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News, and opinions abound in this week's episode! We've got more news from the world of the IRS about how four senators are either for, or against (we're not quite sure) a 'place-holder service' called enQ, and why the IRS reform could raise more revenue than expected. We've also got the latest on SPAC shenanigans, and the new wave of restatements to account for "accounting errors." In more positive news, we're getting into the weeds about the CPA Evolution Model Curriculum revision, and what it means for accounting education; what it got right, and what it totally left out. In app news, we'll look over the earnings from Intuit, and Sage, and what these companies are doing to step up their games. We've got raises, small, and large, from the likes of Outmin, Pixie, Formstack, and Practice Ignition, and we've got a whole host of updates from the QBO camp. In other news, we've got a story about deep-fake voice cloning, $35 million missing, and why everyone should employ a variety of verification factors that can prevent this kind of crime from becoming second nature. Grab a beverage of your choosing, and join us!
Show Notes
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Show Notes
3:57 – SPACs Headed for New Wave of Restatements for Accounting Errors
5:57 – Senators Question Commissioner About Company Offering Fee-Based Access to IRS Phone Lines
11:55 – Opinion | IRS reform will generate a lot more revenue than the CBO thinks - The Washington Post
14:17 – AICPA, NASBA publish revised CPA Evolution Model Curriculum - Journal of Accountancy
17:20 – A closer look at the Model
20:55 – Practical v. Theoretical – which is better for accounting education?
22:14 – In the weeds – what’s missing from the revised CPA Evolution Model Curriculum?
26:21 – Can I get this in Excel? Faculty want the CPA Evolution Model Curriculum in Excel.
32:54 – The Sage Group plc (SGGEF) CEO Steve Hare on Q4 2021 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
Sage posts 10% drop in operating profit after investing in cloud
Accelerating growth driven by continued strategic progress (PDF)
35:14 – Intuit inc (INTU) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript
38:16 – Chimp Change – how QuickBooks Advanced is heading deeper into the midmark with MailChimp
Intuit: Monetizing Its Vast Data Treasure Trove by Creating Better Outcomes For Customers
40:24 – What’s new in QuickBooks Online: November 2021 – QuickBooks
44:53 – Practice Ignition raises $50M | Accounting Today
Practice Ignition lands $50M to scale globally
46:29 – Formstack raises $425M for a no-code platform that helps businesses automate their customer and internal workflows
47:22 – Paychex Adds Support for Vaccination Status Tracking to its COVID-19 Technology Solutions
47:52 – Pixie, the operating system for small accounting firms, pockets £2.25M to grow further
48:36 – Accounting tech start-up to double headcount following funding boost
49:24 – Scammers Clone Exec's Voice, Steal $35M From Bank
52:40 – Listener Voicemail. Thank you!
54:44 – We’ve Got a Review! Thank you!
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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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[00:00:33] Episode Preview
Blake: So, my concern about accounting- it's not just about accounting. It's the whole concept of traditional education - going to a university and getting a four-year bachelor's degree, and that preparing you for the world of work ... I don't think that, in general, universities are doing a good job of preparing anyone for the reality of work these days.
David: For most careers, not just-
Blake: Most careers, yeah, and there's a whole new model of education where you can go online, and you can get certifications, and you can watch YouTube videos, and you can learn a lot faster, and you can learn stuff that is more relevant to what you need to actually do in the real world. And then, we've got this other issue where technology is changing stuff so fast that the universities, the academic programs can't keep up because they move at a snail's pace compared to tech.
--
Blake: Today is Saturday, November 20. This is The Cloud Accounting Podcast. I am Blake Oliver.
David: And I'm David Leary.
Blake: Good morning, David.
David: Good morning. I feel like it's a very calm week. There's no travel. There's not too much chaos happening in our space. Thanksgiving's next week. Things are a bit- a little calm-
[00:01:42] Rundown of Today's Episode
Blake: Calming down? But I mean, the whole- all this infrastructure bill stuff passed. All the focus is on tax-
David: But that's just the house, right? We've still got 12 weeks of media coverage before it gets to the Senate.
Blake: That's true, yeah. So, actually, I was looking at all this coverage about what's in the bill and all this stuff, and there's really no point in analyzing it because it could all change, and it probably will all change. So, like, why even take the mental energy to worry about it?
David: I do feel like, though, every time they talk about it, the mainstream media always mentions the $80 million, or the $80 billion for the IRS.
Blake: Yeah, and that got some coverage this week. I'd like to talk about that. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office that makes these estimates of what stuff is going to cost, or what it's going to deliver, said that the $80 billion isn't going to raise nearly as much as Democrats are saying; investing in the IRS. We can talk about that. Also, um, something even more relevant to our show at the intersection of accounting and tech - you know that service, Call enQ?
David: Oh, yeah. We talked about that about four episodes ago.
Blake: That has the attention of the Senate now.
David: Basically, it's a service where you pay them, and they call and wait on hold for you, on the IRS, and just clog up the IRS lines, in theory.
Blake: Yeah. There's a letter; four senators got together and wrote a letter to Commissioner Rettig, criticizing the service.
David: Oh, the letters! I love the letters!
Blake: So, we'll get to that letter. That's a good one. AICPA, NASBA, they published the revised CPA Evolution Model Curriculum.
David: That's good because I have questions on that. I saw the headline.
Blake: Now that we've got this model curriculum, this is supposed determine how accounting programs in colleges change what they teach to hopefully make what accountants are learning more relevant. And the CPA exam is changing to incorporate more technology. That's exciting for us in the accounting tech space. We'll see. We'll see. I- we'll talk about that later. Here's another one: scammers cloned an executive's voice to steal $35 million from a bank. You've heard of deep fakes, right?
David: So, not just cloning invoices, and the way people do those, or cloning an email. Now they're cloning the voice of an executive.
Blake: Because there is this tech now where, if you have enough of a recording of somebody's voice, you can then create an AI model that will speak text that you type. I actually have this on my computer. I could use it for our podcast to make you say things, David, and people probably wouldn't even know. I mean, you can tell, if you listen closely. Anyway, they cloned this executive's voice, and called up somebody, and approved some sort of payment. So, now, we can't even trust the voices we hear on the phone. What else? What else? What do you got?
David: We should talk about Xero combined with QuickBooks, and Sage, and created a metaverse. I'm just kidding. That’s- That's the AI that just created some random sentence.
Blake: We already had the, uh, Accounting Metaverse episode last week, so you're not allowed to use the word metaverse for a while, David.
David: Metaverse. It’s overplayed.
Blake: No, please.
David: If we had a bot, that's how the sentences would be if you artificially recreated it.
Blake: Well, that would be if it was writing the copy. That's for sure.
David: Obviously, Intuit, and Sage had earnings; we need to talk about that.
Blake: Intuit, and Sage had earnings, yes. And Practice Ignition raised a bunch of money.
David: There's apps that raised some money, but I don't know where you want to jump in. Do you want to, uh ... SPACs! There’s news about SPACs.
Blake: More restatements, right?
