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Guest: Intuit Accountants leader Ted Callahan; The latest on QuickBooks Connect 2023; How to defend against ChatGPT stealing your job; Crypto lender Celsius used QuickBooks, too!
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- (00:00) - Thank you to our sponsor, Relay
- (00:26) - Intuit's "Prosperity Ladder"
- (01:04) - Introduction: Welcome Ted Callahan to the show
- (02:23) - Earmark launched "Crypto With Accountants"
- (03:35) - What is Ted's job title and what does he do day to day at Intuit
- (07:33) - What will Chat GPT and AI change in the accounting industry
- (09:28) - Will some of Intuit's own internal technology be available for customers to use?
- (12:08) - Thank you to our sponsor, Relay
- (13:19) - The Intuit message has changed re: taxes
- (18:44) - How do you respond to people who say Intuit is now an accountants competitor?
- (22:53) - Are intuit accounting employees part time? Full time? Get benefits?
- (26:45) - Thank you to our sponsor, LiveFlow
- (28:02) - Expanding more on Intuit's accounting employees
- (33:53) - What should a young owner of a small accounting firm focus on? Where is the opportunity?
- (38:06) - Let's talk a little about pricing
- (41:38) - Blake checks in on the live chat
- (44:40) - Thank you to our sponsor, 3
- (46:03) - Some thought on QuickBooks Connect 2022 and plans for QB Connect 2023
- (50:17) - FTX and Celsius were on QuickBooks... should they have been?
- (55:33) - ChatGPT article in Medium using accountants as examples
- (01:04:25) - David reads a job posting and wrap up
- (01:07:22) - Client Hub
- (01:07:59) - RightTool
- (01:08:21) - Federal Tax Updates Podcast
- (01:09:35) - How to advertise in these classifieds
Show Notes
Celsius Was Using QuickBooks for Its Accounting—Just Like FTX – Decrypt
https://decrypt.co/120284/celsius-quickbooks-accounting-ftx
Celsius tosses scraps to victims, Alex Mashinsky thought himself infallible
Celsius tosses scraps to victims, Alex Mashinsky thought himself infallible
Celsius Network: Final report from the examiner — lies, incompetence and Ponzi schemes
Intuit Supercharges Virtual Expert Platform with AI Enhancements to Streamline Expert-Assisted Tax Filing
Will ChatGPT replace you?
AI is not a threat to the accounting profession: as written by an AI
Will ChatGPT replace you?. How to tell if you’re gonna lose your… | by Theo Seeds | Jan, 2023
QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping Pricing - Quickbooks
QuickBooks Connect FAQ
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Classifieds
Client Hub - https://clienthub.app/
RightTool for QuickBooks Online - https://righttool.app
Federal Tax Updates podcast - https://federaltaxupdates.com/
Client Hub - https://clienthub.app/
RightTool for QuickBooks Online - https://righttool.app
Federal Tax Updates podcast - https://federaltaxupdates.com/
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Full Transcript Available Upon Request: info@cloudaccountingpodcast.com
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Creators & Guests
What is The Accounting Podcast?
The Accounting Podcast (formerly the Cloud Accounting Podcast) is the world's #1 accounting, bookkeeping, and tax podcast! Join us weekly for a roundup of accounting news, analysis, and interviews. Plus, earn free NASBA-approved CPE credits for listening with the Earmark app. Learn more at https://earmarkcpe.com.
Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!
David Leary: [00:00:00] Do you want to bank that as reliable bank feeds? Do you want to bank that as ultra detailed transaction data to make reconciliation lightning fast? Do you want a bank that connects to both QuickBooks Online and Xero directly? Do you want a bank that offers you access to your clients bank accounts using your own log in? Do you want a bank that has no account fees, overdraft fees or minimum balances? Stay tuned to hear more from our sponsor Relay later in the episode.
Ted Callahan: [00:00:26] And there's actually we actually have a vision, what we call a prosperity ladder, whereby somebody could join us in a position that didn't require as much skill and access to education because they didn't have it. Then with the stability that we can help provide, we can actually help them walk up that prosperity ladder and graduate into the right call center, taking customer calls. And then even if they get the right training, bookkeeping experience into a live expert opportunity as well.
David Leary: [00:00:56] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio, this is the Cloud Accounting Podcast.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:05] Welcome to the Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.
David Leary: [00:01:09] And I'm David Leary. And. By God, I just completely blanked out.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:16] Ted Callahan is on the show.
David Leary: [00:01:18] I was going to introduce Ted, but I was going to do something nice for Blake, and I just like deer in headlights. I just blink out. But yeah. So we have Ted Callahan joining us because we got a little busy in a quick burst connect. And I couldn't we couldn't get him on the show. So we're like, All right, we record every Friday, Ted, pick a Friday and Ted pick today, February 3rd, to come on the show. So for those of you who do not know who Ted Callahan is, he is currently this is his official LinkedIn title director, accountant, segment leader. And it used to be QuickBooks Live leader. So, Ted, does this mean you're catching everything into it now? Pro series, TurboTax accountants, QuickBooks Accountants, Pro Advisors. Can you kind of say like what your real title is now?
Ted Callahan: [00:01:57] Yeah, And you know what's funny? Oh, and there goes the dog.
David Leary: [00:02:02] That's great.
Ted Callahan: [00:02:03] And that title is actually old. There's a new title, which is what I thought you were.
David Leary: [00:02:08] So breaking news. Breaking news.
Ted Callahan: [00:02:09] Exactly. It's like, well, it's not even breaking news. It's like apparently LinkedIn needs to get updated. Apologies for the Barking Dog. She's more excited about the title change than anybody.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:20] Oh, yeah, no worries. If you need to go take care of that, that's totally false [CROSSTALK] All right.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:26] Well, so, David, while Ted takes care of that, you know, how's your how was your week?
David Leary: [00:02:31] I think pretty good. We launched another podcast this week. That's right. Accountants.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:35] Crypto with accountants.
David Leary: [00:02:37] With accountants. With accountants.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:38] Yes. Crypto with accountants by bit. Wave Pat White and Raphael Casas are are the host of that show. How was the first episode? I haven't listened to yet.
David Leary: [00:02:49] It's actually I can listen to it's pretty good it's they kind of in the first episode go from like fintech into the evolution of crypto right. And to where things are now, which is regulation accounting. And this episode didn't get too much into the debits and credits. But truly, Pat White, he's an engineer, but he really loves and likes accountants because he feels like there's a lot of similarities. And so the show will he can speak debits and credits. So obviously all digital assets, all crypto eventually has to be tracked.
Ted Callahan: [00:03:18] Properly.
