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Salary and bonus increases for accountants; PCAOB and China in talks about audits; Xero to pull plug on Russian customers; AI news from Fiskl, AuditBoard, Botkeeper, and Stamped, and more
Show Notes
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Show Notes
01:02 – Talking Disney and Bars ...
15:37 – Commissioner to Congress: IRS will clear backlog by year’s end
16:18 – IRS plans to hire thousands likely to fall short
https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/irs-plans-to-hire-thousands-more-employees-likely-to-fall-short
19:50 – IRS Struggles Allow Secret Election Spending To Flourish
20:43 – IRS Starts Using Chatbots for Calls
21:46 – PCAOB confirms talks with China on audit firm access
25:19 – The SEC is investigating the Big Four accounting firms for potential conflicts of interest that could influence their audits, people familiar say
28:12 – Accounting Faces Reckoning After Years of Sluggish Pay Growth
Big Four Accounting Firms Reportedly Probed by SEC
32:14 – Workers Care More About Flexible Hours Than Remote Work - WSJ
33:20 – 58% of Consumers Check on Work While Not in Office, Outside Normal Working Hours
35:30 – Tucson woman accused of gambling away $5M in embezzled funds
37:01 – Botkeeper Upgrades Bookkeeping Task Platform
39:09 – Stamped AI closes $2 million to simplify financial statement prep for SMBs
40:19 – FISKL introduces modern API-driven accounting for small businesses
42:06 – AuditBoard rolls out new automation and analytics features
46:35 – Coinbooks raises $3.2 million to build accounting software for DAOs
46:51 – Coinbooks Gathers $3.2 Million For Developing Accounting Software To Serve DAOs
48:20 – Xerocon Sydney: Xerocon returns to Australia
49:17 – Xero’s position on Ukraine and Russia
50:52 – The Ukraine crypto connection
52:00 – Bitcoin Price Surges on Biden’s Crypto Executive Order
52:37 – Tether Slashes Commercial Paper Holdings by 21%
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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.
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[00:00:21] Preview
Blake: So, like how do you maintain the value of audit in the world when you have a stable coin that's unregulated that just goes out and buys... I mean, here's what it looks like to me. It looks like they went out, they found somebody who's willing to sign off on this report, got them to do a report. And this could be totally corrupt. It could be. It's three people in the Caymans. What is the value of that?
David: We've seen this. It's called The Firm.
David: Coming to you weekly from the OnPay recording studio, this is The Cloud Accounting Podcast.
[00:01:02] Blake's Disneyland Trip
Blake: Welcome to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.
David: I'm David Leary. How was Disneyland? Tell me, tell me. What was the big learning you had at Disney that you can relay back to our listeners, Blake?
Blake: Well, I'm not sure there was any great, big learning. I think anybody who's been there recently would have the same experience as me. It's just incredible, the quality that Disney manages to have in the parks, given how many people are in the parks, and they're at capacity every day, on a Monday, on a Tuesday, on a Wednesday, it doesn't matter. They are completely full. But it still ends up being a great experience, at least it was for us. We had a great time.
David: I mean, you almost never hear about somebody who has a bad experience at a Disney. I'm trying to think, like have I ever heard anybody ever bitching, complaining about Disney? Not much.
Blake: No. Right. And then they go beyond in a lot of ways. They create these magical little experiences. And we had one of those, Thomas was looking at there's this like candy store or confectionary store that's at the exit of Winnie-the-Pooh in Frontier land. And they make candy, and you can watch them do it while you're in line. And he just became fascinated with this marshmallow treat that had chocolate poured all over it. And he was watching and engaging with the woman who was making it. And when we got to the front of the line, she came out and personally get gave him one so that he could try it. And that's just like a little neat thing that you wouldn't get anywhere else. And I was amazed at how clean the park was. Clean. I mean, you didn't see trash anywhere.
David: That's always the amazing thing. And yeah, you're right, a little napkin, anything like that is never on the ground. They're always sweeping it up, but you never really see the people sweeping it up either. It's like they're ninjas.
Blake: Yeah, it was amazing. And also, you know when you grow up versus when you're a kid, things don't seem quite as amazing anymore? Things were always better when you were a kid.
David: Oh, like eighties bands. You go see them in person now. The whole audience is like 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds.
Blake: Yeah. There's this general trend where everything was better when you were younger. Well, I honestly feel like going to Disneyland as an adult, it's better now than it was, I guess, 30 years ago when I went for the first time. Everything is new. It is all maintained. The rides are in great shape. Although actually Space Mountain, Space Mountain seemed a little bit more-
David: Space Mountain, that thing is notorious for breaking down forever.
Blake: Yeah. I think that one needs to be completely redone. But overall, I mean, just walking down Main Street and into Fantasyland, it's just incredible. The experience is amazing. I don't know. I guess it's a premium experience, and that's why guys like Ron Baker, Ron baker loves to talk about Disney as a premium type of experience. It's one that we should emulate in our accounting firms to try and create a better customer experience. And I think they totally do that.
One thing I did notice that is relevant to all this is Disney has a problem, which is that it's very popular. It's actually too popular. Too many people want to go to the park. There's only so many ways that you can increase revenue and grow. You can add capacity, get more people into the park, or you can do other stuff, like figure out other ways to sell people new products and services. And so, Disney-
David: The second park next door.
Blake: They did that, but even that one's full now. It's sort of like freeways, you build more lanes, more people just come. So, one thing I also noticed that's different than when I was a kid is there's all sorts of premium experiences. Like the fine dining that exists at Disneyland now, I don't remember that as a kid. I mean, maybe there was a little bit of it, but now there's a lot of it, the variety of merchandise. Oh, here's an example. The lightsaber for adults that cost hundreds of dollars. That's a premium type of product that never existed before. And they're not selling toys to kids, they're selling toys to adults as well.
David: Yeah. If accountants made that decision, they'd be like, "We're not making adult lightsabers. This is crazy."
Blake: So, when you run out of capacity, you got to come up with other ways to make money. And that's what this whole advisory services pushes in accounting. You don't want to take on more clients to make more money. That's always been the way you did it in the past. More clients, more headcount, more staff, bigger firm. But really, if you want to have a better firm, it's fewer clients, fewer staff doing more for your clients. They want to pay you more. Disney's figured out how to do that. They built the Grand Californian Hotel. Premium experience inside of the Disney Park, pretty much. We didn't stay there, of course. I wasn't willing to pay for that. Do you want to know how much the whole thing cost? I'm curious what-
David: And trip, like your plain flights.