David: Yes.
Blake: That's what I saw, the headline of- that doesn't surprise me. It all seemed like too good to be true. Probably creating a lot of work for these accounting firms that specialized in them. I don't know if the clients are going to be too happy about that. There's a billionaire-
David: Well, I think they- we should jump into that because-
Blake: Okay.
[00:05:17] SPACs Headed for New Wave of Restatements for Accounting Errors
David: I could see where the clients are not happy. I know you've covered this before. There's a small percentage of firms that are doing most of the SPAC IPOs. Marcum, I think, is the firm that did the most, or they audited the most SPAC IPOs. I think a different set of firms helped SPAC IPOs go public.
Essentially, the accounting firms- what this is, is essentially, there's two types of shares. There's Class A shares, which means they're redeemable, meaning investors can get their money back. Essentially, that's- a lot of them, they want to go into a SPAC like that 'cause they don't know which company is going public, so they're investing in the SPAC, and they want to get their money out, and essentially-
Blake: Can I just step back for a second? For those who didn't- who aren't familiar, SPAC stands for special purpose acquisition company. It's a shell company. You take the shell company public, and then it goes and buys a private company. It's way to get around a lot of the red tape of a traditional IPO. That’s basically why it exists. Sorry, please continue.
David: Oh no. And so, the firms just considered the differences in this, and the errors were just fixable with a revision. And the SEC has came around now and said, "No, that's not true. You need to file an AK form.” It's Big R reinstatement; basically, that the prior financial statements can't be relied on. And so, yeah, I guess if you were a company, and this is your- you created this SPAC, or you hired these accounting firms to help you get through this SPAC process, you might be pissed.
Blake: Yeah.
David: Because hundreds of restatements are coming.
Blake: There's a chart here in the Bloomberg Tax article I saw, showing how there were 349 restatements due to SPAC warrants; all other restatements, 49, in 2021, after the April SEC announcement.
David: In general, like, would you say that, versus other IPOs, and other companies, that this is higher as a ratio?
Blake: Yeah. I mean, the vast majority of restatements are due to SPAC warrant issues this year.
David: Okay.
Blake: Not great for the companies that chose to go this way.
David: I’ll let you go next.
[00:07:11] Senators Question Commissioner About Company Offering Fee-Based Access to IRS Phone Lines
Blake: Well, since we're speaking of SEC/government, let's talk about the tax thing. Let's talk about Call enQ. So, Call enQ is that service that you pay for, pay a couple hundred bucks a month, and you get priority access to the IRS. Not, not officially, but because Call enQ has built these bots that dial up the IRS and wait on hold for you, and then, when you want to get on hold, you take their place in line. They're basically waiting in line for you. People do this all the time-
David: This would be like hiring, back in the olden day of paper concert tickets, you'd pay homeless people to stand in line.
Blake: Yeah. And I mean, this still happens like-
David: The iPhone, when the iPhone launches. Yes.
Blake: There are services that'll do this. You can get a TaskRabbit; You can use the TaskRabbit app and hire somebody to wait in line for you. So, this is the digital version of that. There's a blogpost on procedurallytaxing.com about this getting the attention of the Senate. People have been complaining about this in the tax world on Twitter. You know, it's a controversial service because even people who pay for it think it’s wrong, in many cases. Basically, it makes other people wait in line longer, and it creates this cost for what should be a free service, right? The IRS is supposed to serve all Americans, or all taxpayers, and now, you've got this like toll road. It would be like as if a private company-
David: What if there was three or four competitors doing this?
Blake: I don't know. I haven't heard of any others, but, yeah, it could jam up lines, basically. Like, imagine, you know, some private company figures out how to turn a regular lane on the freeway into a toll road. That's basically what's happened here. It's gotten the attention of the Senate. Four senators - Senators Cassidy, Menendez, Young, and Warner wrote a letter to Commissioner Rettig. I'll read some of this letter.
[00:08:47] The Letter (or the Ad) to Commissioner Rettig
Blake: “Dear Commissioner Rettig, during the 2021 filing season, the IRS answered only 9% of incoming calls. We recognize that during this time, the IRS saw a record high number of callers, and new challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the downward trend began prior to the pandemic. For example, the percentage of calls answered fell from 32% in 2018 to 21% in 2020. What's more, many callers wait on hold for hours, only to ultimately see their calls dropped; an action the IRS calls a ‘courtesy disconnect.’
Such a troubling approach dealing with taxpayers is not in line with the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which makes clear that taxpayers have a right to quality service. Reasonable access to the IRS is essential to a fair and effective tax system. Media reports are drawing attention to a service known as enQ, which launched in 2016.”
David: Media reports? Like, did these senators discover our podcast?
Blake: “EnQ allows paid subscribers to jump to the front the hold queue for the IRS phone lines. According to the company, the service reduces hold time for subscribers by up to 90%.” So, now, this is an ad for enQ, I suppose. “Plans start at about $100 per month and run as much as $300 per month.”
David: This totally sounds like an ad! This is horrible.
Blake: “Although helpful for those who subscribe, enQ's service creates a two-tiered system for taxpayers seeking to access assistance from the IRS. It also may exacerbate the poor response rates that the IRS purports to address. It is curious that in the time period since enQ's robocalls began flooding the IRS lines, the downward trend in calls answered by the IRS increased so dramatically.
As such, we ask that you evaluate whether enQ has negatively impacted the capacity of your phone systems. If it has, we ask that you consider all potentially applicable remedies, including 26 US Code § 7212, which prohibits attempts to interfere the administration of Internal Revenue laws. Being able to call the IRS is a free public service that should be available on an equal basis. Paying to receive preferential access to the IRS should not be permitted.
Finally, we ask that you take necessary action to dramatically improve the quality of service called for in the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Hold times should be measured by minutes not hours. The percentage of calls answered should be in the high double digits, not in the high single digits. Improving service should be an utmost priority to the IRS. Please keep us informed as you investigate this matter and consider your options. We stand by ready to assist if needed. Thank you, and we look forward to your response. Sincerely, Senators Cassidy, Menendez, Young, and Warner.”
[00:11:29] David's enQ Conspiracy Theory
David: So, here is my take on this – two things. One, this is a very public, like, “Hey, now that we're gonna give you $80 billion dollars, here's what you're gonna spend it on." It’s a very clear hammer on that. The other part of this, it really smells like this is pushed by Call enQ. They've either donated to these senators- they're pushing them to get the IRS to make Call enQ the official middleman.
Right now, it's interfering, but if they get a nice official government contract, and they get a chunk of that $80 billion ... I mean, if you could get a piece of that $80 billion to be the call software between the IRS, and the front end - the customers, I mean us citizens - it's worth buying off some senators to get a chunk of that $80 billion.
Blake: I think that's an interesting theory, but wouldn’t it be a better solution for the IRS to spend some money and invest in a callback system?
David: But read that letter. That is a commercial; that is PR talk that was given to the Senator for this letter.
Blake: You think so?
David: Oh, you called- you said it was a commercial- it was totally a commercial!
