenging time. And, you know, in my work, I end up talking to firms about people working in firms about all kinds of stuff. And and I remember distinctly like someone saying, you know, are just their staff. They're not doing as well. And I'm like, Well, what'd you do for training? They're like, basically took their training curriculum and instead of doing it together in person, they just put Zoom. And I'm like, You didn't change it. Like, you can't just take a curriculum and change the modality and expect the same result. It just doesn't work that way. So I think we're going to really be not only do we not have enough bodies, but those who are in the roles aren't as qualified as they were before because they haven't been educated in the traditional way and brought up to speed and nurtured as they once were.
Blake Oliver: [00:13:35] Yeah, I think the the thing that stuck out for me that you said was the osmosis learning by osmosis, hearing the partner talk to the client, you can't really get that remotely. And there's a lot of knowledge transmission that happens just from sitting in meetings. So how do you as a partner, give that to your staff when you're working remotely? Does it mean having them shatter you on your zooms? You know, that could that could work, right?
David Leary: [00:14:03] Well, it goes back to we said midway through. Covid works with remote people. If you if you got hired remotely, you interviewed remotely, you took the job remotely. You worked remotely. Did you ever actually work there? Like, are you have any emotional ties or connections to that company and then vice versa? Do they have any emotional ties or loyalty to you?
Blake Oliver: [00:14:21] Yeah, and that's part of the reason, right? I really strongly believe that even though that's one of the there are many benefits to remote work, that the huge disadvantage for the firm is loyalty. Loyalty is much less. And we saw that with whistle blower. Whistle blower reports increased dramatically during the pandemic. Probably my theory is due to remote work people feeling less loyalty to their employer. Right. So like, that's a sign of it. I wonder if it's continued. That would be really interesting.
David Leary: [00:14:53] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Keebler by combining client communications file review reporting and your task management keeper has everything you need to run your bookkeeping. Our CAS Practice Keeper is an all in one app that allows you, your team and your clients to easily collaborate to make your monthly clothes as efficient as possible, starting with a beautiful custom branded client portal optimized for bookkeeping work. Your client can answer questions you have about Uncategorized transactions, allowing you to categorize and automatically post them to QuickBooks Online correctly all without ever leaving keeper via the month end file review feature to surface transactions that may not be posted correctly, and by providing the perfect customized report that each client may need, keeper can highlight the value that your firm provides clients. Keepers built in task management ensures nothing falls through the cracks, and it includes time tracking. So you can see where you and your team spends their time with keepers. 1099 Manager You can easily review each client list of vendors, email address, physical address, tax ID and the amount paid and from the same screen. Even request W-9 for any vendors that you're missing information for. No more jumping between screens or browser tabs. Keeper has a very affordable and clear pricing model that starts at only $8 a month. Learn more about why thousands of bookkeepers and accountants trust keeper to manage their month end close and to get 20% off your first three months by using code cap 20. Head over to Cloudaccountingpodcast.com Promo slash keeper That is Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo for K PPR Keeper, the one app to run your bookkeeping business.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:27] We've got some we've got a comment in the YouTube live chat. So a reminder to our listeners that we stream live on YouTube, follow our YouTube channel, and you will get notified when we go live. Sam said, I just got approved to work from home two days a week and three days in February. I have an hour commute and argued that I could work more during busy season if I didn't spend 2 hours a day driving. Absolutely right. That's the argument to make to partners.
David Leary: [00:16:53] Six more billable hours a week.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:55] Yeah, that's the argument you make to partners who are thinking that traditional billable hour mindset. Right. I can work more billable hours for you. Hopefully, though, they don't up your billable hours then right from 55 to 60 or something like that.
Amber Setter: [00:17:11] What I would say to Sam and this is the beauty of coaching, what we help people, that person that wrote in the chat is like, you know what? This doesn't work for me and it doesn't work for my life. But what what I would like instead is X and you would be shocked at how many people do not have the gumption to go to their employer and say this policy, this blanket policy actually doesn't work. And the business case for why I want something different, not just because I don't feel like coming in, but like the real business case as to why it would benefit me and my contribution and therefore the firm I want y instead. And that's really like the power of what we do in coaching is helping people understand what they want and asking for it and holding them accountable for the change that they desire. Because when you don't communicate it, you just end up resentful and then you leave and nobody wins.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:08] Now, the thing that is a little worrisome for me is this stat I saw in The Wall Street Journal. It's in a story called The Job Market for Remote Workers is shrinking, and this is to be expected during the pandemic, So many of us went remote. It's going to be a pullback that's expected, right? I don't think anybody would assume it's going to last the way it was. So the stat is this that in March, 20.6% of job postings on LinkedIn were remote, fully remote. That's down to 13.2%. So we went from 21% to 13% from March to December. The thing that's interesting is that demand for remote jobs is still very high. A majority of all applications submitted on LinkedIn are for remote jobs. So to me that says if you're a firm and you can figure out how to do all this remote stuff and to train your staff remotely and be productive remotely, you're going to have your pick of qualified candidates.
David Leary: [00:19:11] Because I mentioned before, the reason this number fell is a lot of jobs that you could argue white collar jobs that allowed remote work. Those all tightened up. I mean, there's tech cuts everywhere, right? Those jobs are not they don't exist anymore. So who's who's left if you can't get a job working remotely? And those you're right. If you're a firm, you offer remote. If you can figure out how to do it, you should have a way to get more people into the profession. This ties back to an article, and I love the headline because this is from going concern. It says KPMG Vice chair hopes the tech layoffs will scare college kids into accounting. And I have loosely talked about this before. All these layoffs, like, hey, maybe try to hire tech people if they're looking for work. But the argument is, you know, and then, yes, lots and you've said this over and over again, you yourself left the county to go work in a tech company, tech companies. Right. You've done this yourself. And now that those jobs maybe aren't as sexy, they're betting on accounting enough quote in the interview. Accounting is that boring, stable profession that doesn't do as well in a hugely expansive economies, but does great when the economy is on a downslide. So it's like the bet here. Like the way we're going to solve the talent shortage in accounting is to have a depression, and then people will be so desperate for work, they'll be like, fine, I'll be an accountant.