Blake: So, I'm an accountant. So, we drove. Gas was expensive. It's like 70, 80 bucks to fill up the tank. That wasn't the biggest part of the cost because we're just driving. It's like a tank of gas to get from Phoenix [CROSSTALK]-
David: You should have brought gas from Arizona and sold it to Californians.
Blake: We could have. So, gas was what, a few hundred bucks. The hotel, we stayed at the Disneyland Hotel. Disneyland Hotel, plus the park. And we got park hopper tickets. These are all the premium things you add on, so you get park hopper tickets so you can go from one park to another, you pay a premium for that. Maybe it's 10, 15% more. I don't remember. You also pay for this Disney Genie Plus, which is an app where you can book rides in advance, you can make appointments for rides. That's a new thing, never existed before. That's way better than waiting in line. You pay an extra fee to have access to that.
So, we stayed at the Disney Hotel. We bought those premiums so that we could have flexibility. And the hotel, the parks with all that, it was about $3,000 for three days for the three of us. So, $1,000 a day, that was three nights, three days, $1,000 a day. And then all the stuff on top, because we did the fine dining, we did some toys, we did bought stuff in the park, that adds another thousand bucks. So, $4,000 all in three days of magic.
David: Oh, maybe you can ask through a reimbursement now that you've plugged them on the podcast. I'm assuming there's sort of accountants taking their families to Disneyland now.
Blake: Or is this a write off, David, now that we've spoken about it on the show?
David: Genius.
Blake: My entire trip was research for our podcast. So, I want to ask you to share half of it with me. But could I write this off on my share? That's a good question for our listeners. I'm sure there are some people who would definitely do that. Anyway, that was interesting. And actually, that was actually a pretty good deal that we got because we bought it during the last COVID surge. I looked at the forecast, the COVID forecast much like the weather forecast, and I saw, oh, things are going to get better in March. So, let's book it now in early January. And we managed to get a deal.
Now it's insanely expensive all the way through the end of the year because everybody wants to go, who's been holding off. And you have a narrow window of time when your kids are young to go to Disneyland and have it be magical. So, we wanted to do it when our son was seven.
David: Yeah, because they eventually get too old for Disney.
Blake: Yeah. He was still debating whether or not what was happening on the rides was real. We want to Rise of the Resistance, which is the Star Wars immersive experience. That thing is so incredibly realistic that if you're a seven-year-old, you think, "Am I actually going into space? Am I actually boarding an Imperial Star Destroyers right now?" It feels like it as an adult so as a kid. What a cool thing for him.
So yeah, it was fun making that happen. But yeah, it's a premium experience, but I would pay it again in a heartbeat. So, the question our listeners is, would your customers for your CPA firm happily pay the thousands of dollars you charge them for a tax return? Again, is the experience that good? Now, I mean, that's kind of unfair. We're a compliance industry. So, this is not something that people want to do, but I think we can take inspiration. We can do better.
[00:08:51] David's bar story and how it relates to client services
David: Well, it’s definitely- So, I went and had beers with Eric Majchrzak, who’s the CEO at BeachFleischman, and this was Friday night. And it's kind of funny because it ties into the tax organizer issues. It also ties into capacity planning type stuff as well. So, I didn't think ahead. I was like, "Hey, let's just meet here immediately at 3:00." The happy hour, there was traffic. By the time I get there, U of A's basketball team had a game at four o'clock. So, the bar was packed. It was just packed. And it was kind of there's this shared courtyard between three restaurants. And so, we go in and they're like, "Hey, there's no seats at the bar. Hey, but there's these tall tables outside. If you sit at those, there's no servers, you have to walk up and get your own drinks.
Which is okay, the first one, because you're walking out there. So, you get your first beers. You can sit at the table. You have that. You're ready for your second beer. You walk back in. The lines are packed. It takes forever to get your beer. So, we're sitting there, and we're just talking about service and how that's the big differentiator. All the servers who walked past our table, we asked if they could just pick us up two beers. Every single one of them said no. They just refused to do it because it's just these...
You're walking to the bar, you're walking past our table, but because there's this rule, like those tables are self-served, we don't serve those tables. So, we were going to actually think about trying to just pay more. "Hey, we'll tip you $20, $40. How much would you do?" But instead, what we did, the other restaurant or bar didn't have as many people because it's not really a sports bar kind of place. And we just walked to that bar, had no line, bought our beers there and brought them back to the table. Kind of like a DIY scenario.
And we just bypassed them completely. And it was funny because we're sitting there and we got in a discussion because BeachFleischman’s doing my personal taxes, and they're the ones that... We'll talk about the tax organizer thing a little bit, and the service for that and how to make that better. And in the meantime, we're watching the basketball game, it's on TV, four commercials in a row show up. Now, this is what accounting firms are having to really compete with. It was a commercial for a free TurboTax, a commercial for a free H&R Block return. There was a commercial for some startup that deliver... it's like the Costco of buying in bulk deliveries just delivered to your door, and like an Uber Eats, Uber delivery. It was Uber Eats as well. And I'm like, "That's what you're competing with. That's people's expectations.”
Blake: Yeah. The ease of that. Yeah.
David: That's the consumer. They want something delivered to them. They want a free return or be able to do it half themselves. Or they're just going to bypass you. And so, it's all tied to experience. Because ultimately, the return, nobody cares about the return. Nobody's like, "Oh yeah man, the numbers are really tight. They give me my return; the numbers were tight." Nobody cares about that.
Blake: Well, they don't know. They don't understand. They can't look at the return and tell whether you did it right most of the time.
David: So how do they determine value? Then you can't bill them for value. You had enough to bill them for an experience.
Blake: Yeah, the value is in the experience, the ease of it. And that takes me back to the Disneyland thing with the app. So, if you go to Disneyland now, it's very different than it used to be. There's an app that you download. And if you pay for this Genie Plus, they call it Disney Genie Plus service, you add... Yeah. Right. You add onto your ticket price, and you get to book rides in a virtual queue. So, you say, "I want to go on Indiana Jones." And you find the ride and you say it's, what is it, the fast lane or something like that. They have a standby lane and a fast lane.
And you click on it, and then it tells you, "Come back at 1:00 p.m.”, and you'll get straight on the ride. And then you get to go in the fast queue, you scan your code. And then once you've done that, you can do another one. So basically, while you're waiting in line for one ride, you can have another ride booked. Saves you time. And Disney did this during the pandemic. This wasn't like some genius idea they had. And they've been playing around with different varieties of this for years. But what they found that it did that has been amazing for them is that when people aren't waiting in lines, they're happier and they go spend money on stuff. They go to the stores, and they shop.