Blake: Your conspiracy theory is that Call enQ is paying off these senators-
David: They have a lobbyist pushing-
Blake: They're lobbying these senators ... But they're criticizing Call enQ. You think this is actually-
David: At the same time, it was a commercial for Call enQ, right?
Blake: Well, that would be some crazy-brilliant marketing, for sure, if that was the case. My theory is that people have been complaining to these senators. I mean, the waiting on hold with the IRS is the worst thing about being a tax professional right now, I imagine. Could that be- could it be any worse? I’d love to hear from our listeners.
David: Call enQ should branch out and do this to every senator's phone lines, as well.
Blake: Oh, so that I could get ahold of a Senator by, uh- by paying?
David: They should do the same thing. They should just block up all the senators' and representatives' phone lines, and run the same service for them.
[00:13:11] IRS reform will generate a lot more revenue than the CBO thinks
Blake: Yeah, so that's Call enQ. And so, you mentioned the $80 billion the IRS is getting, which, it looks like- well, it hasn't gone through the Senate yet, but it looks like they're actually going to get it, right, or did that actually pass? I can't remember. I don't even know where this legislation is, but there's some $80 billion-
David: I think it passed the House, and now, it's moving on to the Senate.
Blake: You know, one of the controversies about this $80 billion is, you know, whether or not it's actually going to generate more revenue which, to me, seems like a stupid argument to be having because we know that if we invest $80 billion, we're going to get it back. The question is how much more? The Congressional Budget Office is estimating that it will generate $150 billion, which is less than half of what the Treasury is saying. Treasury is saying if we invest 80, we're going to get $480 billion-
David: I was going to say, I thought I heard that on NPR today. It was like $435 billion, $480 billion, yeah.
Blake: So, $400 billion net. That's a pretty good ROI, right? The CBO came back and said, when they evaluated this legislation, that it would generate $150 billion, or I guess that's what it's going to come to. I'm not really quite clear where this is. But there's a debate as to whether that- what number is accurate. Nobody really knows. I think CBO is being conservative. Treasury is being more aggressive.
The idea is that, I think from- and I kind of buy this - the argument Treasury is making is that when you increase audits on high-net-worth folks, and businesses, you're going to increase voluntary compliance. I mean, the reason that we have such a tax gap right now is that the risk of an audit is extremely, extremely, extremely low.
You can do all sorts of funny business, and if you get audited- well, the odds are low you're going to get audited, and if you do, you're going to get some inexperienced auditor, and you're going to be able to walk circles around them, or run circles around them, I should say. I can't even believe that we're arguing, as a society, as to whether or not we should be auditing more than, you know, half a percent of businesses or something like that- half a percent of returns. It's just crazy. I don't know. That's my take on this.
David: It's very clear that they want the money spent on telephone calls, and call centers, and not on auditors.
Blake: Right.
David: Do you want to jump into the revised curriculum?
Blake: Yeah, we can talk about that.
[00:15:29] Thank you to our sponsor Center Card
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[00:16:42] Revised CPA Evolution Model Curriculum released
David: So, let's touch in, before we jump into app news, and all the other kinds of stuff going on- the revised, uh, CPA Evolution Model Curriculum apparently has been published again. It's newly revised. This is from the AICPA, and NASBA.
Blake: I think this is like the final ... final final?
David: They've incorporated some feedback from users, and then, they've also tied it to some surveys, I think.
Blake: Yeah, and they've changed the model diagram from this- like circles to a tree. So now, they have a foundation, which is like the ground, and then, the core is the tree trunk, and then, the three different specializations are branches of the tree. So, that must've taken a while.
David: The way they're communicating about it has been changed, and what it is. I guess, for me, I don't feel like a lot of these articles have anything new, but there were some surveys and they-
Blake: Who did the survey? AICPA? NASBA?
David: It says, "We conducted ..." Would this be the Journal of Accountancy?
Blake: I think it's the task force that's putting this together, right? That's what it's gotta be. The CPA Evolution Group did a survey.
David: So, they said, “83% of firms surveyed with 11 or more CPAs said that if university accounting programs were aligned with the CPA Evolution, their hiring of new graduates from accounting programs would likely increase. Accounting program graduates would be considered more valuable than they are today, or both.” I kind of want to call bullshit on that because there's not enough accountants. They're gonna hire anybody that gets an accounting degree, regardless if they get trained in the old-school methods, or the CPA Evolution methods.
Blake: Well, the problem right now-
David: They don’t have much option. They need the labor; they need bodies. Like, "Do you have a pulse? Did you take an accounting class? Maybe we'll hire you ...”
Blake: I think what this relates to is the data point that CPA firms have been hiring fewer accounting grads and more IT, and non-accounting grads over the years. So, the question is how do we get CPA firms to hire more accounting grads? It's to make the education more relevant to what they need to do; what they need to know in the- in the future, or now even.
David: I guess, but I also know- like, all I see in my Facebook feeds, and LinkedIn feeds, and Twitter feeds - everybody cannot find bodies.
Blake: Well, you know who they can't find is the experienced people. Nobody wants to ... Well, so, most firms are small, and small firms do not want to hire grads, recent grads, because they have to train them, and they don't have the bandwidth to train them. So, the only firms that want to hire recent grads are larger firms, generally; The bigger ones, right?
David: The bigger firms. Because they're doing consulting work, and all this other stuff, they don't really want to hire accountants either.
Blake: And they're hiring fewer of them because the skills they need to do this consulting stuff is not what is being taught in the classroom. Yeah. There you go.
David: And so, this model is gonna bring us closer.
[00:19:38] What's in the Model?
Blake: Closer. Theoretically. So, it includes a lot of- well, it's supposed to basically include technology, and that is one of the three options. Section two that you can choose to specialize in is information systems and controls. So, that includes IT governance, risk assessment, performing procedures, tests of internal controls, SOC engagements, use, and management of data, and information security, and protection of information assets. So, you can choose to specialize in that now, as opposed to everybody studying all the same stuff. The thing is, the core of the CPA Evolution Model Curriculum is still accounting, and data analytics, audit, and accounting information systems, and then tax.
So, basically, tax, and audit get their own sections, and then, GAAP- GAAP has been supplemented with data analytics. And then, there’s a module ... I’m just looking at the table of contents of the Curriculum. They added a module at the end of each of these core sections called Digital Acumen, which is demonstrating the knowledge of an essential ability to respond to change in the world of digital tools and technologies. Estimated hours, one to two. I guess those are credit hours. So, it's kind of like tacking on a bit of digital stuff to the core, and then, they have this new specialization, information systems. I have to dig into it more. It's hard to- you know, with all this stuff, it's so general, it's hard to wrap your mind around. What are they actually going to teach in the classroom?
David: Versus if I just got my accounting degree with an MIS minor.
Blake: Yeah, or just experience. So, my big concern about accounting is kind of the- it's not just about accounting. It's the whole concept of traditional education - going to a university and getting a four-year bachelor's degree and that preparing you for the world of work. I don't think that, in general, universities are doing a good job of preparing anyone for the reality of work these days.