David Leary: [00:03:19] Right into QuickBooks. Right? You know, and, and they're building software to do that but he gets to talk to debits and credits. So if you're an account or bookkeeper, you get to understand crypto not in that leg to the moon way right? It's really the debits and credits the way we'd all like to discuss it. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:35] Yeah. Well, we got Ted Beck. Welcome back to the show. Ted.
Ted Callahan: [00:03:40] Yeah, Hopefully the DOT will not interrupt us anymore. So on the title. So my current title is director of Accountant, Partnership and Strategy.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:49] Accountant, Partnership and Strategy. All right. So what's your what's your day to day look like in there?
Ted Callahan: [00:03:53] Yeah, my day to day, it's it's a super fun job. So basically what we have seen is how can we be just putting more and more investment into not only the products but also the community and how we go partner with the community. And so one of the things that we started looking at was if we're going to put more leaders in and you probably you may have seen we recently announced we've got a new leader leading our ProAdvisor program, Tiffany us, who's been it into a for many years and driven a bunch of transformational change. Jeremy Salzman is now head of what we call our combined accountant and developer segment, which we call the partner segment. And so what we've done is we've actually doubled down on the number of executives focused on accountants because we just see not only how critical they are, but with the expansion of the surface area of QuickBooks right out of just the FMS suite into the front office with MailChimp and everything in between, payroll payments, etc., we need more hands on deck guiding that work and explaining and connecting mission vision strategy down to product reality. So my responsibility, getting back to like what is Ted's day to day look like, it's really three things.
Ted Callahan: [00:05:04] The first is how are we communicating our mission and vision and strategy and connecting it to that product reality. I think we do a great job talking big picture mission, right? We want all small businesses to be successful on our platform. We want to empower prosperity around the world, like those big headlines that get all of us excited to get out of bed and go to work. And then we're really good at talking about here is the latest new thing that just shipped. But the connection sometimes gets lost of Why are you doing what you're doing? And I find, especially with the accounting community, when we take the time to say, Here's our mission, therefore here's what our strategy looks like because of this data, this set of insights, and therefore here's the product experience, Then people go, okay, I didn't I didn't understand where you were coming from, and you have a much richer kind of understanding. And then they write, the community can really participate with us in helping all of those small businesses succeed, which is what our mission.
David Leary: [00:06:00] You're kind of playing that liaison between behind the So over here did QuickBooks Intuit has all these customers are seeing this data on the back end it's forcing you to make a business decision. Yep. You're kind of playing that liaison to the accounting bookkeepers, like, Hey, here's what we're seeing the. Data. What do you guys have? What do you think about this? Is this. That's right. Interpreting this data correctly and here's what we here's the action we're going to take.
Ted Callahan: [00:06:20] That's right. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So the first part is what I call kind of the narrative, that connective tissue of strategy to product reality. The next part is exactly what you talked about, which is sharing here. Is that vision out to the community, engaging the community in that discussion and getting the feedback and then bringing all of that input back into our teams and saying, here's what we're hearing. What do we need to change in terms of how we go message this or here's what we're saying, here's what we're doing. Ooh, there's good feedback. We missed this part of the experience. We need to go change our strategy and then update what we're doing. And so you all have probably seen we've got a new article series called Your Feedback in Action that's on Firm of the Future. Right? So from the future is the one stop shop for everything accountant where everybody in the community can go hear what are we doing and search that and moving to a new platform. It's going to be better, bigger than ever before. Every month we're publishing what we call your feedback in action, which is we gather about 10,000 inputs from the community each month through product surveys, care calls, sales calls, everything. And then my team is responsible for synthesizing that and saying, what are those top things and where do we see those on product roadmaps? So we covered off on those or not.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:33] Got it. So a lot of the chatter online in the accounting community has been about Chat, GPT and AI and what all of this is going to do for us as practitioners. Yeah, you know what? What are we what do we have to look forward to in QuickBooks? What are you thinking about how this is going to change QuickBooks? Like the experience. I mean, we've seen folks putting in lists of transactions into Chat GPT and asking it to categorize according to a chart of accounts, and it can do that, right? Are we going to see the end of needing to categorize transactions? Is QuickBooks going to do all of that for us?
Ted Callahan: [00:08:07] I mean, we've been on that mission, I think, as you know, for a long time with all of our machine learning technology. And so when we talk about A.I., we decompose it into kind of three aspects, right? There's the machine learning, there's a bunch of knowledge engineering, and then we we take those to really say, how are we taking all of the insight that we've got from accounts across the globe, Right? Millions and millions of customers watching the patterns of behavior and then do better and better matching. So we've been on a journey, as you said, Blake, for. I don't know, five plus years to be automating that categorization experience and we continue to get better rate. We recently launched something we talked about at QuickBooks Connect, actually, right. Which is the new rules based experience. In the past, if you had a rule, it superseded the match and that created some issues for folks. And so now we've got the ability for that technology. Actually, when you go through, we actually ask you to match three transactions. So we're training and refining the model for each specific small business customer. With that, we actually have seen improvements. I think I won't I won't quote the percentage because I won't get it right, but it's right tens of percentage points higher in the power of the model. So 100% to your question, like we've been on that journey, we're going to continue leaning into that.
David Leary: [00:09:28] So. So you guys had a press release or a news article that came out this week about the AI powered innovation? Or actually let me get the exact virtual expert platform right. And there's some of these features in here. It sounds like you're solving these things for internal for TurboTax living QuickBooks Live where it's routing people to the right expert to some extent, but it's also helping document or the summarize what the chat was or the video call or whatever the method was like. Are some of these tools going to be pushed out to accountants? So if an accountant works with the client through an Intuit chat protocol, like they're going to get the benefits of some of these things you're building kind of for yourself.
Ted Callahan: [00:10:07] Yeah, it's a great, great question in the way that we've we've been on a journey and this is very much like in the category of internal plumbing that's interesting to technologists, but maybe not to the average person out there. We've been on a journey with our technology stacks to modernize them, and so I'm seeing what you're pulling up. And so I'll try to talk. And at the same time, which is something I cannot do.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:32] And so worry about it.