David: Yeah, because when you're standing in the line, you can't do anything.
Blake: Yeah, standing in line is the worst part about a theme park. And actually, Disneyland does the best of making their lines really enjoyable. Anyone who stood in line for two hours for Indiana Jones knows the line itself can be actually really cool and immersive. And same thing with the other newer rides that they do. But yeah, it's the convene into that. Even Disney, a company that has... Disneyland opened in what? The 1950s. They have innovated, and you can do stuff on an app. And they're still working on it. It's not the easiest thing to use, but how many CPA firms have an app where you can chat somebody to get help, or you can submit your documents using the app.
This is table stakes these days. That's what people are being trained to experience like you said, with DoorDash and Uber Eats. The restaurant down the street from me, they have their own website where you can order delivery on the app, on their site. So yeah, it's pretty easy, actually. That's where I would start, start with an app where people can work with your firm, and it feels like text messaging.
[00:14:04] Thank you to our sponsor, Scribe.
David: This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Scribe. Like it or not, your firm is probably going to be impacted by the great resignation, which means you'll need to scale both yourself and your staff. But showing the same things to your staff or clients over and over again does not scale. Good thing, there is Scribe. Scribe allows you to document your processes, workflows, onboarding app instructions, help docs, and how-tos by automatically recording your actions as you use your computer. Then Scribe automatically creates easy-to-follow, step-by-step visual guides called scribes that you can share with your staff, coworkers, or clients.
You can use Scribe to document processes in cloud apps like QuickBooks and Xero. And with their desktop plug-in, you can use Scribe with all your desktop apps as well. Scribe allows you to customize the automatically created scribes by adding and removing steps, redacting sensitive information, and providing additional comments or instructions. Guides created in Scribe can be shared via a link, a PDF, or embedded directly into a website, or the dozens of other tools that your firm may be using like Notion, SharePoint, Process Street, ClickUp, et cetera. To try Scribe Pro free for one month by using promo code Cloud Accounting, head over to cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/scribe. That is cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/S-C-R-I-B-E. Should we jump into the news?
Blake: Yeah. I know we got lots of tax season news.
David: IRS news.
[00:15:37] IRS is promising to take care of the backlog before the end of 2022
Blake: Yes. Rettig was testifying to Congress for the last time. Lucky guy. His term is up at the end of this year. So, it's kind of funny because he was telling Congress that he fully expects the IRS to work through its backlog of millions and millions of… I think tens of millions of returns by the end of the year. But of course, his term ends in November. So, he's not going to be around to be held accountable.
As you mentioned, David, they're hiring 10,000 people this year, but they're hiring them for less than they can make at Walmart. So, there's a question as to whether or not they'll actually be able to do that. And I saw another story that said that they've only hit 67% of their hiring goals for this year anyway. It seems to me that could be related to the fact they're not paying all that great. So, is it really going to happen? I don't know. I wouldn't bet money on it.
David: And he's aggressive. I mean, he's promising to take care of the backlog before the end of this year.
Blake: Right. Yeah. Really? And they have to hire all these people and train them too?
David: Well, he said that too. They've got their training down from months to couple weeks now.
Blake: Well, that's because they're only auditing poor people, which is easy to do.
David: Literally, like the part I don't get is I feel like this article is only addressing the actual opening of the mail.
Blake: Not the actual-
David: It's not really a promise. It doesn't feel like there's a promise to... Like that's what they're calling the backlog. I mean, I guess the assumption is you're going to open the mail and deal with it, but it feels like that's the goal is just to get the mail opened. They haven't opened it.
Blake: Well, I think he said they want to process the returns that are in the backlog.
David: Yeah, they're bringing in like an 800-person surge team of experienced IRS employees.
Blake: Yeah. It just seems like completely unrealistic.
David: Well, here's the crazy thing. So, at the end of this article, it talks about heading into this year's tax filing. The IRS has been encouraging everyone capable of filing returns electronically to do so and emphasizing the importance of accuracy. The agency maintains those who file returns electronically should receive refunds within 21 days. I filed my 2020 returns late. Guess what you can't do if you file your return late?
Blake: What?
David: File it electronically. You have to physically print and mail it in.
Blake: Why? Why?
David: Because they turned off for that tax year that you file. It doesn't make any sense.
Blake: Oh my gosh.
David: So, like for people that are capable of filing, they're making it even worse. This is like, "Oh, I can't go get you a beer at that table." Oh, you can't file electronically. Why? We just turned it off. It doesn't make any sense. I don't know. They can't get out on their own way.
[00:18:07] The reason the IRS is so behind - they're massively underfunded
Blake: Well, it's because they're... I mean, this is the same reason that CPA firms fail to modernize. The IRS has been underfunded. They've had 20% of their budget slashed since 2010. There are more taxpayers than ever. They've lost something like 17% of their entire workforce in the last year. They continue to hemorrhage employees because who wants to work at the IRS right now, and they're just under fire all the time. And they can't keep up with the current backlog. So how are they supposed to modernize their technology? There's not enough capacity. It's not even close. And this year, their budget 675 million, which sounds like a lot. But Rettig was asking for 80 billion in the Build Back Better plan, which is stuck in Congress in the Senate.
David: And I think some representative in Florida wants to half their budget. They would take half the money, go the other away.
Blake: Let's defund the IRS. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to think that that's good policy. Yeah, let's defund the IRS so that there's no accountability. And everybody cheats on their taxes. Let's make the tax gap even bigger than it is and penalize honest people, because now the dishonest people can go and just file fraudulent returns all day long and they don't get caught for it. The rate of business audits is like under 1%. It might be under half of 1%. That's how low it is. So, like, if you're a business owner and you want to just... Like David, you could just make up stuff, put it on your return, and as long as you don't make any obvious errors in the calculations or whatnot, you probably file that. Nobody's ever going to check. The odds of you getting checked are like zilch.
David: Yeah. And it's not just us in the industry talking about this now. I saw an article called Campaign Legal Center, is the website. And the title of the article is "IRS Struggles to Allow Secret Election Spending to Flourish". Because the bargain with nonprofits is like, hey, you don't have to pay taxes, you can pay less taxes, but you have to make your return public. Well, and the IRS is supposed to make all these available on their website, free of charge. But if the IRS is underfunded, the IRS does not have time, what's happening is the form 990s aren't getting handled correctly. It's basically grind to a halt. And so dark money groups are just operating for years without 1-990 publicly disclosed on the IRS website.