David: For most careers, not just-
Blake: Most careers, yeah, and there's a whole new model of education where you can go online, and you can get certifications, and you can watch YouTube videos, and you can learn a lot faster, and you can learn stuff that is more relevant to what you need to actually do in the real world. And then, we've got this other issue where technology is changing stuff so fast that the universities, the academic programs can't keep up because they move at a snail's pace compared to tech.
Even if the universities do change their curriculum, it's not going to be fast enough, and what you learn in the classroom, as far as digital acumen, it's going to be like theoretical. My big problem with accounting education is it's way too theoretical, in most cases. Now I'm sure there's programs out there where you get real-world experience, and that's great. Those are probably the ones that are doing the best, but like most programs, it's all theoretical. And that's why accounting grads get out there, and they get hired by these firms, and they don't know anything. They can't actually do anything. You can't put them down in- you have to train them a ton because the university didn't train them to actually do the work. That's why they can't pay them.
David: So, if a university doesn’t- if these classes don’t even exist yet ... Basically, it's like looking at your college catalog; like, I might take this class. Here's the learning objective. Here's how many credit hours it is, um, and it suggests what courses I should possibly take prior to this course. If these are not currently being offered, and these courses have to be created from scratch, that means some professors are going to have to create textbooks from scratch.
Blake: It's going to take years.
David: Like, I was going to say, like, what kind of timeline is this on?
[00:23:08] The Practical Magic of Accounting Education
Blake: I guess the CPA exam is changing in a couple of years. The new CPA exam, when does that come out? New CPA exam, 2024. So, the new CPA exam starts in 2024. So, theoretically, the universities have to like change the curriculum to match that sooner rather than later. Like, how useful is technology training that is theoretical and not practical? I would argue not that useful; the same thing as learning audit theory, as opposed to actually doing audits.
David: Yeah. Like, where's the course- a lot of colleges now have like entrepreneurship programs, where you have to build and launch a business.
Blake: That is really valuable.
David: Maybe that should be on the parallel here, ‘cause then, you're gonna- you're gonna touch all parts of the accounting stack.
Blake: What would be great is if the accounting department built their own firm and were offering services, accounting services, to businesses. That's what I would do. That's what I would create. And then you, as a student, could get education credit by working in that in-house accounting department.
David: That ties back to a couple episodes ago, when you were talking about Frank Lloyd Wright, and Taliesin West, and he made his students draft the house, but then getting-
Blake: Building it-
David: -their hands dirty and actually physically construct the house.
Blake: Yeah, yeah.
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[00:25:47] In the Weeds
David: I don't know. It's a nice-looking tree. I'm looking at the tree. It would be-
Blake: The diagram?
David: It would be a nice background on like your computer monitor as a wallpaper. I'm just looking at this, and how do you get the universities on board? How do you change all this? And then, by the time it's done, is it already out of date?
Blake: Yeah. I don't think universities are set up to move fast enough, most of them. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but ... Most of what I learned in accounting that was really valuable, I learned on the job, not in the classroom. The good courses that I took were the real core of accounting, you know, uh, Accounting 101, 102, Intermediate Accounting. That theory you need.
David: How much of this is just like personal responsibility? You could do the old curriculum and become a CPA, but isn't it on you to be like, "Hey, I should be more robust and take some MIS classes, and maybe I should learn a little bit more business analysis, and reporting, and other classes on my own to supplement my CPA ..."? You follow what I'm saying? Like, does this even have to be reinvented, per se?
Blake: Well, if you want the traditional pathway to stay relevant, right? The problem right now is that if you talk to a lot of firm owners, they'll say, “If I have a CPA in front of me who went the traditional path, and then I have this non-traditional person who studied everything on their own,” like what you're talking about, David, “I'm going to go with the person who invested in learning technology, and finance, and they know enough about accounting to be dangerous.” That person is more useful to me in my firm these days than the traditional CPA grad, because that CPA grad doesn't know anything practical; it's all theoretical, and even passing the exam doesn't actually guarantee that you can do anything.
David: So this is kind of interesting. Just did some searches of the whole PDF. QuickBooks isn't in there. NetSuite's not in there. The word "cloud" is in there twice. That's it.
Blake: Cloud?
David: So, I'm- if somebody is going to go through this tree and come out on the other end, and they haven't taken a course on QuickBooks, or Intacct, or NetSuite, or Xero, are they being prepared?
Blake: Right. Yeah, exactly. So, that's the theoretical- there's all the theoretical stuff about data, and ... There's one section here about processing that actually kind of looked interesting. This is in the specialization-
David: The word automation is in here; robotic process automation, but it's in regards to audit, and that's it. [CROSSTALK 28:11] These, in theory, would be the words that people are going to need to have skills around in the future: cloud, automation; maybe crypto.
Blake: Okay, so, inside of the-
David: Crypto's not even listed once. There's no crypto.
Blake: There’s no crypto. Inside of the IT specialization, there is a module called Use and Management of Data, and there is a topic called Data Preparation, Manipulation. Here's a learning objective from that - this is eight to 12 estimated hours. Is that credit hours, or actual hours? Anyway, “Recall the capabilities needed in data-extraction tools, and the important considerations in making a data-extraction request, such as the data-source format and integrity of the data. Learning objective number two: describe key characteristics of a relational database. Three: explain considerations associated with loading data into the final target database.” We’re still talking about, like, databases. It just-
David: At least spreadsheet's in here nine times.
Blake: Yeah.
David: It's always done in the same context of appropriate technology, e.g., general ledger software, spreadsheet software/application.
Blake: Right. So, they're leaving it up to the professors, the educators to decide if they're going to actually use any technology tools in the classroom.
David: But, I've been in these classes. You always get some weird CD in the back of the book, and it's some weird half-assed module that the professor had some grad students make that's not any actual application used in market. Sure, it does-
Blake: Yeah.
David: It's like an accounting application, but-
Blake: Oh, I didn't even get any of those in my program. We were- we were doing diagrams that had tape drives in them. We were drawing them with protractors and stuff.
David: I don't understand.
Blake: Wanna know something funny? So, in the Journal of Accountancy article about this revised CPA Evolution Model Curriculum, there is a list of the most common questions that AICPA, and NASBA received as they released this. The number-one question, or the first question listed is, “Is the CPA Evolution Model Curriculum available in Excel format?” That was the top request from faculty. It was to make the curriculum resource available in Excel format to help them map it to their own curricula. I just thought that was funny. Of course, the first question is, “Can I get it in Excel format?”
David: Yeah. It's funny that pivot tables is not in here.
Blake: They're not in there?
David: No, but that's like one the most-used things-
Blake: Is Excel- if you search-
David: After you graduate, you kind of need to know how to do pivot tables, right?
Blake: If you search Excel, does it come up?
David: Excel's not in here.
Blake: The word Excel is not in the Model Curriculum? I mean, that's-
David: From what I can tell, there's no branding, but- I mean, the curriculum probably should have, like, “You need to take a course on ...”