Blake Oliver: [00:20:31] And that's what you hear. I've said this before. I was at a Naspa event and one of the speakers said the recession could solve our talent crisis. And every time somebody says that, I've got to call bullshit on it because you look at the numbers, the tech layoffs are just a tiny fraction of their workforce. Nobody is laying off like more than, I think, 10%. And all of these tech companies over hired during the pandemic because they were all flush with cash, because money was cheap. And so they might as well. Right. So all they're doing now is just being smart. Like if you have the opportunity to cut 5 to 10% of your workforce and you know that you're already overstaffed, you should do it. And that's why they're all following suit, right?
David Leary: [00:21:10] Accounting firms have been cutting five, 5 to 10% of the workforce for decades.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:14] 20 to.
David Leary: [00:21:15] 30%, not consciously, just because their behaviors.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:18] So that's the thing, is all these headline numbers of Google cutting tens of thousands of workers or whatever, it's it's tiny. Compared to their overall workforce. And it's not making a dent in their number. It's just bringing them back to where they were a few years ago. So it's actually good because now Main Street companies, non tech companies have an opportunity finally to hire some of these people. So if you're an accounting firm and you've got room for tech people and your team like you should be recruiting like heavily like go after those engineers. Now, they might not be the cream of the crop, but probably in your accounting firm they can handle it. I imagine.
David Leary: [00:21:54] A Google C engineer is probably going to be an engineer at any accounting.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:59] At any firm. Right. Given what given where we are, we're a little bit you know, admittedly, most firms are far behind, right? I mean, still making the transition to cloud.
David Leary: [00:22:09] So, Amber, do you even think like, is this. As you coach younger people and you coach for homeowners, is this even realistic? Like, oh, there could be a shift of people. Well, do you think it's possible for people to really shift their careers from, Oh, I'm some tech engineer, I'm not. I'm going to go into accounting. Like, is it even or is this just a dream?
Amber Setter: [00:22:27] Not with a 150 hour rule. I mean, let's let's call a spade a spade. It used to be that we had these ways in which we could take somebody who did something before and then come into the profession and learn what they needed to learn in order to get up to speed and get certified. And I can't speak for all the jurisdictions because they're just it's just way too much. Right. But I and my day, I get to say that now, like in my day, you know, we only needed four years of college and there was a masters of accountancy program where I did my undergrad that was specifically for someone who had been an engineer who came in and got their hours and they got certified. And I just. I think because we have that 150 hour rule, all those kinds of programs are diluted now. I mean, Masters in Taxation used to be an awesome add on for someone who worked in tax. Now most programs are diluted with people with no work experience that need to get 150 hours. So, I mean, it's possible. I guess the last sort of to contradict myself is something I'm hearing a lot of in firms is they're like, well, we used to require people to be a CPA to get promoted, and now we can't do that because if we don't promote these people, we know they're going to leave and they're going to go because they've been loyal and we really need them.
Amber Setter: [00:23:50] So now we need to bend our own rules. And the big four has done this for years, right? Like you could be if you're in tax, you could be an enrolled agent and get promoted to manager and onward. But the smaller firms, they don't have that or medium firms. And now they're just saying, okay, well, maybe we're going to promote people without the CPA. Well, I don't know. Maybe you can come in and be an engineer because they've dug themselves in a hole or we as a hole have dug ourselves in where you can't now, because of the shortage, require people to get the CPA to get promoted. And that's just what I'm hearing is going on in firms that have to go away with that rule.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:29] Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't really thought of it that way. It was motivating. You couldn't make it to manager without being a CPA. But now, if we take that away, why are people going to go get their CPA? I mean.
Amber Setter: [00:24:42] And I should say it's not like blanket wide. Like I think if you are actually doing a test work well, you should keep that that rigor there. And so I do see it there. Like, I don't know if you guys saw in the news this past summer, KPMG did something which they called the Audit Kickstart program. So for entry level folks, they could either like do the same old incentive that's been around for decades for passing the CPA exam, which is like a the sooner you pass, the greater the bonus. They said you could do that old way or you could do this new thing called the Kickstart program, where you come in and you sit in a training room with people and you do your CPA review course together. And when you do that, like we'll give you medical benefits and we'll give you a little financial incentive. But they only did that for audit. Why do you think only for audit? Because that's the only place that you really need the designation anymore. So it's interesting of like how this is all going to shake out long term for the CPA designation aside from auditors.
David Leary: [00:25:47] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Live Flow. Think about this If you have approximately 60 clients and create five reports a month for each of them, that's over 3500 reports a year. And let's say you're really fast and only take you one minute per report. That's almost 2.5 days a year you spend creating reports. Here are a few of the ways life flow saves time for so many Accountants and bookkeepers. Once you create the perfect suite of reports for a client, you can just copy the Google sheet. Use live flow to connect it to a different client. Quickbooks Online Company and you're all done. The new reports will pull in the data for the second client automatically. You can easily drill down on the details of each number on a live flow report, including drilling down to the transaction level to navigate directly to the transaction inside of QuickBooks Online. No more opening QuickBooks Online to search for specific transactions like phone. Google sheets are in the cloud so you don't have to waste time emailing files between your team and your clients. And you can give your clients access to a suite of reports that they can access any time, eliminating one off requests for you and your staff. It's more about using live flow and how you can save 20% off your first three months at Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo slash live flow. That is Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo for Live e. F. L. O. W. Stop manually updating your spreadsheets with live flow.
Blake Oliver: [00:27:08] So, David, where do we go from here? I have apps, tech chat, GPT AI a little bit of fraud. Is there anything burning for you? We could talk about Jorge Santos.