Blake: Amazing.
David: So now it's going to affect the election campaign because 501C4s can't do campaign politics as their primary purpose. But there's no way to know this because none of it's being looked at.
Blake: Well, you know what the IRS is doing, they're going to start using chatbots for calls. That won't be infuriating in the slightest. Will it, David? Your favorite thing is calling up the bank and you get the chatbot, then you have to like fight through the chatbot to get to an actual person. So, this is the solution at the moment. The IRS in recent weeks has deployed voice in chatbots in English and Spanish for phone lines that assist taxpayers with tax payments issues or understanding an IRS notice they may have missed. The thing is that chatbots can't help you with anything that requires personal information. So, it's really just a knowledge base.
David: The TikToker from two weeks ago said like she had the hack for that. She said, "Just be really quiet." And eventually the bot just gives up on you and brought you to a person.
Blake: Oh, just don't say anything. That's smart.
David: Just don't say anything. Don't interact with the bot.
Blake: Don't interact with the bot. I like that. I like that.
David: Until they change the logic, and they just disconnect you, which the odds of doing that anyway are fairly high.
Blake: Right. They just disconnect you when you get to a human. They want to go on their break, disconnect you. Yeah, I think that's it with the IRS news.
[00:21:43] The PCAOB in talks with China for audit access
David: So, the PCAOB has confirmed that they are in talks with China and getting access audits to the firms.
Blake: Yeah. Yeah. So, this is going back to that story we covered quite a while ago where the SEC was talking about delisting Chinese companies where their auditors won't submit to inspection by the PCAOB, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
David: Yeah. And they even released this time like five companies that are subject to delisting. Yum China Holdings, which is fast food provider, ACM Research, a technology company, two biotech firms, BeiGene... Looks like BeiGene, but it's kind of spell weird. Zai Lab, and pharmaceutical maker, HUTCHMED. So yeah, they're very serious about it. The part I don't really get though is it feels like there's a lot of elbow room here, which I'm kind of shocked by. If the PCAOB is unable to inspect the firm for three years in a row, securities are banned from trading on US exchanges, I'm kind of surprised that we've let somebody slide for three years.
Blake: Well, that's the standard, three years in a row. So, if I skip one year and then I come back and let them inspect another year, it's okay. Wouldn't I just skip the year that is going to be a bad year? So, what does this actually achieve? And that's the risk. That's the whole reason this is happening is that we've got these Chinese companies. Who knows if their audits are any good? Who knows if any of this is real if the financial results are good?
And it puts US companies at a disadvantage because they've got a higher standard. I mean, not much of a standard, but it's slightly higher. All right. So, audit is just such a mess. The whole audit profession. I'm sorry. I mean, we probably don't have a lot of auditors listening here. But mostly people who probably left audit, it's just a disaster because audits are pass fail. You've got these massive conflicts of interest because you're getting paid-
David: And this is the big one. Is like the Chinese government running these companies. Subsidizing them possibly.
Blake: Yeah. And you think if you're an auditor in China, that there isn't pressure to not report fraud that you find or material deficiencies that you find. I'm sure there's way more than there is here even.
David: Well, death. Possibly I'm just-
Blake: Yeah, exactly. Like social isolation. I don't know. Where do we go from here?
David: They're chatting it out. I don't know how where this will land because I mean, in the end, who has more power? The Chinese government?
Blake: Well, these companies do want access to US markets. There's a reason they're listed here. So, if they really want the access to the capital, global capital, they're going to come here, or they're going to allow for inspection. But I guess my point is submitting to inspection by the PCAOB is not really a big deal because the worst thing that happens is you get finned an infinite decimal amount that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's like not who cares.
David: Yeah. So then if that's the case, why the difficulties? Isn't nobody told.
Blake: Nobody told them. That is actually not a big deal.
David: The Chinese government, hey, don't worry. Even if they find something, it's not a big deal.
Blake: Well, that, to me, indicates there might be something bad going on. I mean, and that's the thing, what was that, real estate developer that everybody's thinking is going to implode?
David: Well, I think a lot of this is they don't want. They can't be controlled by the foreign government and then be listed. And that's, I think, the bigger issue here.
Blake: Right. So maybe they are controlled and it's just not... Yeah, that would expose them.
David: And of course, if you are, you're going to try and figure out how to not be audited.
[00:25:17] The SEC is probing the big 4 accounting firms
Blake: Well, the Big Four Accounting firms here are reportedly being probed by the SEC. This was reported in The Wall Street Journal. I'm not sure how big a deal this is. Because again, it's like a letter from the SEC to a bunch of big firms, not just the Big Four, some other ones as well, asking them to disclose their conflicts of interest with providing non audit services to audit clients.
Now, the Big Four big firms have been slapped with independence violations for years now. But again, they're tiny little fines compared to their revenue. These firms make billions of dollars a year, and the Big Four have been audited, or fined rather, in the millions of dollars. It's like EY has paid 10 million in fines since 2014, but their global revenues are in the billions and billions of dollars. So, like who cares? PWC paid 8 million in 2019 to settle SEC.
David: It's like merchant service fee. All Right, I'll just have to pay it, and it's a business expense.
Blake: I mean, I guarantee you they're making more money the consulting services that they're offering that violate their independence than they are paying fines to the SEC. So, I think this is all stupid. It's all meaningless. So, let's move on.
[00:26:39] Thank you to our sponsor, Keeper
David: This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Keeper. By combining client communications, file review reporting, and task management, Keeper has everything you need to run your bookkeeping or CAS practice. Keeper is in all-in-one app that allows you, your team, and your clients to easily collaborate to make your monthly close as efficient as possible. Starting with a beautiful custom branded client portal optimized for bookkeeping work. Your clients can answer questions that you have about uncategorized transactions on you to categorize, automatically post them to QuickBooks Online correctly, all without ever leaving Keeper.
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[00:28:04] Accounting is facing a reckoning
David: This is going mainstream now. This is an article in Bloomberg Tax. And it's basically about how Accounting is facing a reckoning after years of sluggish pay growth. And I think for me the big is a quote from... She is the professor at Portland State University, Elizabeth Elmer. And she said, "Students are making economically-rational decisions. Faced with mounting housing costs, student loan debt, they opt to pursue other fields."
Blake: Yeah. And this was in a mainstream publication.