Blake: What about SaaS? Is Software as a Service, or SaaS in there?
David: No, phrase not found. Holy shit ...
Blake: You said cloud was in there twice?
David: All right, everybody- Cloud's in there twice.
Blake: What are the other terms that we use constantly in this space?
David: I was searching for some of them. Excel. I searched for all the name brands; cloud; SaaS.
Blake: Is there anything for like how to run a practice?
David: API. API is not in there because it's part of the word capital ... API is not in there as-
Blake: What about, like, how to talk to a client? Is that in there?
David: Customer service?
Blake: Yeah, right. That's not going to be in there. Let's just see the word client. There's something about liability. Okay, of course. I'm finding the word client in there, at least, a little bit, like, uh, individual tax planning.
David: Soft skills.
Blake: Identify data used to help clients establish their financial and tax goals. That's good. That's good. That's something. Planning communications with the client.
David: Software is in here 26 times, but it's always in that same sentence: e.g. general ledger software, spreadsheet software/application.
Blake: Yeah, no specified. That makes sense-
David: But there's no course. Business processes, and controls - describe the purposes of accounting, financial reporting systems, and related tools, but there's nothing like "use" the tools, just describe them.
Blake: Right, right. Exactly. Well, you know what I would love to see as a learning objective, or as a module, or some sort of objective, is, “By the end of your education, be able to run full accounting cycle in some sort of accounting software.” I don't care what it is. Just be able to do a full accounting cycle, like you would do in corporate, where you post the transactions; you look at the trial balance; you make adjustments; you do all the accruals, and deferrals; you create a set of financial statements; you analyze them. Does anyone learn how to do that these days? Because that's what you actually need to be able to do as an accountant is close the books, and do the financial statements-
David: There's a core- calculating software costs, and R&D costs for capitalizing, and that type of stuff. There's stuff on that.
Blake: Oh, well, you know what? We'll dig into this. We'll need to look into it more, and I really want to have some folks on my Earmark Podcast - you know, my new show that I'm doing - about this. Get some of the people on who created this, and ask the questions because I don't know ... We don't really know just looking at the document.
David: And here's the reconciliation, right? Two weeks ago, I think I brought in that job posting from ProPublica, and they specifically called out Excel, QuickBooks, Expensify, and ADP. That's who they're trying to hire, somebody who has experience in those things, and none of this criteria trains you in any of those things.
Blake: The specific tools.
David: What about payroll?
Blake: How do you run Payroll?
David: Payroll is five times in here, but that's not in context there. It's just like, as a step in a business process; it's not like how to run payroll.
Blake: Yeah. You know, my focus is on, of course, the accounting services 'cause I think that's what I did, but like, in tax, I think it should be the same thing. Like, one of the, key objectives of your tax courses should be, at the end, your students can prepare a tax return, right? Shouldn't that be the point? Isn't that what we're preparing them to do is prepare tax returns, review tax returns for individuals, corporations, not-for-profits, whatever? Like, be able to do it, or if, if you are studying audit, be able to run audit, or like manage one, right-
David: Alright. I think I understand all this now. Right? I was like, what are they launching? And now that we've dug into it, it feels like it's just- maybe it's not the answer. I don't know.
Blake: Well, they’re changing the theory, but it's still theoretical. It's not practical, and that's the problem. It's just not practical enough. It's not useful. This is why starting salaries for accountants are low because the skills we’re teaching them in school are not relevant to what the market wants, and so the market has priced the services accordingly. So, you've got to make it more relevant, more practical; actually be able to do stuff. That's what I think. I mean, I'd love to hear from our listeners, if they think something else.
David: And the way the motivation is, in theory, if you're not going to be tested on the exam, your CPA exam, about QuickBooks, or NetSuite, or Excel, or your knowledge of cloud, or SaaS, or any of these types of things-
Blake: Right.
David: -why would you take time to take classes about that, and learn those, when you're- when you really have to double down and only focus on passing the exam?
Blake: Yeah, and that's the same way the accounting professors design their curriculum is to help people pass the CPA exam. Like, that's what they teach to most of the time, so, that's why it's so important, and that's what I'd love to see in the CPA exam is actually, like, do a return, or do part of a return, or do a financial close, or audit a set of financial statements as the exercises that you do.
David: The tree just needs one more branch. I'm just looking- it just needs a branch that just says some real-world experience; functional, true experience, like, you actually use the apps; you actually create a return; you actually perform an audit; you actually, you know, run a small business. Whatever it is, right? You, you get in the- Actually, you know what? It needs weeds. Like, it needs weeds. That's what this graphic needs. It needs weeds, which is all the real stuff.
Blake: The real, actual stuff. Yeah I like that ‘cause it’s a tree diagram-
David: We’re gonna mock this up. If somebody has some Photoshop skills, I'd love for you to add the weeds down below this tree, and that’s all the real stuff-
Blake: Well, hey, David, we've-
David: We've beaten this up. I know. Too much time.
Blake: We're beating this up. We need to do more- go home and do more homework. Uh, let's talk about apps because that's the stuff we really know.
David: Should we start out with earnings announcements?
Blake: Yeah. Let's do it. What's a- who released their numbers?
[00:36:21] Sage Q4 Numbers
David: Sage had their numbers out, and Intuit also had their numbers out this week. Sage, I kind of dug through the earnings call a little bit. So, ultimately, it's the same trend they've seen before with Sage, right? Cloud native is growing. It grew, uh, another- a growth of 44%. It's up 26% from last year. Their focus remains growing the Sage Business Cloud.
A lot of their growth, a high proportion of it, is significant levels of new customer acquisition, plus they're finally actually driving migrations to their cloud-connected solutions. And so, their revenue for- they kind of are tracking something called "to be migrated," and it actually decreased by £56 million, so, they're moving old Desktop revenue, if you think about it that way, to their new solutions.
Um, the biggest one, obviously, is Sage Intacct; it stands out as a performer; its recurring revenue grew at 22%, so it continues to grow, and that's big because Intacct's very expensive, so, if it grows at 22%, that's a big-number movement. The only other thing I picked up in there was they were very specific about Sage Intacct; they’re talking about selling to CFOs.
Blake: Yes. I like that.
David: Very focused on selling to CFOs; understanding what causes CFOs work; the admin task in it; their teams’ problems. That’s why they’re focusing on workflow, accounts payable, accounts receivable, integrating payroll, HR, all of these things that are in bigger companies, right?
So, it’s very clear Intacct's going not so much at accountants that listen to our show, but they're going really at internal controllers, CFOs; they're really targeting them because that's who- if they can convince that CFO, “We're going to solve X problems for you,” that's who's going to make the buy decisions.
Blake: And this is a broad generalization, so, take it for what it's worth, but I've always felt that NetSuite tends to sell to the CEO, the COO; whereas Sage Intacct tends to sell to the CFO. That's always been a very different persona that they've had from a marketing standpoint. And I think we saw that, actually, when we interviewed the CFOs at SuiteWorld. They didn't implement NetSuite. It was generally something that the operations folks, CEOs had done- chosen to do, and they were using-
David: Above them-
Blake: Right, which makes sense because NetSuite is a- they've got finance, and accounting, and that’s obviously important, core important, but it's like a business suite designed for the whole business. That's the starting point of it. You had more earnings, though, right?