Ted Callahan: [00:10:34] So what we've been on a journey to is decomposing what we call our monolith, right? So how we built a lot of experiences many years ago and updating, modernizing all of that infrastructure so you get the benefits of what we call a modern services based architecture. So for an end user, what that means is there's reduced downtime, right? It works faster for you, Page loads are faster. All of those kind of like usability issues, that's the first benefit that a user will see. But then as you move progress forward and you get, you start building differently, what it means is if somebody builds something, say, for example, in TurboTax or Mint, we can actually repurpose that technology. Think of it like a Lego block. We can pull that Lego block out of that experience and put it in to power, a different experience. And so we're on that journey to as we build what we call capabilities. They're now fungible across experiences so we can increasingly build once in power multiple experiences. So because of that technology change, we're able to bring a lot more innovation to more experiences at the same time. So the answer so that's the kind of why behind David that, yes, we're going to be able to bring that kind of technology over to the different parts of the experience. Part of what's been a big effort, I would say, for the last 18 months that something was that I was kicking off when I was leading the accounting segment was modernizing the QuickBooks Online for accounting infrastructure so that we could use these modern services. And we're almost there.
David Leary: [00:12:12] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Relay. Between Blake and myself, we now have three or four or maybe five business entities, 20 or so checking accounts and dozens and dozens of virtual cards. It would be impossible to manage all of this. We weren't using Relays or small business. Bank really is truly a part of the tech stack. We used to run our businesses. Relay allows Blake and I to each have our own logins. We can grant access to our team and even our accountant without sharing passwords or two factor authentication codes. Really allows us to grow and scale our banking needs without ever going into a physical branch. I recently add an account to receive inbound merchant services with just a few clicks and add to create a payroll checking account. Again, just a few clicks. And I instantly had access to my ACH info to give to my payroll provider with Relays virtual cards. We can issue debit cards to our team around the world for needed business expenses. I can instantly spin up a new Visa debit card and set both daily and monthly spending limits. And when a team member doesn't need their card, I can freeze it until they need to use it again.
David Leary: [00:13:09] Learn more about using Relay in your firm and with your clients. Head over to Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo slash Relay that is cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo. Forward slash Relay. Why? We're seeing this year is like a shift. And some people on Twitter or some accounts have talked about like previous years during the Super Bowl and the NFL's championship games and you have 8 hours of TurboTax commercials. It was always about everybody's a tax person. And this year it's like, don't do your taxes at all and it will do your taxes. And then I noticed and I could even play a clip from one of these commercials. I don't know if he has it ready or not. But then I also noticed I went to the pricing page for QuickBooks Live, and I feel like it used to be like, Hey, we'll help you do your stuff together. And now it's like full service bookkeeping. That's the only thing that's on there. Has there been a shift mentally? I don't know if Blake has the clip. He wants to play it kind of fun for the listeners, but.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:03] Yeah, let me let me let me play this ad for you. We always enjoy the Intuit ads.
Speaker4: [00:14:10] Once you meet with a TurboTax expert who will do your taxes for you, you are free to do, not taxes. To show your eyes things that are not taxes. Show your brain Things that are not taxes. Case, no taxes. So you have no taxes, makes you laugh or cry, which is not. Taxes smell like. How deep is it? How warm is it? Try on the taxes in pink. Clean, not taxes so loud and neighbors can hear. Come to TurboTax and don't do your taxes. Meet with an expert who will do them for you so you can do not taxes into a TurboTax.
Blake Oliver: [00:15:09] So we went from everybody is tax people to nobody is tax people in. Was it a year to two years?
David Leary: [00:15:18] Yeah. Pretty quick. What drove that like what is it the data is it just because this is what consumer customers actually want?
Ted Callahan: [00:15:27] Yeah. I mean, so I love you. I love how you guys always ask such fantastic questions. And I haven't even seen I've seen a lot of tax commercials because my kids have been mainlining all of the NFL football action they can handle. But I hadn't actually seen that one. The colors at the end, I was like, Wow, that's a cool set of color palette. Yeah. So I think going back to the insight, if you think about right, our mission is powering prosperity, right? That's that's the first goal. We see how powerful taxes are for so many of the average consumers. You've heard us say it many, many times. Right. Largest paycheck of the year for a number of Americans is their tax, their tax rebate and so or their tax refund. So the first of all is we strongly believe in as a concept, how can we help people do their taxes? And so we've made you all have seen the evolution of TurboTax over the years. Every year our teams just comb through that experience. Where are their points of friction? How do we make that easier for the consumer to get through? What we also see is the number one reason for folks to say, Oh my gosh, I can't do this on my own is when they no longer are getting that refunds. But now they have a balance, too. That's very scary for folks. And that's when they say I need help. And so we said, how can we be providing help through that platform? Hence, right. The genesis of TurboTax Live. What we also saw was TurboTax live in consumers minds. Turbotax, Even with TurboTax live, it remained DIY software, right? So it was only appealing to the segment of the market for folks who wanted to do the taxes themselves. And so what, you're okay.
David Leary: [00:17:10] So even if okay, it was never clear that I could get extra services and TurboTax live. That's correct. Turbotax is such a strong historical brand of what it meant. Okay.
Ted Callahan: [00:17:19] And so really, what you've seen us continuing to kind of lean more and more into is how can we help more folks understand here's all of the power, not only the technology, but now the people armed with the technology through TurboTax. And so that's that's what you're seeing in that steady evolution moving into that live space on the TurboTax side.
David Leary: [00:17:40] Got it. So make sure I'm here in this crazy. It's not where you're trying to get all the existing TurboTax people to switch to a full service. We'll do your taxes for you model. If you're if you're a DIY or and use TurboTax, that's fine. You're just expanding out to a whole new set of population that would have never tried TurboTax. That's right.
Blake Oliver: [00:17:54] That's right. But got it. These are folks that may have used a professional tax preparer before, and now they are tempted to use TurboTax live for their S Corp or business or LLC returns as as David and I are actually planning to do this year. We're going to test it out. And that that got a lot of attention in the accounting community when Intuit announced TurboTax Live now is going to serve businesses, right? Previously it was always just 1040s, and I think the general feeling was, okay, that's great. I don't want those Orphan 1040s anyway. We call them Orphan 1040s. If they don't come with a business return. Most firms are I would say most of the the larger I mean only the smallest firms really are are taking those kind of clients these days. Right. But now that.
David Leary: [00:18:41] Turbotax in their clients like.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:43] Me like David but now that TurboTax is edging into those business returns, we're starting to see like real competition potentially, right, with those tax pros. So how do how how do you, Ted, you know, respond to those who say Intuit is I've actually seen this on Twitter. People say Intuit is not your friend. They are not your partner. They are directly competing with you. How do you respond to that?
Ted Callahan: [00:19:05] So the I think there's a couple of answers, right? The first is the experience that I heard and it was amazing at QuickBooks Connect to talk with so many members of the community from all over the country, from Canada, etc. Even folks traveled outside from outside the US to join us was just everybody saying there is not there are not enough workers to do the work. Right. So we and I think we'll probably talk about the supply imbalance right now. And so I think my first answer is I'm not hearing of anybody having too little work. What I'm hearing is they don't have enough workers for the work. And so then and then what I'm also seeing and David, you you experience this personally, right? Your tax preparer fired you. And so we look at.