David Leary: [00:27:21] Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about that. Does it tie? Is there an accounting story there for like. Well, I mean, he could. He could have said he worked for Big four companies, too, and his list just goes on and on.
Blake Oliver: [00:27:32] It's too bad that he he didn't say that because that would have been an easier tie in. I've been following this since The New York Times broke this story, like right when he got elected.
David Leary: [00:27:41] About how you should rewind who this guy is.
Blake Oliver: [00:27:42] Oh, Jorge Santos, I feel like if you haven't heard of him, I mean, maybe you don't follow politics at all, but he's the Republican congressman from things like parts of Queens and Long Island, somewhere out in the boroughs in New York, and somehow he got elected and nobody.
David Leary: [00:27:58] So the US Congress, this is not a locality in the US he's.
Blake Oliver: [00:28:01] In and he's he's he's in the house and he is a total scam artist. And in the the tie in to our show is that his last as far as I can tell, his last W2 job was as the salesman for an alleged Ponzi scheme in Florida. That's something like a $17 million Ponzi scheme. And there's a follow up story in The New York Times, and the headline is How an investor Lost $625,000 and his faith in Jorge Santos. And it profiles a client, a wealthy investor named Andrew in Trotter, who was lured by annual returns of 17 16% and had invested 625 K in a fund offered by the company Harbor City Capital, where Jorge Santos was a VP. And I just I can't believe that we have the salesman for a alleged Ponzi scheme in Congress, but it wouldn't be.
David Leary: [00:28:57] It depends on your view of Congress. I mean, you know, maybe. Maybe it's all the.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:01] Yeah, it's just it's amazing. So, yeah, And I would highly recommend anyone who's interested in this go find this story on on the Times. But like yeah it's it's I hope that the guys on oh my fraud the the best fraud cast the best fraud podcast in our profession go and dig into this once once more shakes out because it's just fascinating. Santos claimed to have raised 100 million for Harbor City and Seck documents say the firm only raised 17 million. And Santos also was telling people that he and his family invested millions of dollars. But financial disclosures filed during his 2020 run for Congress show that he earned just $55,000 that year and had no assets.
David Leary: [00:29:46] So speaking of going off of crypto and Ponzi schemes, I guess if you want to keep going. Did you see Moody's is working to create a scoring system for Stablecoins? Your favorite.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:58] Thing? Yeah, I saw this headline.
David Leary: [00:29:59] And essentially they want to use your favorite thing, which are they want to evaluate based off the attestation reports that firms are making.
Blake Oliver: [00:30:09] Oh, is that how they're going to do it? Yes. Great. So so we've talked about these attestation reports when it comes to blockchain crypto for a few episodes now, and they're basically agreed upon procedures, engagements, which makes them kind of useless. They don't they actually say, and if you read them, they say that they do not provide any assurance. Yes. So how could you create a scoring system?
David Leary: [00:30:32] So that's Moody's is saying. So they're not going to deliver an official credit rating the way they do for publicly traded crypto companies. So basically they're inventing a scoring system because there's probably money in it for them. Yes, because the crypto companies are. But we'll look Moody's game, people will not know it's the same way crypto exploited accounting firms not they're going to exploit Moody's. Moody's is going to create some scoring system that has it's not their official scoring system. They're going to get a point or whatever they get. And then the crypto companies like, look, Moody's gave a score of blah, blah, blah, even though it's not the real score for Moody's, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:31:04] The foundation is sand and the scoring system built on it is sand. Well, since you brought up blockchain, I get to bring up this story. Wash sales heavily inflating unregulated crypto exchange transaction volume. So it turns out that 75% of trades on unregulated crypto exchanges, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 77% of trades are essentially wash sales, which means you sell, you buy, you sell, you buy, sell, you buy, you create fake volume to create the appearance that there's this big market for crypto. But in reality, which is what you and I have known for at least a year now, David. Most of it's crap. It's people, big players creating this, this, this illusion of activity.
David Leary: [00:31:53] So, Amber, where are you on the the crypto thing before, Right. Are you, are.
Blake Oliver: [00:31:58] You a crypto whale? Did we accidentally just.
Amber Setter: [00:32:01] No, I'm just like, oh my God, wash sale. I learned this at some time. Wow. Wow. But yeah, when you just said like big players creating an illusion, I was like, Wait, are we talking about employment opportunities in our profession? I don't know a lot about crypto, to be honest. This is not really in my realm. I did learn the most I think I can absorb in by watching John Oliver tonight talk about crypto, which was.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:25] Oh, I got to I got to check that out. He's good.
Amber Setter: [00:32:28] He's good. Second favorite to my favorite that he does about the IRS. I don't know if you saw that one. It's about seven years old, but it's phenomenal. He refers to the IRS is like the anus of the body while we still need it. It has a really important function and if it's not working, we're in trouble.
David Leary: [00:32:46] And that's.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:47] That might be my favorite thing anyone has ever said on our show, ever that that's.
Amber Setter: [00:32:51] Amazing. The quote from John Oliver. I can't take the credit. I love.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:55] It. I love it. Well, we should talk about tax season, right?
David Leary: [00:32:59] Well, before you jump into that, we can transition in. So the IRS released guidance on the whole crypto check. Mark, Right. I have crypto, I've used crypto, I've sold crypto. That's on everybody's.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:10] Return. That's on the top of the 1040.
David Leary: [00:33:12] Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:13] We're still on the 1040.
David Leary: [00:33:14] So they changed the guidance for this for 2022. Now apparently only check the box and hopefully so are the podcast we talked about last week, the new podcast federal tax updates they're going to be the tax experts have a deep dive on things like this more. But the way it looks, if you moved any digital assets or crypto, you have to check the box. But if you're like me, who I had transactions in 2021 and it's just been sitting there, my wallet's worthless for 2022. I don't have to check the box this year.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:45] So if you hold, you don't have to check the box.