[00:38:40] Intuit Earnings and the Case of the Missing QuickBooks Live
David: Yeah, earnings number- QuickBooks had their earnings numbers; some highlights from there-
Blake: Oh, QuickBooks, got it.
David: -on Intuit's earnings calls. Just doing a quick search, like QuickBooks Live was only mentioned once, and there was really no context around it. It was just a word in a sentence, which, previously, it was a lot heavier in these earnings calls, but these earnings calls, now, all the attention is all the new business - Credit Karma, MailChimp; how these are integrating into the system. There's some stuff about QuickBooks Online. So, QuickBooks Online Advanced, it grew by 118,000 customers in fiscal year 2021, up 57%.
Blake: Say that number again. That’s a lot-
David: 118,000 new-
Blake: New subscribers-
David: QBO Advanced subscriptions.
Blake: In this year? This-
David: In fiscal year 2021, up 57% year over year.
Blake: Wow, and they charge like 150 bucks a month for that. So, that’s a lot of revenue-
David: Yeah, which is why QuickBooks Online Accounting revenue grew 32% in fiscal Q1. It's really because of higher growth, and higher effective prices and, and the, the shift, right? They continue to see- as people move to online, the ecosystem, they use all the other services – payroll, payments, capital, time-tracking. That grew another 42% because they're seeing this flywheel effect. You use one service; you use the next service; that type of thing.
There is some Desktop information here. QuickBooks Desktop enterprise revenue grew to high single digits driven by strong growth, and price increases. So, obviously, they were raising a lot of the prices on this, and people still used it. They kept paying. In that same paragraph, they did talk about how they expect this, “We expect the Desktop business to decline longer-term.”
Blake: It's good they're stating the obvious.
David: They're stating the obvious. That’s the way to do it. One thing I was confused about is they talked about Desktop, and they've moved people on Desktop to this new subscription model. And, essentially, it's almost like 50-50 now, the, uh, subscriber mix. They grew the subs- the subscriptions for the Desktop product grew 48%, but the outright unit sales declined by 47%. Apparently, the way they're doing rev rec, to quote, it says, “You get like an extra pop of revenue from subscriber growth in the quarter.” I don't understand how that works, cause like, can you count the SaaS revenue if they haven't- if they're paying now monthly?
Blake: So, normally, when you convert a transaction-based business to a subscription business in software, you take a hit on your earnings because instead of a bunch of people renewing at $3,000 a pop all in that quarter, you get them switching to subscriptions, so now, that's spread out over a 12-month period. So, normally, that would actually hurt you. I wonder if somehow, the way they're doing it, they're getting people to pay ... Yeah, I don't- I don't know. That doesn’t quite add up.
David: Well, I think- I think with Desktop, even though somebody bought a Desktop on January 1 for $300, that revenue had to be pushed out over X months.
Blake: Oh, it did already? Okay.
David: I think maybe that's why. So, now what's happening is as soon as you- they subscribe, you get to book that month's revenue now.
Blake: Yeah. Maybe they're accelerating it in a very short-term kind of thing, quarter to quarter. I don't know. We'd have to, like, actually know; we'd have to see the spreadsheet.
David: Yep.
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[00:43:17] Chimp Change
David: And then, a lot of talk about midmarket. Um, they're talking about how, with QuickBooks Advanced, now they're really going deeper mid-market; they're really- this is where they're bringing in MailChimp. They think MailChimp's going to help them disrupt the midmarket. That's what the MailChimp is. It's for going midmarket, making QuickBooks Online Advanced more robust.
A couple of little, small notes I noticed that were nuggets to take note of. They said that they- “We call small mission-based teams that we are exploring other spaces because we can leverage a lot of capabilities to this virtual expert platform,” so, virtual expert platform, which is like TurboTax Live, QuickBooks Live. They have this platform now, “to serve spaces like marketing, and potentially spaces like financial services.
Blake: Oh, so they could have like a Marketing Live inside of MailChimp, and you'd just get marketing help on demand-
David: Exactly. And, it’s sounding like, on personal-finance side, the Credit Karma side, you might be able to get-
Blake: Like personal financial advisors?
David: -some sort of financial live-type services. It looks like they’re doubling down on the Live concept. And then, there was an interesting question brought up by one of the analysts that were on the call, and they didn't really answer it, or confirm but they must've said this somewhere else. He said, and I'll quote, “I believe you called out the opportunity for QuickBooks Payroll customers to deposit up to $232 billion of payroll funds into their Credit Karma Money accounts.”
So, remember, QuickBooks enabled that connection. If you open a bank account on Credit Karma, you can connect that directly to your QuickBooks Payroll account. That's massive. If Intuit can move $232 billion from employees getting paychecks from banks, and other places they send that money, and put it into the Intuit bank, the Credit Karma bank, that’s a pretty massive amount of assets.
Blake: Well, 'cause then they can take that money, and they can loan it out to QuickBooks businesses and-
David: Well, not only that, I think they're going to get into loans for consumers, right? The Intuit bank has really arrived, if they're gonna be able to move that money around like that.
Blake: That’s a big deal. Yeah, and they just are siphoning it off just very easily, right?
David: Yeah.
Blake: With a click, switch banks.
David: And obviously, The Street loved Intuit's numbers because the stock- I think it's almost $700 a share. It just- it moved almost a hundred dollars in the last day and a half. It's crazy.
[00:45:30] QuickBooks Online Updates - All Kinds of Updates!
Blake: Well, this is a perfect tie-in to my updates for QuickBooks Online in November 2021 from the QuickBooks blog. Let's see what's new. There is now a MailChimp app for QuickBooks Online. It's a one-way sync that imports contacts, and revenue data from QuickBooks into MailChimp. Currently in beta, the app is the first joint effort of QuickBooks, and MailChimp with more to come.
David: So, if I'm with MailChimp, it's my CRM; I’ve been sending out emails out of there - in theory, I’m going to be able to see the emails I sent to you, Blake, if they turn into revenue; not just if you clicked my emails.
Blake: Here is the most confusing thing that I've seen in a long time. The QuickBooks Online Advanced app for Microsoft Windows is now available for download and includes feature, and performance improvements. So, David, QuickBooks Desktop is dying, but now we have QuickBooks Online Advanced for Windows.
David: Essentially, it's a browser window, but it's not your browser, and it allows you to stay signed in, but the real magic of this is you can open up multiple entities at the same time.
Blake: Which you can't do in your normal browser-
David: You can, but you- you’ve gotta like set up sandbox- not sandboxes, but yeah- I guess sandboxes-
Blake: Different profiles-
David: -and set up different profiles, and-
Blake: Okay.