David Leary: [00:19:50] What we're not enough people to do the work.
Ted Callahan: [00:19:52] That's right. And so what we're trying to do is grow the market for services. And I can share, right, I think. There was a lot of concern when we initially launched QuickBooks Live, Hey, you're coming after my clients. And I think as the community is understood, here's our intention. We're going after the set of customers who are not ready for an accountant right there. They're looking for a different kind of experience. And here are all the opportunities for you to differentiate what you're doing. That's very different from what we're doing. We've grown the market for services since we launched QuickBooks Live, and I think you all have heard me say this before, but we've increased both the rate of connection of a small business right to an accountant since we launched QuickBooks Live not not talking about live independent accountants, we've increased the rate.
David Leary: [00:20:40] So historically, I think it was always like 38% of the QuickBooks Online users never were connected to an account or bookkeeper. So you've moved that to now to what? What is it kind of now?
Ted Callahan: [00:20:50] It depends on the market, right, is the short answer. But yeah, so we we've steadily moved that up. We've moved it up two points since we launched QuickBooks Live. And so I'm not I'm not remembering the stat. I don't have it in front of me.
David Leary: [00:21:04] This that's pretty I mean, you consider how many accountants are there are and how many QuickBooks customers you move something two percentage points. That's a lot of new people that are now customers of.
Ted Callahan: [00:21:12] Accountants, correct? Correct. Yeah. I mean, and it's in the hundreds of thousands, like I want to say it's over one half million or more on the absolute basis, connections that have been made. And I'm sure that number's stale. Right. So it's it is above that. So going back to the TurboTax question, we've established everybody needs to do their taxes, right? We know that the stimulus checks during COVID brought more tax. They grew the market for tax returns. And so there are more people filing than ever before. And I think there was a lot of complexity in this. Right. We've talked about this as well. Right. Still figuring out how do you do some of the accounting for those loans and the forgiveness of those remains a little bit in question. Right. Folks are still kind of working their way through that. And so, again, we want to be providing all of the tools, the expertise and the people required to give people the confidence. And so that's the big thing. If we think about Intuit has three customer benefits, we're always focused on money time, and then what we talk about know, work in kind of associated with that. No work is the confidence in what you're doing. We see that having an expert, right? And this is whether it's independent expert or that live expert is so fundamental in helping somebody persist and go all the way through that flow of filing their taxes. So it prevents people from stalling and then bailing out.
David Leary: [00:22:33] So I'm driving home from the gym this morning, Ted's going to be on we're we going to talk about and I was kind of thinking about things and thinking about the last three, four or five, six episodes. I mean, all we talk about is the lack of talent, the accounting shortage, me getting fired by clients, like some things you just touched on. But so Bell went off on my head here. You clarify something first before I go on this this theory, and then I want to get Blake's take, too. But what if I am a TurboTax live or a QuickBooks Live accountant or bookkeeper? What do I get? Am I have full time? I'm full time or part time? Like I'm an Intuit employee. I'm getting ownership, I'm getting stock, I'm getting health care, I'm getting benefits. Is that how the model is?
Ted Callahan: [00:23:15] Yeah. So it's a it's a technical question. So let me let me try to explain. You are an Intuit employee, but part of what we saw, if we if we talk about Intuit, I always talks about design for delight and this kind of focus on what is the customer problem, what are the pain points? When we looked at this set of problems, we actually saw the problems were of a two sided nature. There were problems that a consumer had. And then we looked also at the expert market and we said, Wow, there are problems on the expert side as well. Accountants, right. And folks in the accounting community, accounting professionals, they're struggling to find workers. They're struggling to find clients. They're struggling with some of the technology as well to get their jobs done. So you kind of look at those, they follow each other all the way through. And so when we looked out in the and the expert side of the market, we saw there's there's a lack of supply. What could we be doing to help with that? We can dig into that. Secondly, what we saw was that folks, there were a number of folks, maybe they were reaching a point in their career where they weren't wanting to go find new clients. They just wanted to work. They didn't want to have to deal with all of that. Client management would be another example. And so what we said is, aha, if we're going to go provide this service experience that helps our customers on this side, we can actually help experts on the other side as well.
Ted Callahan: [00:24:43] And so one of the things that we started looking at is what would have to be true if we were to hire on an expert for us to care for them the way that we would want to be cared for. And what we saw is they wanted flexibility. They didn't want a full time job. They wanted the ability to pick up work. Maybe when things got slow for them or some folks right on the other side. Right. I talked about those that are moving to a place in their career where they're maybe slowing down, taking taking some more time for themselves personally. They wanted the stability and they wanted benefits. On the other side, folks that are just starting out, they're not ready to leave and go out on their own. Maybe, but they do want some more at bats than they're currently getting. And they want to be getting trained in learning more experiences than what they can get in their local market. And so what the value proposition of becoming a live expert with Intuit is we're going to give you flexible work. You get to determine your hours. Secondly, we're going to provide you. A full suite of benefits, almost as if you are a full time employee without having to be a full time employee.
David Leary: [00:25:45] And those are like just accounts because they are like the gold standard. My wife is in the health care insurance space and she has friends that do communications, benefits, communications, and like Intuit's like one of the top gold standards. So it's very attractive from that point of view.
Blake Oliver: [00:26:01] So sorry, I think I missed it. So are they. So if I'm a QuickBooks Live bookkeeper, I'm a TurboTax live expert. Like I get benefits. I'm full time. I can be if I want you.
Ted Callahan: [00:26:11] So you're not full time, right? So again, really, we want to give people the flexibility. Okay. But you get full you get a full suite of benefits for that. That's appropriate for the hours that you were working. And I think you also are. Yeah. I think you also have bonuses. And I think we also have some retirement options as well.
David Leary: [00:26:35] Okay. Okay.
Blake Oliver: [00:26:35] So so this is it. But is it like when I worked at Starbucks, when I was like right out of school and I had to hit 30 hours in order to get health insurance?
Ted Callahan: [00:26:42] Nope, not work there.