David: Yeah, this was not inside baseball stuff. This was like main-
Blake: Bloomberg Tax. Yeah. Well, Bloomberg Tax. The biggest site. Yeah. I mean, salaries are jumping. Salary offers have jumped as much as 25% for some roles in recent months, but will this actually solve the problem. I've seen on Reddit discussions about the salary increases at the Big Four. Just massive pay increases to get people to stay through the busy season.
David: Yeah, this article talks a lot about this.
Blake: Yeah. Like big ones. But the question is, is the pay going to make up for the hours? And I think that a lot of folks are making the calculation now, my time is worth more than they're willing to pay me. Because who cares if I'm making a bunch of money if I don't have a life and if I don't get meaning out of the work that I'm doing. And now that we can go work remotely and live a nice quality of life while making half the money, and you go live in a second city like Phoenix. Tucson's a really nice. You can live an even better lifestyle in Tucson where you are, David. I mean, you can buy the big house, relax, go to the pool every day. You leave New York or LA or any of these other big cities that you're stuck in as a big auditor, make good money.
David: There's internet. It sounds like there's internet. You can start your own thing. You could go to work for a smaller firm. There's lots of options on that.
Blake: Anywhere there's fiber, and you could go work for a cloud-based firm that does advisory work and you could actually help small businesses. And you could feel good about what you do every day, as opposed to wondering what's the point. It's interesting. I guess the Big Four will be fine.
[00:30:14] The Big 4 will be fine, but the ones right below are in trouble
Blake: And I saw another story, another opinion piece about how... This probably contradicts our headline, the title of our episode from last week, which was, Big Firms are Doomed. Because the-
David: Two weeks ago. Yeah.
Blake: Yeah. The biggest of the firms are fine because they'll always be able to raise fees on these big companies. I mean, there's only four of them. If they all raise fees, who are you going to go to? Nobody else is going to audit you. Nobody else is going to be able to do your international tax.
David: Well, I would guess these large firms, the consulting advisory divisions are subsidizing tax and audit division.
Blake: Well, that's where they're making the money. So, you get the audit engagement and then you sell them all these consulting services and you hope you don't get an independence violation from the SEC. That's the game. So, they're going to be fine because they can sell all these consulting services. They can raise prices, they can value price, that stuff. They can pay people enough to sacrifice their life for work. But it's the firms because they're kind of below that in the top. 100. So let's say 5 through 100 that are going to struggle because those people, they're not the... I wouldn't say call them A players, but they're not the people who wanted to go into the Big Four or enjoyed it.
They tried it and they said, "Ah, this is not for me." They said, "I'm going to go to a smaller regional firm." Still a big firm, maybe hundreds, thousands of employees, but not the insanity of working for a Big Four. Well, those are the people I think now who are making that decision as to, well, do I jump down another tier and go to a lifestyle firm, get a lifestyle kind of job. And I think those firms are going to struggle a lot. So, it's either get really big or get smaller. The firms in the middle, I wonder, are they going to be able to attract and retain, keep talent? We will see.
David: Well, it's going to be the experience. We've talked about this before. Remember those job postings for TurboTax Live or QuickBooks Live. They're appealing to the experience of the life balance.
[00:32:04] WSJ - workers care more about flexible hours than remote work
Blake: The flexibility. Yeah. I saw something about that in the New York Times. It was really an excellent write up about flexible work environment. Actually, this was in The Wall Street Journal workers care more about flexible hours than remote work, in The Wall Street Journal. 95% of people surveyed want flexible hours compared to 78% of workers who want location flexibility. According to a new report from Future Forum, a consortium focused on reimagining the future of work led by Slack Technologies. So, this is a survey by Slack. And this is a survey of 10,000 knowledge workers. 95% want to set their own hours. So here we are debating going back to the office or not, but that's not really the big thing. The biggest thing is people would be fine going back to the office if they could set their own hours. I mean, well, it's not really fair because 78% also want location flexibility. So, it like it's both.
The hours are more important, the flexible hours. And that, for me, is personally thing that I could never give up. I love being able to go pick up my kid from school. That is something I like to do. And it's important for him. Am I ever going to go work for a company that makes me stay at the office from nine to five, or worse, eight to six or seven or eight? No, never. No amount of money. No amount of money.
David: You're running that very easily. This is Slack putting out the survey and I would argue tools like slack, et cetera, have caused people not to have normal working hours, like where you're just working all the time. Oh, you're flexible, but you're on 24 hours a day.
Blake: Well, and that's true. And that's how I work, where I wake up and I start working immediately. And then I'm working all day long. I work through lunch too. I'll work, but I'll like catch up on stuff. And then I log off, I go do my family thing. And then I come back on later at night before bed. But I like that. And I think-
David: I'm seeing a lot of people would like that. If you can let people work when they're in their productive moments.
Blake: Yeah. So that's interesting. I think the nine to five definitely needs to go. And this is of course why timesheets suck and they fail because I can be productive in four or six hours. If I'm really focused, I can get all my stuff done that I need to get done before 3:00. So, who cares if I'm working another two hours? This is where time-based performance management just completely falls down. And the fact that partners want their staff back in the office indicates to me that timesheets are a terrible way to manage employees.
Because if they worked, if they actually worked, then who cares where they're sitting, who cares if they're in your office or not. They obviously don't, which is why partners want people back in the office so they can manage by walking around, which is their real management technique. The time-based stuff is all imaginary. The real management they do is talking to people, walking around, which is good.
David: Counting empty cubes. Yeah.
Blake: Yeah. But you can do that in a virtual environment if you're willing to adapt to using like Slack.
David: Well, you can do it even more because you could just use PCs and you could track everything they're doing even more than just walking around the office.
Blake: That's right. You can see every-
David: You could track how fast they type. You could track everything.
Blake: Oh God, I hope that's not the world we end up in, David. That would definitely get, I think, a lot of people to leave bigger firms.
David: It was a while back, but I swear I saw an article. Maybe some third-party tech company wrote an article pushing their technology, like saying how firm owners should implement these types of tools because their employees are working remotely, like these monitoring tools. It's a little scary. It's very, very scary. Hopefully nobody in the big firm have decided to go down that path.
[00:35:31] A Tucson bookkeeper embezzled and gambled away 5 million dollars
David: I have an article that, hey, maybe you guys could put this on the Oh My Fraud Podcast.
Blake: What's that?
David: So, a Tucson woman is accused of gambling away 5 million in embezzled funds.
Blake: $5 million.
David: So, Tucson bookkeeper, she embezzled 5.3 million from two local construction companies and a homeowner association that's based out of Mexico between September of 2013 and July 20 by writing checks made out to cash. How did this-
Blake: Wait, 5 million in checks made out to cash.