David Leary: [00:33:47] If you have no activity activity, you don't check the box this year, obviously don't. That means the expert in the interpretation is, but that's what it looks like they've changed.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:57] Well, that might be one tiny contribution to this stat in CPA Trendlines. Cpa Trendlines has a barometer where they ask tax professionals, Do you think this year is going to be better or worse? And 53%, a majority of respondents think that this year is going to be somewhat better than last year. So mildly optimistic.
David Leary: [00:34:19] But it's been really bad for two years. Really bad. So but you said, what's the percentage?
Blake Oliver: [00:34:25] 53% say somewhat better and 14% say much better. So add those together where it's 67%, two thirds say it's going to be better and the rest say about the same or worse.
David Leary: [00:34:40] So what you are what's the what's the mood? The mood, Yeah, what's the vibe? What's the emotional piece of this that you're seeing when people talk about taxes?
Amber Setter: [00:34:50] So I'll share that. Yesterday I got a text from a client that was like, Hey, can I just get 15 minutes? And I always offer that to people, right? Because I talked to them. We have like a standing call. But if they need some spot coaching to reach out and this tax practitioner reached out and as I heard them, you know, sharing some stuff, I shared with them something that I've observed for years is that about this time of year, everyone assumes that I need to get stressed out and now's the time where I really should start stressing because it's going to be hard, it's going to be difficult and life's not going to be great and all the things. And so I do think there's a way in which the emotional climate people might be feeling that way. I was on a panel last week with the Center for Accounting Transformation, and they did a poll, you know, a CPE poll, and they asked people, as you head in to the busy season, like tell us about your stress levels. What do you anticipate? 27% said severe stress and 58% said moderate. So a total of 85% are going in with moderate to severe anticipatory stress. Some of that, I think, is what people create in a very unhealthy way. Like if I really. Pay attention. Like it's that thing that I do, that self talk that gets me into overdrive, but it's really not healthy and it's not sustainable. So I really encourage people to, you know, really reframe what your experience is going to be. Because if you go into it saying it's going to be worse, it's going to be stressful, then your mind is unconsciously going to be looking for all the things that are stressful and all the things that are going wrong instead of like, Hey, this is going to be a better season, or this season, I'm really going to focus on this or whatever it might be.
David Leary: [00:36:39] Who sets that tone or people setting it themselves mentally, or is this coming kind of from the vibe that comes from the higher ups in our firm?
Amber Setter: [00:36:47] I think it can be both. Sometimes it's the vibe from higher ups and the correspondents like, okay, we're coming in like your hours got to be up. You got to be back in the office. Like, whatever the communication going out in the firm could absolutely create some of that. Sometimes it's the individual. A lot of the work that I like to do is in adult development, which is how somebody grows psychologically. So at the lowest level of adult development, you don't realize that you're just reacting to the external environment. So if the firm says it's going to be this way, you're like, oh, okay, I, I, I go into that or I'm reacting to the deadlines. But when you mature psychologically and there's no correlation to age or IQ, but when you mature psychologically, it's like I'm going to create my experience the next several months. I, I realize I have patterns of thinking and I can see like, oh, my mind wants to tell me, I should stress out right now. That's an interesting thought. Where does that come from? Does that have to be true, or do I want to choose a different thought?
David Leary: [00:37:58] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Anker. For many of you, getting paid by your client is a multistep and multistep workflow that looks something like this. Send a client a proposal or engagement letter via a quote unquote signature tool. Wait for the client to accept it. Add the client to the accounting system, generate an invoice. Send that to the client. Wait for the client to pay you. Or maybe your advanced new sort of separate PDF to click their ACH or credit card info to set up automatic payments. But again, you wait for them to provide those details. You get the point. It's a messy manual process and I didn't even mention the spreadsheet you'll need to create to track all these steps. Introducing Anker. Anker automates your entire billing process for you end to end with Anker, you create one proposal that defines your scope of work, includes terms of service, allows your client to review and accept disagreement, even collects the client's payment info instantly to establish automated monthly payments for the client. They experience all of this in just one screen. It's really that simple and clean. With Anker's dashboard, you always have visibility into the entire process from pending and approved agreements. It will even surface items that may need additional attention, like when a client needs to update their credit card expiration date and if the scope of work of the client ever changes it monthly services or a one time additional charge, you can easily and clearly modify the agreement keeping you in the client on the same page. And the best part, there is no subscription fee at all. Anker only costs $5 per payment received. No matter how much you charge a client, it is still only $5 per payment. So read more about using Anker at your firm. Head over to Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo. Anker That is Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo for A and c h. O. R.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:36] So, David, I think this is the perfect time to transition into app news. The IRS has opened an online portal where businesses can file 1099 forms. So we've talked about how the dream is that you could interact with the IRS entirely through a portal. Never have to call on the phone, never have to fax anything. I think that's what they should spend the money on, the $80 billion. Hopefully it wouldn't cost $80 billion to build, but if that's all they did with it, I think it would make things much better. So we've got a small step in that direction. The IRS calls this the IRS portal and hopes that it will enable the agency to reduce the millions of pieces of paper it needs to deal with each year as it continues to work on catching up on its backlog from last year. And 1099 are a huge piece of that mess because a lot of people print out and mail in their 1099 to the IRS. And I think they got so many during the pandemic that they they actually got in trouble for just burning a bunch of them.
David Leary: [00:40:38] Remember that they're shredding and getting rid.
Blake Oliver: [00:40:39] Of they didn't even process them because they were never going to do it. So they just shredded them.
David Leary: [00:40:44] Which actually is declaring bankruptcy on your email inbox. Yeah, they just delete your whole all your emails.
Blake Oliver: [00:40:50] Yeah. So I haven't given this a try yet. I got to still do my 1099, so maybe I'll maybe I'll log in to the.