David Leary: [00:26:49] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Live Flo. Anita Kumar, one of the founders of Live. Flo was telling me about a small business owner who is complaining that his accountant didn't do any cashflow projections with him, causing his business to take an unwanted loan just to keep the doors open. I wanted to learn more and understand from this business owner about what his accountant did or didn't do for him. So I attempted to set up a zoom call with him. This was his reply, and I quote, I would be happy to review this further, but at a later time, due to our cashflow problems, the problems are already here and I have to solve this crisis before I can plan, unfortunately, end quote. It makes me wonder how many other small businesses are currently struggling with cashflow crisis and their accountants aren't helping them. If you're not helping your clients with cashflow, stop what you are doing and go sign up for live flow right now. Grab one of the life flow, cash flow forecast templates and connect your clients. Quickbooks Online Data. You and the client will be able to see real time money movements, have important cashflow conversations and make impactful business decisions quicker rather than later. So learn more about using live flow and how you can save 20% off your first three months. Head over to Cloud Accounting Podcast Promo slash live flow that is Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo for Live E Flow w. So. So I'll finish the rest of my question. So. So that was a clarity point. Yes. You're basically like an Intuit employee, kind of. It's it's a pretty good gig. So now we kind of let's go back to some previous shows or previous quarterly returns. Intuit, the accounting firm is like the 10th biggest accounting firm. Now.
Blake Oliver: [00:28:22] That was going to be my question, David. It's like how many QuickBooks live bookkeepers are there, How many TurboTax experts are there?
David Leary: [00:28:27] So, so so let me finish this long question, then we'll do that. All right. So going back to our discussions about what's wrong with the industry and Blake, you strongly feel it's because firms have the partnership model does not treat employees the bottom correctly. Right. And employees leave because what you're going to work a decade to get some ownership of the firm you're working at, right? Yeah. It's complex problems with this and now so I was driving home in the car and I'm like, it sounds a bookkeeper should not be worried about the services Intuit is offering. They should be. The real competition is Intuit's offering their low level entry level Accountants and bookkeepers a flexible experience that probably pays more and has way better benefits and ownership.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:06] Well, that's another question I have. Then. What's the pay? What's the starting pay for a QuickBooks Live bookkeeper? And which one do you want to do first, Ted? Like how many? How many do you have? How, how, how big is the QuickBooks Live accounting firm?
Ted Callahan: [00:29:20] I don't I don't know. And I don't know if we if I. I don't know if I, if I did know it. I don't know if I could share it. So the short version is I don't know. And then on the on the pay, I also don't know. I know that we, we did a lot of studies on that and the goal was to be competitive, to get the right caliber, right skilled worker. And so we actually talk about one of our commitments is in powering prosperity is how are we creating jobs. Right. And especially in places that maybe haven't had the same kind of blessing of economic opportunity as places like Tier one Cities or Silicon Valley. And so we actually have what we call prosperity hubs, where we've been going into communities that maybe traditionally were more industrial, like places like I grew up in Tennessee, right? There's a number of places in Tennessee that are very hard hit. And so we've actually gone into a couple of those towns and built out physical buildings where we're hiring folks, and then we're hiring people that don't even have a college degree and we're investing in them so that they can be growing their skills on the job, getting degrees. And there's actually we actually have a vision, what we call a prosperity ladder, whereby somebody could join us in a position that didn't require as much skill and access to education because they didn't have it. Then with the stability that we can help provide, we can actually help them walk up that prosperity ladder and graduate into right call center, taking customer calls. And then even if they get the right training bookkeeping experience into a live export opportunity as well, the pay that they're getting because we're paying at that kind of national average in that local market, that is a very competitive wage for where they live.
Blake Oliver: [00:31:08] Yeah, Yeah. And I know you're not probably not allowed to talk about this even if you know it, but I can pull it up on Glassdoor. So that's what we'll go with here. I'm looking at.
Ted Callahan: [00:31:15] Supporting.
Blake Oliver: [00:31:16] Yeah, the QuickBooks Live bookkeeper hourly pay is average is $32 per hour, which I'm surprised at. I feel like that's higher than it used to be. Last time I checked, it was like closer to 20, and that's with 11,000 people reporting their salaries. According to Glassdoor, the range the likely range is between 27 and $38 an hour. Interesting. And so so here's what I'm hearing that I like about what you're doing and that other firms will, you know, in our profession will hopefully follow or, you know, traditional accounting firms will change is is you're offering the flexible schedules, you're offering part time work and.
David Leary: [00:31:57] Your remote.
Blake Oliver: [00:31:58] Remote work if you want it, but you can also come to an office and then you're you're targeting nontraditional job candidates. You're not just recruiting people who are majoring in accounting. You're not just going for the people who are in the CPA path. You're taking people who have potential and in areas of the country that are not well served. Right, with jobs. So so in that sense, like thinking about that, I'm thinking, well, really, if you're tapping into if you're tapping into a workforce that's been untapped by accounting, then you're not competing. Actually, that's good, because then those people get skills and maybe someday they go work for an accounting firm. Kind of what you were saying about how QuickBooks Live is not actually, you know, stealing clients from bookkeepers. It's bringing new clients into the market. It's expanding the pie, I suppose. So This this makes sense. Yeah.
Ted Callahan: [00:32:54] Yeah. No, that's. I think it's a great synthesis. And I think one of our big principles is always it's about choice, right? And so we believe in providing the consumer with choices in how they file their taxes. How they get different jobs done, whether it's using a pro or using TurboTax. And then similarly, we want to have more choice for the accounting professionals in how they do their work because. Right. I'm very much in the category of the power of the free market. Right. If that if that value proposition right in different places is not compelling, people are going to move and that will signal, hey, we need to change our practices. Right? I worked in consulting for a number of years. I remember what it was like to be grinding it out in those early years for the kind of the promise of making partner. And it's an amazing training ground. But it's you, you it's a sweat of your brow, a kind of moment where you where you learn in that apprenticeship apprenticeship model.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:53] So, Ted, you know, given your position at one of the more innovative companies in this economy, it into it, you know what what do you think accountants should be doing And let me let me, I guess, tighten that question up for you a bit. What do you think that like a young aspiring owner of a of a small accounting firm should be focused on in their career? You know, like, where's the opportunity at in the profession?