David: Yeah. Over, what's that, seven years.
Blake: And who did she steal from?
David: Two construction companies.
Blake: Construction companies. So clearly-
David: A homeowner’s association out of Mexico.
Blake: So clearly, nobody is looking at the financial... Nobody's looking at the bank statements. And that's the problem here. I mean-
David: It's always this like longtime employee likes gambling. If you have any employees, any clients that have any employees that like to gamble and have been there a long time, make sure they're not touching the books.
Blake: Have touched the money. Yeah.
David: And have access to the cash.
Blake: How long did it take, 5 million? Over-
David: Seven years.
Blake: Seven years. That's a lot of money every year.
David: And then she spent apparently at the local casinos. So, then I'm thinking like, if you're dropping 5 million at local casinos, aren't you a baller at that point? Doesn't even the casinos question like, wow, you're dropping a lot of cash for a bookkeeper. I don't know.
Blake: Yeah. Well, they're not going to say anything. Shall we talk about app news?
David: Yeah.
[00:36:56] Botkeeper reveals acronym for operating system
David: So Botkeeper released an acronym as far as I can tell.
Blake: Botkeeper released an acronym.
David: An acronym. So Botkeeper released the Botkeeper Operating System, BOS. It's the latest iteration of its automated bookkeeping platform. And from what I can tell just reading descriptions, it's all the things I thought Botkeeper was already doing. A more consistent centralized source of truth, deeper visibility, more control over accessing user permissions. The one that I feel like might be a little new is reporting. Have you ever had any insights back in the day of Botkeeper doing any reporting for firms or helping them build reporting?
Blake: No. Yeah, no, I didn't know about that.
David: So maybe that's kind of new. But yeah, it's hard. I can't tell if it's just an acronym. It's a press release. So, you read them and you're like, okay.
Blake: Well, now they've got BOS, Botkeeper Operating System. It's a great name for it. Well done.
[00:37:55] Thank you to our sponsor, Synder
David Leary: This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Synder. With direct connections to Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Stripe, Square, and 20 of the most popular online e-commerce platforms, Synder automatically categorizes and accurately post transactions into the accounting system. Or I need to easily prepare your client's data and organize their consolidated P&L regardless of the number of platforms they may be selling, Synder allows you to use the general ledger of your choice, QuickBooks, Xero, or even Synder's own GL, which is designed specifically for e-commerce businesses and contains everything you need out of the box to make tax easy and a breeze.
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[00:39:06] Stamped AI raises 2 million CAD
Blake: Stamped AI closes 2 million to simplify financial statement prep for SMBs. This is a Quebec City-based accounting software startup. It's 2 million in Canadian dollars.
David: This is stamped.
Blake: Stamped. S-T-A-M-P-E-D.
David: So, it's like a stamp. Play out there and other people just stamped.
Blake: Stamped AI. It helps medium-sized businesses prepare their year-end financial statements. In an interview with BetaKit, Stamped AI co-founder and CEO, Simon, I don't know how to say his name, his last name. L-A-N-G-L-O-I-S, said this process typically involves spending hours exporting your company's data into Excel files so your auditor can audit. So, they pull information out so that you can do your year-end financials to help work with auditors. Which seems to me like something auditors should be doing, figuring out how to do that. But I guess if you're the customer of an auditor and you're tired of working with your audit team and having to manually send them stuff, you could just say, "Here, log into Stamped AI, get what you need, because it already pulls it from our accounting system." Neat.
[00:40:19] Fiskl introduces new accounting API
David: Fiskl, F-I-S-K-L, introduces a modern API-driven accounting for small business. So, this is another press release. So obviously, it's usually written by the company that did it. And it starts out with, "The classic cloud accounting platforms are now facing technology legacy issue as they were all built when you had to reconcile paper to digital entries, digital entries to bank accounts, and then finally reconciled bank entries with accounting. And they go on to say what they're solving. And essentially, long story short, it's like bake feeds accounting. They're reconnected to the banks, we pull down the transactions, we categorize it, we reconcile it. Which is basically what QuickBooks and Xero do. So, I don't understand the argument of the classic cloud accounting platforms.
And then another thing they're doing, they're simplifying demystifying accounting for small business owners by doing away with debit and credit terminology, which is what QuickBooks did 20 years ago. That wasn't really interesting to me. But at the very bottom, it talks about how they're powering businesses in over 150 countries. I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." So went out to their website and this is probably what's really interesting about this is they... So, they do 150 countries. You can invoice 60 different ways for payment languages.
Blake: 60 different ways. Wow.
David: And then they do 153 payment currencies available. So, this is really what sets them apart. All that other stuff is like table stakes. Everybody does bank feeds. But this is what sets them apart, which is if you have somebody that really has to do lots of international business, you probably want to take a look at this. Because a lot of that, I mean, even still this day, I don't think QuickBooks Online works with Mexico. I think it's very difficult because you have to have barcodes on both sides of the transactions that match. They both have to be submitted. It's very complicated. So, this is a reason to possibly look at Fiskl.
[00:42:05] AuditBoard introduces new automation tool
Blake: AuditBoard rolls out new automation and analytics features as reported in Accounting Today.
David: Another audit.
Blake: Another audit solution. So, I think this is a huge opportunity. Big area for improvement is streamlining audits. So much of it is done in Excel manually. This is a big opportunity. This is the next area where audit firms, if they can just get over themselves, can just see huge improvements. So AudiBoard automation and analytics is aimed mostly at internal audit and SOX teams. The new tool works within the platform's existing internal audit SOX, risk management, and IT compliance solutions to allow teams to draw upon their data to automate routine processes and streamline analytics.
The platform handles tasks such as automated evidence collection, automated testing, continuous auditing, and continuous monitoring. It also centralizes documentation, evidence requirements, design testing, and version control in one place. It leverages third party solutions such as Alteryx, Fastpath, and Snowflake, none of which I have heard of before. So, what is AuditBoard? What does all this mean? I mean, to me, this is automating the intake of data. So, you're importing your client's GL data into the software, that's the automation of the collection, and then the testing can be automated too, because you're no longer manually pulling transactions. The software looks at the data set and then uses algorithms to figure out which transactions should you test.
And then if you can connect the data into the audit software, you can continuously audit. So, all the new transactions, as they come in every month, you can flag ones to test. So instead of doing the audit all at the end of the year, you can do it throughout the year. And this is the same thing that's happening in tax that has the potential to unbusy busy season, to make it go year-round to spread the workout is, why are we waiting until the end of the year to start putting numbers into the tax return. If we could pull that data from the trial balance throughout the year, it could always be connected into that return, and then you could see the impact throughout the year of what is going to happen.