David Leary: [00:40:56] System and.
Blake Oliver: [00:40:57] Try to do that.
David Leary: [00:40:58] As well.
Blake Oliver: [00:40:58] Yeah.
David Leary: [00:40:59] It's funny that they called that Iris because there's an accounting software company.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:04] In the UK in.
David Leary: [00:41:05] The U.K. that's making a strong strides here in the US market now. And so Iris software announced their earnings and basically they have a 28% revenue growth. And a lot of it is because of their acquisitions they made in the efforts are doing in the states. So remember, they acquired a payroll solution called my Pay Solutions in October. Remember, they bought Accountants world. So Accountants World is tons of suites of software coaching. It's payroll apps. And then they bought docket, which is similar to a document management scanning receipts, scanning that type of thing. So they bought all these things, but this is what's helping their their growth. And now on the US side, they now are in 52 of the top 100 firms and they have about 6800 small business, small to midsize firms.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:47] I imagine most of that's from the accountants world acquisition. Probably. That's my guess, because accountants world has been pretty fairly popular.
David Leary: [00:41:54] It's been around for a long time too. Yeah. And but I imagine they have were somewhere probably being like I guess you can't call your accounting 1099 system Iris I imagine that's we're going to see that.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:04] I think the iris can do whatever it wants in that regard. Here's an update about QuickBooks. Jan brings banking enhancements to QuickBooks. This was on Insightful Accountants. This was a feature that was announced at QuickBooks Connect 2022. It is now here.
David Leary: [00:42:22] We made a video about this. If you go on all our socials, you should be able to find this video.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:25] Well, I don't I don't know if this feature was in it. So this is the ability for QBO subscribers to make use of the QuickBooks banking find match feature for foreign currency bank accounts.
David Leary: [00:42:37] Oh, no, we didn't talk about that.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:38] So previously, users operating on a multi currency basis, they couldn't match transactions in QuickBooks with their foreign currency bank account transactions. But now you can. So if you are a Canadian or a UK QuickBooks user where you've got a lot more multi currency than you do here in the United States, you're going to be really happy about that. Another banking related enhancement gives QuickBooks Online accountant users the ability to batch edit their clients auto add bank rules. So if you need to revise them, you can do so as a batch. You just select banking and then you choose multiple rules and turn off auto add for all of them. So this auto add feature has been a bit controversial because if people turn it on and they set up a bunch of rules, suddenly everything's getting coded automatically into the GL. But it might be wrong.
David Leary: [00:43:27] So yeah, because, because I could see a small business owner like, of course auto add it and they said about 40 rules, all auto add and not the kind of bookkeeper I'm going in to clean up this stuff. I have to go one by one to make them not auto add. But now I can just bulk select all and change it. Yep. These are these are the small things that make becomes bookkeeper smile.
Blake Oliver: [00:43:46] You mentioned layoffs in tech. So we got to mention the layoffs in accounting tech that have happened. So there was an article on accounting web summarizing them. David, do you recall any of them off the top of your head?
David Leary: [00:43:59] I think I saw ignition. Did I think I saw drafted? Obviously, Amelio did a few months back. Basically, everybody's cutting some because of.
Blake Oliver: [00:44:10] Ignition is the one that's highlighted here. They let go of it doesn't say what percentage is 20 employees and carbon. Carbon also did a 23% cut in its team. That was probably the biggest one. Pleo laid off 15% of employee of employees. Plaid and Stripe have cut their employees. But again, as I said before, I wouldn't worry too much about this. This is just normal cyclical nature of tech, which.
David Leary: [00:44:38] Well, I think in general, like, you know, when money was cheap, there was a lot of VC money going into these companies because money is cheap and then it's usually VC money you get that pressure to. Sell, sell, sell. You've got to grow it. That's possible. So people hire a bunch of salespeople. And so a lot of these layoffs are in sales. But the one thing that's interesting to note here is this a trend or not is a lot of people like the content teams, the blog post writers, things like that. And sometimes I'm wondering now if because I did talk to an app, the founder of an app and he turned me on to Jasprit II, which is you know, everybody's hot on chat. It's kind of a similar type thing. We use chat. I told you about using Jasprit and he's like, it's I can use that and I can get blog posts that are almost just as good as what I'm paying content writer full time to do. And so you're starting to see some of these layoffs, really, because the positions are now getting eliminated. Like if if you are just writing content or managing somebody overseas to write it and they're really using jasprit or chat to write a basic SEO blog post for your website, like are those jobs actually are we seeing a real shift in some work going away? Content writing?
Blake Oliver: [00:45:47] I think definitely on the low end, if you're just churning out blog content, marketing content, you're either going to have to learn how to use these tools to do more or you're out of a job if all you're doing is churning out draft copy.
David Leary: [00:46:02] Well, if I'm a firm and I need to tap some SEO post like How to create 90 nines or why I need the, I'm sure these tools can create a good enough blog post for me just to slap up on my site.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:13] Yeah, I mean, you still need to edit them.
David Leary: [00:46:15] So if you need to hire somebody.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:16] Know if you as a firm owner are willing to edit that, you can just ask Jasper to write you those blog posts you can edit. I mean, that's what I'm doing. I'm using it right now. I used it with a client the other day. We wrote six emails in like 20 minutes. It's incredibly fast at doing that kind of boilerplate marketing stuff and then you just tweak, you customize, you're done. It's four or five X savings in time. So for that, yeah.
David Leary: [00:46:42] Did you say earlier on you did have a chat story?
Blake Oliver: [00:46:46] I've got a bunch of them, actually. So Microsoft is investing something like $10 Billion into open AI. That's huge for accountants because the vast majority of firms are on the Office 365 stack.