Ted Callahan: [00:34:19] If I look at the innovators right now, there are a couple of things I think they've got in common. The first is they are coming from places where they've developed their competence under somebody else's wing. I do think there's a lot to learn from apprenticeship, so I'd say I continue to celebrate the experience that you get in those kinds of places where I look at folks really leaning into opportunity is they have gone to amazing lengths to find to to hone their vision of where their opportunities in the market and how do I developed the competency and the skills to over serve those. So there's somebody that I know who works in kind of the audit space in the government side of things. Right. Created an amazing niche for himself in his firm and he's growing like crazy because of that, the time he spent in a big firm and then really honing the craft, getting clearer and clearer and his value proposition. So I think that's one. The other thing that I see really, and this was a new trend I was actually going to see, how are you all seeing this? I'm seeing more and more accountants embracing technology not only as a consumer, but I'm seeing folks start to create their own apps because of what they see as, hey, there's a gap here in this part of the experience for my clients within this specific vertical, trying to get this specific job done. This is a way for me to improve my workflow, better differentiate myself, and because of the market opportunity I see go serve better there. And so I'm continuing to see folks that want to spend the time paying attention in the market and then aligning their skills and their capabilities and they're going and saying, I don't have to just be a consumer, but with a lot of these new technologies, with the power of these modern APIs, it's easier than ever with kind of no code opportunities to put together a workflow that then automates my practice and gives me better efficiency and effectiveness in the same breath. So that's a pretty exciting development that I've seen as well.
David Leary: [00:36:25] Yeah, so what I'm hearing you kind of say, and we talked this last week like, like it was an abbreviation of accounting or abbreviation of CPA. Same way always or. Sally during lunch last week.
Blake Oliver: [00:36:35] Sally. Sally. Same as last year.
David Leary: [00:36:37] Same as last year. Yeah. And really, if I'm hearing you correctly here, Ted, is the people that are crushing it or are doing great things, they're actually probably just listening to the market more and adapting and changing. It's not same as last year, and that's the way I would.
Ted Callahan: [00:36:49] It is not the same as last year. I mean, think about how dynamic the market is right now with inflation, right? I mean, it's insane. And what I'm seeing is a number of accountants have been really hip to if prices are going up, I need to actually change some of my advisory services and really double down not only on cash flow. Cash flow always matters, but what do we need to do differently with suppliers to prevent price rising supply cost from negative negatively impacting client margin? And so we recently did a survey of small businesses and we actually saw, I'm going to forget the percentage, I think it was 80, it was high eighties, 87, 89% of small business owners were saying, my accountant has actually helped, accounting professional has helped me weather inflation better. And so I'm actually able to better maintain my margin structure even in the face of rising prices. And whether that's, hey, here are the opportunities where you can take your prices up within certain areas or better manage supply costs or change some of your own practices to get more efficient. So exactly what you all said, the adaptability because of the accountant insights to that small business is more powerful than ever.
David Leary: [00:38:06] Including that monthly QBO fee that seems to always go up about every two years, including that one.
Ted Callahan: [00:38:12] Are you broke up? Yep. Yep. Well, you know, I mean, and that's look, I did pricing for six years.
David Leary: [00:38:18] It happens. Yes, but I get it.
Ted Callahan: [00:38:20] I know, I know. But I did pricing for six years in my past life. And one of the key things that I learned in pricing is, number one. Number one, and I think this is true for the community as well, pricing at the end of the day is an act of courage. Right. And I think a number of professionals in the industry, they know they have not updated their prices because they're hesitant. They don't have the courage of the conviction of what they're delivering to, say, the value I'm creating for my client is higher, therefore I should be updating my price.
Blake Oliver: [00:38:51] We had a listener last week write in and say that, you know, he hadn't raised his prices for years and years and years and then he tried to do it all at once last year and raised his prices 80, 80%. And unfortunately his revenue actually declined. But David's point, David, you said that, hey, if you just modeled after Intuit and raised it every year a little bit, then you would be where you are now and you would never have lost those clients. So. Perhaps like that's a suggestion is for those who are kind of irked by software fees going up. This is actually a best practice like companies like Intuit wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work. And so every time they raise their rates, you raise your rates, too, and then you're you're covered, Right? And you don't have to like, think about it. You don't have to decide when to do it. You just do it whenever Intuit does it or Xero does it, or your tax software does it. Right. That's that's the way to go. A little bit every year.
Ted Callahan: [00:39:47] Any act of pricing is an act of courage. But secondly, and I think critically there's this concept of value based pricing. We've talked about it a lot in the industry, but it is basically can you establish what your value is relative to your competitors? And then are you able to capture that value because you have differentiated your offering and you've put more value in? And I think the part, again, that I am very excited to do in this role is to more clearly communicate. Here is all of the new value that we've built out in the QuickBooks ecosystem. And I think something that this is a personal belief, right, is if you think about where QuickBooks was, QuickBooks Online was and where we've come, the amount of tools that we're providing for small businesses and for accountants to do their work better is unbelievable. If you look at Bookstore view, it blows my mind how many accountants when I talk about books review, they still don't know about it, right? And if you if you talk to those that have implemented it, they will literally call me and they will be in tears saying, this is the most amazing experience I have ever encountered for the person for the purpose of getting my books done. It makes me more effective. I've got insight into where my team is, where they're getting stuck. We're more efficient, we're more accurate, and it's faster. And so I think that's the kind of value we continue to put into the product to make that experience better. And that when you do that, you can and should be right pricing to value. So that that's the other part of the conversation I think sometimes gets lost. And to me, I'm always thinking about how much are people paying for their cell, their cell phone, Right. Why would QuickBooks be with all the power in QuickBooks? Right. It's fundamental to getting business done. Why would that be less than the price of your cell phone bill like that doesn't make any sense to me.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:38] Related to this value conversation, we've got some some of that going on in the chat in YouTube. And a reminder to our listeners that we stream our episodes live on YouTube. You can subscribe to our channel The Cloud Accounting Podcast and get notified when we go live. Christopher said going back to the self prep versus using a paid preparer discussion we're having earlier, he said On the Pro Prep side here, a large chunk of my book can at least self prep. They really just want to know why their refund slash balance is what it is and how to change it. So go into the value conversation, right? The value is not you as the preparer. Putting the numbers into the form. Like David says said on our show, anybody can put numbers into an organizer. And if you're putting numbers into an organizer, you can probably put them into TurboTax. And that's not why you're choosing a preparer or not a preparer.
David Leary: [00:42:27] Arguably, it's easier to put it in TurboTax, arguably.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:29] Maya Yes, it is. Versus a PDF organizer. The value you're getting is is you have somebody to talk to to explain it to you.
Ted Callahan: [00:42:38] That's right.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:39] Well, I got more chat here. So there was discussion about the rate for QuickBooks Live bookkeepers, folks saying it was actually closer to the, you know, low twenties for them. And then I went back to Glassdoor and I checked and that $32 per hour includes bonuses and stock compensation. So it's closer to in the twenties, right? Let's say 22 to $25 an hour. But then you add in the bonus compensation and then the stock compensation. That's how you get up to 32 on average.
David Leary: [00:43:10] Total compensation.