And that lets you do better planning. It lets you just click finalize at the end of the year when you're sure the books are reconciled. It's just so much that we take for granted in accounting and tax and audit is that there is this busy season, but it only exists because we don't have the data connected. Once you got the data connected, you could do this on a monthly basis or quarterly basis.
David: And then also I would argue that if you start looking at it real-time, that's when you're going to find fraud, that's when you're going to actually audit things.
Blake: Right. Yeah.
David: Because what happens is everybody waits till it's at the end and it's well past the fact and you're busy and then you kind of rush through it and maybe it doesn't get figured out.
Blake: Well, and that's where this audit and audit firms could offer more because if you're working year-round, you've got the time to actually look for the fraud to look at the internal controls.
David: Well, they could serve it, like, hey. Because you have, over time, this lady in Tucson with the fraud. Written checks to cash, like how come, all of a sudden, checks written to cash keeps going up.
Blake: I wonder if these, construction companies had audits. Probably not. That's what happens a lot of the time with this fraud is there's not anybody looking at the bank statements.
David: But it's also like in construction. It's like, "Oh yeah, cash." Because they had to go buy supplies for this job over here. It's very easy to-
Blake: I Know, but like almost-
David: As an industry, it's not really like... There's a lot of wishy-washy kind of last-minute stuff.
Blake: That's true. I guess you could get away with it that way, but I don't know. I feel like if you had software pulling out all these like check amounts... And that's the thing too, is a lot of times fraudsters will use same numbers or they won't use... They'll just make up a number. But this is one way you catch fraud is the numbers that we make up are not random. People have a preference for zeros. I don't know. There's different numbers that crop up more when people are making up numbers.
David: Yeah, she's a gambler. She's probably like lot 7, 7, 7, 7.
Blake: Yeah, who knows.
David: 21.
Blake: You can actually flag fraud that way. If you run through a set, through an algorithm, it can spot the inconsistencies or the non-randomness of certain things. So, then you'd be wondering, okay, well, why are all these checks made out with certain numbers to cash? So that's the potential for all this.
David: Yeah. I mean, in theory, it wouldn't take seven years to detect it. It might take two. Seven's a lot.
Blake: I mean, but it's like almost a million dollars a year. Anyway.
[00:46:37] Coin Books and DAOs - what are they?
Blake: Coin Books has raised 3.2 million to build accounting software for DAOs.
David: I saw this article twice. I couldn't read it. I saw this article on two different kind of Bitcoin websites. And it's written so poorly, the article, that I was like, all right, I'm not even bringing this to the show. So, I'm glad I'll let you go with this.
Blake: Well, so I don't know if this is going to be worth anything because I just saw the headline again.
David: Exactly. The headline was great and then you start reading it, it's like, I'm 21-year-old kid and it's like, they distributed... What's the DAOs stand for again?
Blake: So, we can use this as a learning moment. What is a DAO, distributed autonomous organization? A Dow is... I like to think of it as an algorithm that lives on a blockchain.
David: It's like a headless company.
Blake: Yeah, it's a company that just runs based on a set of rules. I mean, people, invest in it. You can invest in a DAO by buying its coins. But yeah, it doesn't have people running it. So how does this work? And I'm looking in here. Coin Books works by integrating with crypto wallets and existing accounting software so that crypto companies can manage both their crypto and non-crypto transactions in one place. That's all we know. DAOs could be a big thing. It's crazy to think about a business that does and have a CEO or management that's managed by an algorithm, but I mean, I mean, you could argue that Facebook is like that.
David: I mean, maybe that's HOA should be ran. It seems like a good fit.
Blake: Yeah. A DAO could work for an HOA and then the way you vote is-
David: Nobody really wants to be the president or on the board of an HOA, unless you're going to embezzle money from it. But nobody's asking for that job.
Blake: What else, David?
[00:48:23] Xerocon is returning to Australia
David: Xerocon's returning to Australia. So, I mean, over the pandemic, Australia and New Zealand have been some of the most locked-down places, but also makes sense because they're islands. They mark it down. So, they're super excited. Xero's super exited they're going to... This is going to be at the International Convention Center on Darling Harbor and Sydney, September 7th and 8th of 2022.
Blake: Well, how do we get out there, David?
David: It's been two and a half years since they had a Xerocon in Australia.
Blake: I think it's time for The Cloud Accounting Podcast to it to Xerocon in Australia. I hear it's quite a thing. I hear it's quite a thing.
David: Are they letting Americans in Australia?
Blake: I don't know.
David: No. Yeah, exactly, this is the big one. So now they have all three. They have New Orleans in August, London in July, so July, August, and September, and Sydney. Hopefully QuickBooks gets some in-person events. Like people want this. hopefully this pulls back up.
[00:49:17] Xero stops support for any Russian customers
David: Xero issued their position on Ukraine and Russia. And what I thought was interesting... And it's kind of this typical, like we extend support, that type of thing, but they go on to actually taking actions. And this is towards the bottom of the press release blog post. Says Xero has decided to not offer its service in Russia at this time, but they do have in Russia.
Blake: So, are they turning it off for those people?
David: So, while Xero has made this decision, we are working with affected customers so they can take the most appropriate action for their circumstances and extract their data. Xero will also hold and protect their data for a period of time consistent with our data retention policy so that it'll be available should we commence supporting small business customers in Russia again. This is that bigger impact. This could be a little bakery in Russia and a small business owner. Now, they can't do their Accounting the way they were running their business before. And it's not by any of their actions, it's the actions of their government. They did do something, but it's like... I don't know. Every time these things get turned off, who are... I get it. They're trying to shut down the-
Blake: Russian economy.
David: Right. In the oligarchs.
Blake: Well, no, it's putting political pressure on Putin. If regular Russians suffer economically, then that's the theory. But who knows?
David: In a weird way, it's warfare without bombs.
Blake: It's economic warfare. Yeah. Well, you're not allowed to use the word warfare war in Russia. It's a special economic action.
[00:50:52] Ukraine and cryptocurrency
Blake: So, I have follow up on two items. First, we got blockchain and Ukraine is actually... This is related to it. So, we haven't talked about this much on the show, but Ukraine is becoming a turning point for cryptocurrency, both in terms of regulation, in terms of its ability to change the world. The issue with regulation is our Russian oligarchs, in particular, using cryptocurrency to try to get their money out of Russia. And will they be able to do it? The question is open because crypto is not an anonymous platform. You can trace everything on a blockchain. So, if the world is able to trace the money that goes out of Russia and onto the blockchain, they could actually freeze those accounts and prevent anyone from ever using that money.