David Leary: [00:46:59] And so that's a very good.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:02] All the benefits of chat. But if this partnership works out strategically will be embedded into the Microsoft Suite. So imagine outlook drafting emails for you that you can then review and approve and send. Imagine having access to your whole communication history with your clients.
David Leary: [00:47:17] Just excel.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:18] Yeah. Or accessing the data that you've got in your Excel files. And so you can ask it a question and say, you know, or just even finding information, just, just like all that stuff so disorganized and everybody wants to have a SharePoint, everybody wants to have a notion that's organized. But has anyone ever actually had a wiki that was.
David Leary: [00:47:35] Organized in your firm? I cannot find.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:37] It. The client files are just everywhere. I mean, our file folder structure in our company, David, is a mess. And actually that leads me to a story featuring somebody really smart at a big four firm talking about the application of AI. Let's see if I can find this here. Yeah. This was an article on VentureBeat featuring Ernst and Young's CTO. The headline is Chat Killer Enterprise Use Case will be Managing Knowledge and he talks about how they've got so much knowledge across EY globally with all these people there. Sharepoint must be a giant mess right now. Chat GPT Open AI tools. These generative AI tools can ingest all that information and then go find you what you need. So people must spend. It's probably impossible to quantify the amount of time that people spend just looking for information inside of big organizations like that. And these tools could really help.
David Leary: [00:48:37] Yeah. So finding the information.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:39] Yeah, really exciting. Rocket attacks has launched attacks. Sorry, not rocket attacks. Rocket launcher has launched rocket tax, which is tax prep.
David Leary: [00:48:51] But it looks like the headlines a lot from the headline. I saw that article and I was like, oh, here goes another outsider getting the tax game. But it looks like they're just working with tax file who basically tax files a little bit of a Uber system for tax returns done and so it looks like there it's a seamless integration It looks like I haven't looked at it or seen it, but it's not like they're they're an outsider coming in. They're just utilizing a player inside already. So they're just it's a it's probably biz dev deal.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:21] Some type one thing on the website that caught my attention is the subhead costs less than your average CPA firm. The pricing starts for personnel at $200 for self employed at $400 and for business at just $500, which is C Corp. S. S Corp partnerships, trust estates and non profits. And they say that for all of these levels of service, a CPA or an enrolled agent will prepare your entire return from start to finish. We might have to try this out. David Well, now, now we have to do this is good because we have a couple of entities. Yeah, and more than a couple and we need to test the new TurboTax live for businesses and we need to test this and and find out just how good it is.
David Leary: [00:50:07] Well, the difference here, here and what this is, is rocket lawyer is very similar to legal zoom. That's the other major competitor. Yeah. Legal zoom. If you remember, we talked to they bought an accounting firm. They actually are doing bookkeeping and tax services. Right. Legal zoom is and this is probably the response like, oh no, we need to have something. So they just partner somebody in the industry. So I don't think it's any advice that the headline was very like, whoa. But I don't think it's as much of an impact as we think. It's really just an optimized site to buy text file is really what got us. I found, like the most random article of the week. It's really random. So this is from Rita Keller. Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:47] Oh, yeah. She was a guest on my earmark pile. That's okay. So if you don't know Rita Keller, she was one of the original firm administrators before that became a thing. You know, when when CPA firms didn't have operations people and and she grew a firm from like a dozen people to becoming a regional firm as the administrative partner. And one of the the few women in that role originally. Oh, gee.
David Leary: [00:51:16] So. So it felt like a weird article then to click through it because I was like the decline of voice mail. Like this is an article.
Blake Oliver: [00:51:24] Somewhere and headline is the.
David Leary: [00:51:26] The decline of voicemail. And this is January 27th, 2023. But what she's doing, it's a flashback post to a post she wrote in 2014 and the 2014 post talks about using voicemail less. And she goes on to say, So this is in 2014. She's like, Hey, you know, I expect all of you to begin frequently. New ways of communicating with clients such as texting. Right? Mm hmm. And she's like, I know many experienced, mature CPAs who are now using text extensively, but so it's just kind of a. Funny look. The headline was like, Are we kidding me? There's there's articles to be written about voice mail. But it's really if you step back and read that again in 2014, she's like, Hey, stop, stop using voice mails.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:07] Like, stop using voicemail.
David Leary: [00:52:09] And I bet you there are people are still using voice mails.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:11] Oh, yeah, I on my voice message now, it says, if you actually want me to respond to you, please send a text. I don't I don't remember the last time I got a real voicemail. Amber, do you do you remember the last time you got a voicemail that wasn't a scam or scam artist or a salesperson?
Amber Setter: [00:52:30] I still get them from, like, family and friends, but I have like 65 that I haven't even listened to, if I'm honest. So, yeah, I'm not a big voice mail. Like, sit there and listen. I just call somebody back.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:43] You know what the smartest thing is? It's and I never did this because I. But I should have. It's. It's you let your voice mailbox fill up completely so that nobody can leave a message. And unfortunately, Verizon, I use Verizon. They don't have the ability just to turn it off. Some providers will let you completely turn off voicemail.
David Leary: [00:53:01] When I was at Intuit, I had to turn off the voicemail because it was too much work or it's a voice. You have to type in all these dials you get in there and somebody's saying, I send you an email. Like, what? All that work for that. So yeah, I'm anti voicemail for sure.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:15] So David, I have some listener mail.