Blake Oliver: [00:43:11] Total compensation. You always got to look at the total compensation. And Dhall said, have encouraged to strive forward is a mark of leadership and a lot of accountants walk away from leadership or are not given the opportunity to grow as a leader. Where does one put leadership training on a time card? It is not a priority for accountant growth. So I think that goes to the courage to increase prices and to sell your value. Right. And that is something that. You know, How do you. You just can't do it when you're too busy. If you're always working 110%, you're never going to have the time to to have the courage to write that email or to do that price increase. And I've been there. I mean, I was guilty of it, too, when I had my practice. I would let clients that I really liked slide for years and years with no price increases. It's so easy to do it.
Ted Callahan: [00:44:03] And what I've found is when you let somebody slide like that. You're not only doing yourself a disservice, but you're training them, that you're not adding as much value as you are. Right. And so that makes that ultimate reset harder and harder because that gap is growing. So anyway, we can we can talk that. I think the other piece to highlight is the hourly wage. It varies by geography, right? So I think that's the other range. We have gotten that where we're trying to be appropriate for the different market conditions.
David Leary: [00:44:44] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Client Hub. We've been talking about the lack of accountants lately, and I'm guessing you may have your own shortage this busy season. And with a counting team spending more than 30% of their time chasing clients for information. Client Hub can help you gain one third of a body just by getting needed information from clients quickly. Client Hub Automatically send your client to task for each expense or deposit marked as Uncategorized in QuickBooks. Your client then can respond via their simple web experience or even their highly rated mobile app. Your team will save hours of time, and the best part that it's free. Introducing the Free Client Hub Re Categorization Plan. Client Hub is bringing the freemium business model to accounting apps. They are so confident that you, your team and your clients will love the free Recategorized plan that it will lead you to implement all the features of the award winning client hub into your firm's workflows and communications. Using client help in your workflow is a guaranteed ROI, especially since it's free to get client Hub's new Recategorized Plan for free. Head over to Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo slash client Hub that is Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo for Client HQ be.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:58] So, David, I don't know where you want to go from here, but I have blockchain and QuickBooks. We can put them together.
David Leary: [00:46:04] Well, before you jump in that, I just want to touch on quickly QuickBooks Connect. So in December, QuickBooks Connect, you know, at Post Cove, it's the first event. It was only Accountants and bookkeepers and ProAdvisor, which made it really great event. And but there's a lot of people left outside looking in like, What are the plans for QuickBooks Connect 2023? Is it bigger? What's the date? I think there's a lot of open questions about that right now.
Ted Callahan: [00:46:26] Yeah, Yeah. We've we've been going through a bunch of the data on our side now that we've gotten right, because as we talked about, we love feedback and so it's been great to get all of the survey data back and see what an amazing experience that the folks that were were there had together with us. And so we're we're working through that right now in terms of how do we need to change, adapt, what do we need to stay right? What do we need to keep, what do we need to change to make it even better this year? But there are 100% will be QuickBooks Connect this year. We're just working out all of the details, so keep watching all of our social channels and we'll be getting the message out as soon as we can.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:09] I wanted to tell you, Ted, that and I really mean this, that it was I think QuickBooks Connect this past year was the best conference I've been to. Really? They really? Yes. Period. You know, as far as I can remember, it was great. So well done.
Ted Callahan: [00:47:24] And what was what specifically for you? Blake was so powerful.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:28] I think. I think having the accountants all there together, not trying to serve multiple audiences was great. It was very focused. And the fact that it was in Las Vegas made it easier for people from everywhere to come. So there was just this huge group of of people with all different backgrounds. Yeah, those were the two things that really stuck out for me. I don't know about you, David. What do you think?
David Leary: [00:47:49] I mean, I think it's the we've been doing a lot of conferences over the last year, but the majority of the people we really know, so many of them are in the QuickBooks world. And so I feel like what made that conference great is you're seeing people that maybe you haven't seen in two and a half years, three years. So I think that also that that elevated the feels that you got there because you were hugging people you haven't seen in three years. Yeah.
Ted Callahan: [00:48:13] It was I got to say, it was an experience that when a lot of memories have faded, when I'm hopefully older, I will remember the experience of that QuickBooks Connect as well. It was unbelievable for me, just seeing exactly as you two just articulated. Seeing the joy of folks reconnecting and being together was so powerful for everybody that I interacted with. Didn't matter, right? Whether you had come from somewhere, you were an Intuit employee, whatever, Even even some of the the folks, the hotel staff that were working the event would grab me and say, that was awesome. Like, thank you so much. Right? So it just it just had an amazing vibe, which was fantastic. Who were your favorite speakers?
Blake Oliver: [00:49:03] I really liked Serena Williams. I liked I liked one thing she said in particular, which was I've never regretted saying no, which is kind of the opposite of what you hear a lot, which is in accounting especially. You've got to say yes to everything. If you want to succeed, you just take on all the work you do all the work. And she said, No, I actually I have to say no a lot. And I think that's something that we need to change as a mindset shift in our profession is is we overwork ourselves, so we've got to be strategic. That was that was one of my favorites.
Ted Callahan: [00:49:35] Yeah, that's great.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:36] Actually, actually, I had a criticism of Malcolm Gladwell because his entire talk was pretty much about how, you know, really good ideas take a long time. And I said, don't give the partners another excuse to delay.
Ted Callahan: [00:49:51] That's. But. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:52] But what? But I get the point.
Ted Callahan: [00:49:54] What did you tell her? That guy is. I mean, the fact that he has this spellbound about this guy in the thirties in North Carolina, Right? Delivering stuff. It's like, where are you going? I just couldn't believe what an amazing storyteller he was.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:08] Yeah, it was a great lineup. And who was? There was one other speaker. Oh, Simon Sinek. Yeah, I had he had really like three all stars there. That was fun.
David Leary: [00:50:17] Well, David, jump in the news.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:18] Yeah, Well, so I wanted to ask what Ted thinks about Celsius using QuickBooks for its accounting, just like EFT. I think that was the biggest story that had the word QuickBooks in it over the last few months was the fact that EFT was on QuickBooks, and it was part of the congressional testimony about the collapse. And now we find out that Celsius was using QuickBooks for its accounting. And of course, you know, all the ERP sales bro's are all over this, using it to say that, Oh, you can't run a big business on QuickBooks. So, Ted, I want to give you a chance here to defend QuickBooks.