David: A lot of accountants like this because you can have a couple of clients open at the same time, bounce around, and it stores your passwords. You don't have to keep logging in ‘cause, it's just- once it's an app, it's a little bit more secure than just coming in from the web. So, there's a lot of benefits to this. Um, and then, apparently there’s-
Blake: But the thing is- here's the thing, though; it’s like, it looks like it's only available for QuickBooks Online Advanced.
David: And they've changed this to a premium offering for Advanced. A free app is an add-on for QuickBooks Online Advanced users. Yeah. I'll have to go to my other computer and see if it still works. That’s gonna be crazy!
Blake: So, if you’re using not- yeah, if you’re not using QuickBooks Online Advanced, does the Desktop app work?
David: Well, I- that's the confusing thing 'cause I have it installed on my computer for the regular QuickBooks Online, so I'm kind of- unless they've killed that.
Blake: It's confusing.
David: Yeah. Call us, somebody. Let us know, ‘cause that- I hope they didn't do something like that. This is why people are- they're going to grow the hell out of the QuickBooks Online Advanced app 'cause basically, it's just going to be QuickBooks Online. All the stuff that's great is just going to be put in that other app.
Blake: Right. Last update: employee expense management. It's a new feature available only in QuickBooks Online Advanced. This is found under the Bank/Receipts, or Transactions windows. It's called Employee Expense Management. It allows employees to submit expenses directly to QuickBooks for the admin, or bookkeeper to readily review, and then reconcile into the books. Submitting expense reports, and uploading receipts is now faster, and easier than ever.
David: So, basically, all these expense apps are out there. Expensify just went public, blah, blah, blah. But now we've seen in the last- Xero launched it in their little payroll app, the ability for employees to submit expenses. We just saw Sage Intacct launch this last week, or two weeks ago, and now, QuickBooks is launching it. So, is employee expense reimbursement just going to be a default function of accounting systems now?
Blake: Right. And yet, Expensify's stock popped 50%. It doesn't add up. Are people even going to need Expensify if all the GLs do this? I guess they'll do it kind of in a mediocre way, and then people will buy Expensify because they need something better. I don’t know. It seems like-
David: Well, and I've always thought about that, Blake, about QuickBooks. Like, it'll be just good enough, right? If you have a restaurant, and you have to do- you have a little bit of barbecue sauce you need to ship, and send, QuickBooks will do just good enough e-commerce to get you by, but if you have omni-channel, and you have all kinds of e-commerce, and it's your real- you're just an e-commerce business, maybe it's not going to be the best fit for you doing that stuff through QuickBooks. But, in this case, I think, for somebody like me, I'm an admin; a couple receipts. This could be a good fit for me. I don't know. I'll have to try it.
Blake: We'll have to leave it there.
David: But I have to buy QuickBooks Online Advanced first, though, to try this.
[00:49:19] Practice Makes Perfect ...
Blake: Practice- practice. I'm going to start that again. Practice Ignition raised $50 million in a Series C-funding round. Founded in 2013, Practice Ignition helps accountants, and bookkeepers, and others manage their clients with digital proposals, payment systems, and automated workflows. Currently, they support over 300,000 monthly client engagements. They've got offices in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. According to the story in Accounting Today, the company plans to use the money for product development and to fuel global expansion, particularly in the U.S., where it has strategic partnerships with Gusto, and Intuit. They also plan to establish a new R&D team in Toronto.
David: And what I like about this is the founder, Guy Pearson, he was an accountant.
Blake: He had his own firm. Still does-
David: I think he worked for a Big Four, maybe, at one time, right, or a Top 10 firm-
Blake: Definitely a bigger firm, yeah.
David: He kinda hated it; started his own firm and built these processes, and that led to the creation of Practice Ignition.
Blake: Really awesome to see Practice Ignition doing this. And the opportunity is huge for them because they've always focused on accounting, and they've had some people from outside accounting use Practice Ignition for proposals, like other professional services firms, but they've never really marketed to them, but there's so much opportunity for them to expand to, I don't know, law firms, or design agencies, or any professional services business that has recurring engagements. That makes a lot of sense. So, I think their growth potential is huge.
[00:50:54] Formstack Raises $425 Million
David: There's another product that's not so much for firm management, but they actually offer kind of similar functionality, per se. Formstack; they just took $425 million. They call it an- I think "no code" is the big buzzword now, right? They say it's a no-code platform to automate customer workflows, and internal workflows. You know, you have forms, right? You're onboarding for your client. They have forms; they do documents, document signing, proposals, templates for that, and the compliance of them signing those forms, and it all connects through a workflow.
Now, the thing is, with this, it's probably- it's more custom. You're gonna build everything. And so, if you're an accounting firm, you could possibly build it all on in this, or, like you said, you could just get Practice Ignition, and it's kind of optimized for you, but it's- Practice Ignition can expand out towards this direction, you know, as well. But that's a lot of money, $425 million raise. Do you have any other app news?
[00:51:49] Paychex Adds Vaccination Status Tracking Support
Blake: I do. Paychex, payroll processor, Paychex has added support for vaccination status tracking to its COVID-19 technology solutions. This is going to be really important because of that federal mandate now that employers with more than 100 employees track their employees' vaccination status, and they have to either get vaccinated, or get tested on a regular basis. So, that is there. I think ADP did it first.
[00:52:14] A British App and an Irish App Walked Into a Bar ...
David: I have a UK app, and an Irish app that had raises.
Blake: Let's hear it.
David: Pixie, which is "The operating system for small accounting firms," they raised £2.25 million to further their growth. Um, basically, they created a simpler approach for practice management, and workflow automation for smaller firms. Apparently, they already have 1,100 accountants, and bookkeepers around the world relying on Pixie.
I always get this one confused every time I see it because they're a similar color, but there's another app called Pixifi, which is for- it's practice management for your professional photographer. So, it's a very similar name, so I always get them confused because their colors are similar, too. I actually thought the other company pivoted to accountants, but that other company still exists. There's Pixifi, and there's Pixie.
[00:53:03] It's about the Quality, not the Quantity, right?
David: Out of Ireland, there's a company called Outmin. They are an Irish startup founded last year. They just took £ 650,000 as their first raise. They want to double its head count to 20. Essentially, what they want to do is they already have 60 clients, but for £99 a month, the startup offers customers an accountant, a bookkeeper, accounting software, and it takes care of payroll, managing tax returns, compliance, filings, and many other administrative services.
Blake: Wait, wait. So, how many clients do they have?
David: 60.
Blake: And they raised how much money?
David: £650,000-
Blake: Okay. Okay ... That’s not-
David: Which is not actually- in the grand scheme of the way the raises have been, it's not much. It's under a million bucks.
Blake: No, it's funny they got- where did you find that press release?
David: This is in Siliconrepublic.com.
Blake: Siliconrepublic.com. Man, I've never even heard of some of these.