David Leary: [00:53:18] Yes, absolutely.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:19] Let's finish out the episode with listener mail. Okay. So this is the subject line of this email is January 20th, Cloud Accounting Podcast. Hi Blake. Hope you and David are having a great New year and lots of success with your new media company. I find it interesting in the last podcast you said tax professionals were getting rid of clients because they couldn't handle them all. This is not our situation. Remember, we became remote only and we are in our second tax season in Prescott, Arizona. After raising our prices 80% the previous year. Our goal is to retain half our clients and make the same amount. We retained about 38% of our clientele, but revenue was down 30%. We are not trying to scale and become a large company, but we are looking for new clients. We are currently doing Facebook ads, Google ads, Yelp ads and a mailer to try and generate some new business. In Arizona. We are looking to increase by about 150 to 200 more clients and we would like to get more tax resolution clients and our marketing for that too. I have learned a lot about crypto and Bitcoin in the last year or so since my last voice message. I will be sharing my thoughts soon. That's from Greg and I just wanted to bring that to the show because I thought it was interesting. They raised prices 80% and their goal was to retain half the clients and make the same amount of money, but instead their revenue went down 30% because they lost a lot of clients. They only retained like less than half, 38%. So I was curious, David, like just knowing that, do you think that 80% was aggressive?
David Leary: [00:54:52] You know, that's almost two X Yeah. If you're here, you have to. And then I know the boiling frog thing is not true, but like, you kind of have to ease this in and, and use the math strategies into it, into it grows 15% every year because they just do these small price increases. The next thing you know, payroll used to be $99 a year and next payroll is $300 a year. Now, it took a long time to get there, but they just every year, teeny little move of the dial and then the masters at it.
Blake Oliver: [00:55:20] And the problem was, Greg told me in another email that I don't have open. I guess they had not raised prices for years, so they just felt like, okay, we got to do it all at once. But probably if you're that far behind, you might want to spread it out over a few years. Even if you are behind like 20% a few years in a row.
David Leary: [00:55:38] Like the good news is, is tons of clients are currently being fired because the lack of bodies to do work at their firms. So there's tons of clients that are just roaming around. Like maybe if you're doing online advertising or outreach, like target them specifically let go by your accounting firm. Question Mark Right.
Blake Oliver: [00:55:57] Well, and that brings me to the second question here, implicit question, which is how do you get new clients? Probably I would probably not do really the the Facebook ads and I would focus more on going out to other firms, the larger firms that, you know, are trying to get rid of these smaller clients and like you. David Yeah. You got fired for your firm and, and partner with them basically say, Look, I'll happily take on the clients that you can't serve.
David Leary: [00:56:29] And that can be Twitter clients.
Blake Oliver: [00:56:31] But if you get a big firm relationship. Yeah, absolutely.
Amber Setter: [00:56:35] I wholeheartedly agree, because I've been helping practitioners through this a lot, like raising rates, you know, right sizing not just the rates with clients, but like getting rid of the clients who are drags on their energy and get things in late or want to argue with them about their liability, which is not in their control. Right. But going and building relationships in the firms. Because in the firms there's oftentimes just a och there's a minimum threshold period. And that's because they tried to do that a couple of years ago and people didn't do it. And so now they're like, No, this year we're really serious. Like we're we're culling clients. And I wouldn't do a Facebook ad either. I would build relationships with those firms that are calling clients and getting lots of them, because in addition, then you get like practitioner input on on those clients. They're just not. Joe Blow off the Facebook ad Street.
Blake Oliver: [00:57:31] Yeah, that can be rough, right? It can often be very difficult to serve them because they've not done taxes for years and years and then you've got to catch them up. I would much rather.
David Leary: [00:57:40] Me the big firm is sending you their paying clients. And not just.
Blake Oliver: [00:57:43] Not, they're.
David Leary: [00:57:44] Not they're unpaid.
Blake Oliver: [00:57:45] That's why you've got to get paid up front, guys. Get paid up front. I was just listening to a podcast in AICPA podcast featuring Jody GRONDIN, who is like the chair of the Digital CPA Conference and has led Summit CPA for I think like 18 years. And they just got acquired by Anders and they're doing everything right. They're the model as as digital CPA holds them out to be or AICPA holds them out to be. And what he did is really not that complicated. He just took all of the tax clients and put them on subscription billing upfront so they would get paid at least in two chunks before they do the tax return. And then he put all the bookkeeping clients on monthly and then weekly. And created subscription revenue.
David Leary: [00:58:27] And because of that, you're not chasing money, you're not you don't have people that don't pay you.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:32] You they did other stuff too. But like the two revolutionary things were not that hard to do from a practice management standpoint. I got one more listener message and then we'll we'll close out. How about that? So this is from Jared. Jared said, Hello, I am a relatively new listener to your podcast, but fascinated and excited that people are talking about accounting in this way. Our firm uses QuickBooks Online for majority of our clients. I have recently tried the right tool and think that it is revolutionary because of how customizable it is. It truly does save time and makes it easier for the user to navigate QuickBooks Online in a way that makes sense for them. I would love if you could all do a short segment about the security behind all of this. Can I truly trust this extension, or should our firm wait to see if Intuit adopts or acquires the same sort of format idea? Thank you and I look forward to listening to future episodes. So David, as the QuickBooks expert on this podcast, can you tell me about the security of. Browser plugins and then specifically Hector Garcia's right tool.
David Leary: [00:59:36] Yeah, So and I did reply to this email individually, so I've known Hector for whatever, dozen, 15 years, forever. Hector is not a bad actor in this space. So that's the.
Blake Oliver: [00:59:49] Trusting, trustworthy individuals.
David Leary: [00:59:50] So he's not a bad actor or a trustworthy individual, but in general, like browser plug ins are kind of dangerous.
Blake Oliver: [00:59:57] That's true.
David Leary: [00:59:57] Yeah, very dangerous, because basically you're letting that that tool you're running just read every single piece of data in text that passes through your browser. And they're like, I remember PayPal had that one where it watches everything you do so for your shopping carts, right? So we can give you a coupon. I forgot what that thing was called. Paypal bought them, but then they're very dangerous to use those with your client data. And so you have to be very selective on what browser plug ins you put in because it's reading your data and it's your client's data. So it's very dangerous and.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:28] It could be sending that data back to a.