That's a possible thing. That's an open question. Crypto is also being used to fund Ukrainians. Fund the Ukrainian defense forces and send money that way. There's been like tens of millions of dollars so far at least that have been sent to Ukraine. This is an interesting moment for cryptocurrency. Crypto crowdfunding, also, crypto is a way to launder money. So more to come on that. President Biden has instructed federal agencies to study the risks presented by cryptocurrencies and consider the creation of a US digital currency. This was reported in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
David: Yeah, we quickly touched on that last week for a split second, I guess. The CBDC. No, the CB-
Blake: Central Bank Digital Currency, CBDC. So, it's not as relaxing as CBD, but it is a positive move forward. But again, they're just talking about it, they haven't done it yet. I mean, if you ask me, this is like something that absolutely desperately needs to happen is regulation around this space.
[00:52:39] Tether follow up
Blake: And the case in point, of course, is Tether. Tether is, as we've reported, one of the top stable coins in the world.
David: Because they're hiding it against the US dollar.
Blake: Right. One to one US dollar. You can trade your US dollars for Tether. They claim that they have assets to back Tether so that you can always redeem your US dollars. You can always redeem your Tether for US dollars. But as we have reported, as many others have reported and we have then copied the reporting, there... Is a question as to like whether this money even exists, whether these assets even exist that are backing Tether. there was a report in CoinDesk, this was actually back in February, about Tether. They underwent an audit at year-end. Well, I'm not sure I would call it an audit, but they released their latest attestation report back in February. Tether's the largest stable coin issuer. We're talking 80 billion in value.
And although that's a small percentage of the crypto market, it represents a lot of the liquidity in the crypto market. So, my argument has been if Tether's not really backed, then a collapse in Tether could cause a liquidity crisis in the crypto markets which could cause a lot of things to fall apart. And there's a question as to whether or not Tether has been used to manipulate Bitcoin prices and pump up the value of crypto in the past. So that calls into question the whole value of Bitcoin anyway as it is now. So, the problem with Tether, though, when it comes to the audit, is that their audits have been done by these dinky little firms in the Cayman Islands. we're talking like a dozen people maybe or less. so, here's the deal with the latest audit report, the latest attestation. It's the first one, they switched auditors. Okay. Always never a good thing. So, MHA Cayman took over Tether as a client earlier this year.
They are a subsidiary of UK based mid-tier firm, MHA MacIntyre Hudson, which has recently been UK financial reporting council's radar for audits the company issued in 2018 and 2019. As part of its settlement with the New York attorney general back in February of last year, Tether is required to release quarterly attestations of its assets and liabilities as a way of being more transparent when it comes to what exactly backs its Tether stable coin. But like this audit, if you actually go and look at the firm that did this, we're talking an $80 billion bank, essentially. If you look up MHA Cayman on LinkedIn, I'm going to do it right now.
David: And they're like a subsidiary of a UK firm that's being investigated.
Blake: Yeah. So, MHA Cayman. First of all, their address is a PO Box. They have three employees on LinkedIn. Three employees on LinkedIn. This is an audit firm that supposedly audited and validated-
David: 78 billion in assets.
Blake: Like 80 billion assets to make Tether, by comparison, one of the largest banks in the world. So, I mean, this just seems ridiculous. And the reporting in the press is nothing to do with, is this audit even real, it's Tether slashes commercial paper holdings by 21%, which was the big concern. Everyone's concerned, oh, they have all this commercial paper. Is it real? So, the reporting is positive because they have reduced their commercial paper. So how do you maintain the value of audit in the world when you have a stable coin that's unregulated that just goes out and buys... I mean, here's what it looks like to me. It looks like they went out, they found somebody who's willing to sign off on this report, got them to do a report. And this could be totally corrupt, it could be. It's three people in the Caymans. What is the value of that?
David: Well, we've seen this movie, it's called The Firm.
Blake: I never saw that movie.
David: Basically, it goes over for a tax legal law firm/ accounting firm thing. And they're setting up all these entities in the Caymans. That's the whole premise of the movie is like send stuff up in the Caymans.
Blake: I got a lot more I could talk about, but that's all the time we've got today. How about you David?
David: It looks like Hedge Fund though, this week, announced they're shorting... They're trying to short Tether.
Blake: Yeah, that would be interesting. I mean, that's a good... I guess that's a sign that we're on the right path, perhaps. I don't understand, how could it be legit? What are the odds that Tether is legit when they get an audit from a three-person firm in the Caymans?
David: Oh, doesn't matter who audits them. Are you saying like if Big Four audited them, it'd be more reliable?
Blake: Yes. Actually yes. In this case, yes.
David: Okay. Just trying to fill the time.
Blake: Much more. Yes.
[00:57:30] Thanks for listening, earn free CPE credit by taking a short quiz on the Earmark app
Blake: Well, if our listeners want to comment on this or any other stories, or just tell us anything at all about the accounting profession, you can send me an email at blake@blakeoliver.com. I love emails, but I love voicemails even more. So, you could use the voice memo feature on your phone and send me that. Either way, love hearing from you. We will listen. We will likely play that on the air as you have heard in the past. And you can remain anonymous if you like, just let me know. David, how should people get in touch with you online?
David: I'm on all the socials @DavidLeary.
Blake: And follow The Cloud Accounting Podcast on social media @CloudACCTPOD on most channels. We love to connect with our listeners on Twitter and on Instagram. And do subscribe to updates on our website, cloudaccountingpodcast.com. You get an email whenever an episode drops. And the most important part, I almost forgot, you can get CPE credit for listening to these episodes. Yes, Continuing Professional Education credit for listening to this show. It's amazing how they allow us to do that. I can't believe it. Go to earmarkcpe.com, download the app that I created, find The Cloud Accounting Podcast, take a quick quiz for each episode, and then you'll get your CPE credit. And we put those courses out about a week after each episode drops. So, if you're listening to this episode right now, and it's been about a week, go download the app. You'll find it. Get your CPE credit. It's never been easier to earn continuing professional education. And with that, David, I'm out.
David: I'm out. I'm going to head down to Rocky Point for the week. So maybe I'll have a story and observation-
Blake: Enjoy
David: ... that I can bring back and then we can write off that trip.
Blake: Bye.
David: Bye.
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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 of The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad? Hit the show notes for the link to get more info.