[00:53:52] Scammers Clone Executive's Voice to Lift $35 Million
Blake: Hey, I teased it at the beginning of the episode, so I’ve gotta talk about it. "Scammers Clone Exec's Voice, Steal $35M From Bank." This was on newser.com. So, apparently, this was in the United Arab Emirates. According to a court document, investigators in Dubai say a bank manager “received a phone call that claimed to be from the company headquarters. The caller sounded like the director of the company. So, the branch manager believed the call was legitimate.” The director told him that he needed $35 million to complete an acquisition, according to Forbes. The manager, who also received emails that appeared to be from the director, and a lawyer he had been told was involved in the deal authorized the transfers.
So, they spoofed emails- the hackers spoofed emails, and they created a fake voice. They did it using deep voice technology. This is the audio version of that deep fake technology, where you can insert people's faces onto other people's bodies and make them say things they never said, and all that kind of stuff. So, another great reason to use approval software, or approvals in your accounting software, and not rely on informal verbal, or email approvals. It's really gotta be in a system if you want to stop it.
They caught the guys, so that's how they found out about this, or that's why this is coming out. There apparently are 17 known, and unknown defendants in this case. Still a rare occurrence for this to happen, but we can anticipate it'll become more common as the software becomes widely available.
David: I mean, we already have like- I've been a victim of this, where it is a text that's not the CEO sending me a text, asking me to, you know, go buy gift cards and put them in a mailbox, so they can pick them up later type stuff, but they engage you those first two, or three texts till you realize like it's a total scam. If you're not paying- if you're not paying attention quickly, you assume that it's a real person texting you. So, they’re just taking that and moving it to voice. It's the same game, it's just, they're taking advantage of-
Then, the next thing it'll be is a fake Zoom call with fake video. “Hey, you have a second to Zoom?" They get on, “Hey, pay this bill,” and you're not talking to that person. You're right, having approval processes and products could help this, but it's going to be- maybe people are going to have to have secret back-channel apps they use to approve.
Blake: Well, I mean, if you have the approval software secured by single sign-on, and you're using- I don't know. You'd have to hack into that somehow, and then make approvals-
David: Yeah. it just makes the amount of work even harder, right?
Blake: Right, and so, you're not going to be that low-hanging fruit. All right, David, that's all the time we have for this week-
David: We've got a voicemail, though, right?
Blake: Oh, we got a voicemail! Let’s listen to that! Here we go:
[00:56:33] Listener Voicemail
Voicemail: Hi guys. My name is Sabrina. I am a virtual controller, and bookkeeping manager in Long Island, New York, and I'm calling because we were- or you guys were discussing in your podcast, uh, what CPA firms are going to do in terms of being able to offer, uh, bookkeeping options for their clients and that the CPA staff, uh, is an issue, especially this year with all the staffing problems.
Well, I work for a company that came up with a solution. You don't give bookkeeping work to CPAs. You hire professional bookkeepers. There is a slew of individuals who are running their own bookkeeping firms, and there are people taking online courses every day to have this alternative, and flexible career.
I have quadrupled my business, and my income, and been able to staff people who are working part-time, and full-time to become bookkeepers under the umbrella of a CPA firm. Don't have CPAs do bookkeeping. They think in terms of tax returns, and they think in terms of certain projections. You want to hire a less-expensive bookkeeper to keep up with the books.
They can do it in real time with all the modern technologies, the mapping, the syncing, with all the wonderful apps that you guys are friends with the folks, and support, and you can have real-time financials, and information. Then, we're going to lose that tax season, and that burnout for CPAs, where they don't enjoy their careers because they're so overwhelmed because they're not going to be doing full-year write-ups and cleanups anymore.
That's in the past. They’ve gotta go look towards the future. And I think, for CPA firms, the future is with bookkeepers. Don't have CPAs do bookkeeping; have bookkeepers do bookkeeping. They're less expensive. They are focused on those tasks, and then the CPAs can do what they do best. That's all. Thank you. Bye.
Blake: But I like doing bookkeeping, David.
David: Well, the good thing is she has nothing to worry about because the new CPA training doesn't train anybody to do bookkeeping.
Blake: There you go. You're safe. Don't worry about it.
David: The whole new curriculum is keeping CPAs from learning to do bookkeeping. So, they will have to hire bookkeepers. Maybe that's the plus in all this. Bookkeepers are gonna have plenty of work to do. We also have a review that slipped through. Um, I'll read this.
Blake: Oh, okay. Let's hear it!
[00:59:09] We've Got a Review! Thank you!
David: This review- it's five stars. It's on iTunes, or I'm sorry- on iTunes ... It's called Apple Podcasts now. I'm dating myself. On Apple Podcasts ... Here's a review. It's from kvs661. “I started listening in 2019 and was immediately hooked. I sold my accounting firm in 2020, and still don't miss an episode, even though I'm not working at the moment. Blake and David keep us informed about so many new developments in the accounting world, and their editorial comments are helpful, and entertaining. Having the links in the show notes is invaluable.
I love the ads as much as I do the content, because I like to hear about new tools, and opportunities, as the content has helped me to advise my daughter, who's a college business major, about employment trends relevant to her future. One suggestion: if the advertisers would change their ad content more often, I would listen more closely, as I tend to tune out the ones that I've heard before.” The title of the review was “Best Accounting Podcast Out There. Five Stars.” So, Thank you, kvs661.
[01:00:03] Find Us
Blake: That’s great. Yeah, thank you so much. Appreciate that. David, if people want to get ahold of you, where do they go?
David: I'm on all the socials, just @DavidLeary.
Blake: I am @BlakeTOliver. Reach out on Twitter. David, I'll talk to you next week.
David: Have a good one. Bye.
--
David: Time for the classifieds.
[01:00:23] Fast track a scalable 7-figure firm with Future Firm Accelerate
David: If you're looking to quickly grow a scalable, systematic seven-figure accounting firm without having to work 50-plus hours per week, Check out Ryan Lazanis’ online coaching membership, Future Firm Accelerate, designed around Ryan's experience taking his cloud firm from scratch to sale, so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
You'll get online learning, and topics that help you automate, and systemize all aspects of your firm. You'll get coaching when you need help with implementation, and you'll also join a collaborative community of hundreds of other forward-thinking firm owners. For more details, head over to www.futurefirmaccelerate.com.
[01:01:00] Oh My Fraud: A True Crime Podcast for Accountants
Blake: Hey, podcast listeners. It's Blake, and I wanted to let you know about a new show I'm working on with CPA/comedian, Greg Kyte, and blogger/former CPA, Caleb Newquist. It's called, “Oh My Fraud,” and it's a podcast all about financial crimes. That's right, a true crime podcast for accountants by accountants.
Caleb, and Greg are going to come together every couple of weeks to unpack their favorite frauds and explore the circumstances, psychology, and interpersonal dynamics involved. They also fully indulge in victim blaming the defrauded widows, orphans, infirm, and feebleminded because who can resist?
If you fancy yourself a trusted advisor, or prefer your true crime with spreadsheets instead of corpses, listen to this show to learn what to watch out for and to keep your clients, your firm, and even yourself safe. To subscribe, go to, ohmyfraud.com, or search “Oh My Fraud” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:02:00] How to advertise in these classifieds
David: 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.