David Leary: [01:00:29] Server. That's correct. Yeah. In general, like apps that are on the QuickBooks App Store, right? To get on the App Store, you have to go through a big security review and it's very exhaustive to get on there. But in general, this one to tell accountants and bookkeepers including this this account in the email, then I don't want to throw people under this, but I want to go to the website of his website. And it was the browser is telling me his website is not secure. It's like accounts and bookkeepers are always so worried about the security of an app they use of the security of this is the security this when the real vulnerabilities are in house right. You know many apps I looked at or helped launch on QuickBooks thousands. You know how many of them have ever committed a fraud? None. You know, many stories we've covered on this podcast of an accountant or bookkeeper committing fraud at firms or in a small business more than we can even cover on the show. And so it's like, yes, you should be concerned about security, should be concerned about these apps. Yes. But you've got to look internally. That's what I would say for firms. That's where your real risk are.
Blake Oliver: [01:01:31] Yeah, good point. Very good point. Well, I think that is it for this show. We're out of time.
David Leary: [01:01:37] Yeah. I mean, I think I'd like to find out if people want to get a hold of ember. Yeah, we can do that.
Blake Oliver: [01:01:41] Amber, thanks so much for joining us. If people want to get a hold of you, learn about what you are up to in the world, where should they go?
Amber Setter: [01:01:49] Our website is Conscience dot CPA, so that's easy enough to find. And then I'm always.
David Leary: [01:01:56] You do this.
Amber Setter: [01:01:57] What was that?
David Leary: [01:01:58] Hard to spell but.
Amber Setter: [01:02:00] Just close c0nc ious, dot CPA, dot, dot com. And I'm always, you know, trying to say something different on LinkedIn because there's too much noise that's boring. But if you want some perspective, some commentary and some entertainment, you can follow me there.
Blake Oliver: [01:02:20] Great. And I look forward to following you. Well, I already do. So I look forward to more of that. Thanks for joining us, Amber. David, great to see you in person as as always. And we'll see all of our listeners here next week. As a reminder, you can earn CPE for listening to this episode. You already made it to the end, so you might as well get continuing professional education credit for it. Download the Free Earmark CPE App. Take a quick five question quiz and earn your CPE certificate. We get the courses up on the app about a week after each episode publishes in this feed, so if you don't see it right away, just come back to the app next week and you'll see it there. And you can always take your quiz later and get your.
David Leary: [01:03:02] Cpe I do have one review from Apple.
Blake Oliver: [01:03:05] Oh, let's hear it.
David Leary: [01:03:05] Yes. This from Apple podcast is a five star review. It's from Cody Kreiner. Thoughtful conversations from day one recently started a job in the outsourced accounting industry, and I started listening to a couple a couple of weeks ago to from episode one. So he's listening from episode one.
Blake Oliver: [01:03:21] I got to if you go back to episode one and you listen all the way through to what are we on.
David Leary: [01:03:25] 300, you get your CPA designation, why you should.
Blake Oliver: [01:03:28] Be able to earn your.
David Leary: [01:03:29] 150 hours.
Blake Oliver: [01:03:30] By listening. Well, because you're going to be listening to 316 hours of the podcast.
David Leary: [01:03:36] So it might take a while for me to hear. It might take a while for me to hear you read this on a show. But the foresight and the discussions from day one pre 2020 is really cool to look back on now. The podcast is aged well and probably would have been a lot more successful businesses. So little.
Blake Oliver: [01:03:55] There probably would have been a lot more successful businesses.
David Leary: [01:03:58] If they'd be tuning in at that time. What you guys are doing, keep it up. So thank you Cody, for the review. And six months from now when you hear this episode, you'll hear your review.
Blake Oliver: [01:04:08] Thanks to everyone who tuned in on the YouTube live. We'll see you next week by Ember.
Amber Setter: [01:04:13] Bye.
David Leary: [01:04:14] Hi. Time for the classifieds. Is your New Year's resolution to get your firm better organized. The average firm spends more than 30% of its time sending repetitive requests to clients for information to complete their work. When you don't have what you need, your workflow is blocked and your team is. Frustrated. Eliminate this frustration with Client Hub. Client Hub is a modern workflow platform with deep roots in the accounting profession. Unlike traditional platforms, client hub is built for both your team and your clients. Get faster client responses, build better client relationships, and become a more productive firm. To schedule your demo, go to Client HubSpot app. That's Client Hub app. Check out Hector Garcia's new app called Right Tool for QuickBooks Online. Instantly increase your productivity with keyboard shortcuts and more. It will save you seconds. The app is free and offers a pro version with additional batching tools. Check them out at right Tool app. That's right. Tool app. Our IG HD Toll app. The Cloud Accounting Podcast Blake and I discussed the top accounting, bookkeeping and tax news stories each week. But for years we've always felt like there were so many federal tax related updates, changes and news that we couldn't possibly ever talk about all of them on our podcast. Not to mention we probably lack the knowledge to go into the weeds about tax code and how it affects your clients.
David Leary: [01:05:38] The host, Roger Harris and Annie Schwab together have over 75 years of tax experience helping both individuals and small business owners navigate the complexities of the current tax law. Their expertise has been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Morning business report, Bloomberg Business News and Accounting Today. And even as it led to offering testimony before Congress on small business tax legislation. Listening to this podcast will save you time from scouring, digesting scores of blog sites or IRS news feeds while keeping you up to date on the latest federal tax information needed to run your tax practice and best serve your clients and to save you even more time. Cpa is an E, Kinnaird CPE and C credits for listening to this podcast. And don't worry. They're both fully Naspa and IRS approved. Be sure to subscribe or follow the Federal Tax Updates podcast in your favorite podcast player today, or head to federal tax updates. Dot com That's federal tax updates dot com. Want to get the word out about your newsletter webinar party, Facebook group podcast e-book, job posting or that fancy Excel macro you just created. Why not let the listeners The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by reading a classified ad if the show notes through the link to get more info?