Ted Callahan: [00:50:55] Well, yeah, first of all, we don't we I mean, one of the principles that we have is customer information, right? That is, we have crazy, intense data stewardship principles. That's a technical term, crazy, intense data stewardship principles. So we don't comment on who our customers are. Right. So glad to hear this is out there. But that's not coming from us when we think about right, who who is right for running their business on QuickBooks? As you know, we've made moves to move from small business into the mid-market, and we've been adding a ton of new features and functionality. If you look at the velocity of the team that's building the QuickBooks Advanced Product and all of the suite of innovations that's coming out of them, accountants are so fired up about what's happening because it's like, Oh, you're finally really listening and committing to my more advanced client needs. So we're going to continue to go after serving that growing mid-market so folks don't have to make that hard choice of leaving QuickBooks and paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for other products that are sometimes overbuilt and over serving their needs.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:05] So I think one of the criticisms of QuickBooks for larger companies is the the lack of an audit trail I've heard or, you know, the inability to to manage internal controls with user permissions. Like how do you address those concerns?
Ted Callahan: [00:52:22] I've not heard the audit trail one that's a new one, so I'd love to maybe unpack that.
David Leary: [00:52:26] Definitely audit trail. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. There's audit trail.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:29] I think the ability to oh, maybe it was the ability to turn it off. But that's an old thing like in desktop, right? Maybe that's outdated because in QuickBooks Online, can you turn the audit trail on or off? I don't think that's a thing.
Ted Callahan: [00:52:42] No, not to my knowledge.
David Leary: [00:52:45] Yeah, I don't think you turn it off anymore.
Ted Callahan: [00:52:46] And then on on the user user permissions and controls. We've heard the community loud and clear. That is fundamental to the needs of larger growing businesses from small into the mid-market space. So we are hard at work delivering those. And so there's actually role based permissions and controls in the advanced product today. And we're working hard to be bringing those into the right experiences for the accounting firms that are serving those. So you can differentiate who's doing what, who has access to what that's appropriate for these large growing firms that are serving those larger growing businesses. So, yes, and continue to watch that. You're going to continue to see investment in that part of the space.
David Leary: [00:53:35] Yeah, because I definitely feel like Blake is right. Like the the headlines are like it's click baity, Right? It's very dramatic. They were on QuickBooks and but more than likely it's the typical QuickBooks use case, which all of us our listeners know about. It's garbage in, garbage out, right? Like, just because they've got QuickBooks doesn't mean they put anything into it properly in any way, shape or form.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:55] And I mean, we all know you can do fraud in any general ledger accounting system. It doesn't really matter which one you're on. It's not.
David Leary: [00:54:02] Like No. Yeah, that's the other silly part. Yeah.
Ted Callahan: [00:54:05] Yeah. I mean that's, that was my big aha. When I took my first accounting course was ultimately all of the insight is predicated on at the most atomic level. Are you categorizing that expense, write that income correctly or not? And I remember my head exploding when I couldn't get the books to balance and then the swings when you changed one thing, right? If you if you if you put it in the wrong spot, your balance sheet blows up. Right? Your income statement is completely upside down. And I think that's where you think about what I love about the industry is it is a craft and there's a there's an aspect of this that is a guild of we look out for each other because we also don't want one another misrepresenting us. Because whenever there's an issue with fraud that brings all of us down. And that's why we talk about one of our values from day one through to the present is integrity without compromise. And it's just so fundamental to how we operate holding ourselves to a high bar. And that's what I love about working with this community, because it has a very similar high bar, because fundamentally, if you're not getting that atomic level set of inputs right, you don't have anything really to talk about in a real way in terms of insights off that set of books.
Blake Oliver: [00:55:27] So, David, it's your turn. We got about 5 minutes left in the show. What do you want to talk about?
David Leary: [00:55:33] I saw an article on Medium. The author, he Theo Seeds. He describes himself as a digital nomad, freelance writer, eternally curious as I try to crack the code on human nature. But he wrote a long, medium blog post that says We'll chat GPT replace you How to tell if you're going to lose your job. And it's his intro paragraph. Essentially. This is what caught my eye. It's like, Man, this is what people think of accountants. He So she paints a picture. Imagine the year 2025, you're 18 years old, you're headed off to college. You know, your school makes you pick a major. So you're like, you're practical. You say, Hey, I'm going to study accountant accounting, right? It's not glamorous, but it'll be stable work, right? I'm going to make some money but wrong because he goes on, he actually says this. Here's the problem. Services like QuickBooks and TurboTax are making it way too easy for people to do everything an accountant does all by themselves. When you can do your taxes in an hour, why hire an accountant? And basically, it goes on to say today, a lot of CPAs are calling it quits and switching injuries because they get replaced by software, which shows like that's what this this is not what an outsider thinks of the accounting industry, not the other problems that are really making accountants call it quits.
David Leary: [00:56:44] But it's interesting, he at the end, he pulls it back into full circle about how not to lose your job. Right. And he and he uses again, accountants as examples where accountants don't call themselves accountants anymore. They call themselves fractional CFOs. Right. They're going to what Ted said it's it's the help me figure out why oh this much money but or how to change that number. Right. It's really kind of that because his argument is that GPT is essentially just spitting out answers. Everybody already has and that's all it's ever going to do. And the analogy gives to that is like, you know, there's these assistants to Congress people and their job is to plow through tens of thousands of pages of bills and summarize it. But also their job is to summarize it exactly how every other person would ever summarize it. Like, do not think on your own. Do not make a decision. Do not offer any value. Right. And that's how you not lose your job is to not be in the herd. Right? And so people do. Things, but you have to go above whatever all the stuff it's not capable of doing, you have to do. And that's the value you bring. Yeah. As an account or bookkeeper.
Blake Oliver: [00:57:49] Well, the question is, what will it be capable of doing in five or ten years? Because what it can already do is pretty darn impressive and this is the first version of the product. So it's it's. You know, I was talking with a yesterday with a financial analyst who asked me for some career advice and he explained his job to me. And in it sounded like basically his job is basically managing an Excel template that he sends out to all the subsidiaries or all the different divisions of this business. And then they fill it out and then they give it back to him, and then he consolidates up into the accounting system. Right. I feel like that is the kind of work that AI is going to do really good at just taking gathering data and consolidating it. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of manually moving numbers around for him in Excel right now, But but like, that's not something that takes a large degree of of what do you call it, intuition or knowledge. It's just a manual task, right? And you can't rely on a macro to do that reliably yet. But I could.
Ted Callahan: [00:59:03] Yeah. I mean, to me, the the exciting part of the conversation is always I think invariably there are parts of one's job that are you would love to have software or something replace that part. Right. Like we get into it right We, we the rigor with which we run requires us to be reporting out how are we doing with this customer? Why, what's happening there? What do we need to do different? We're always kind of reporting that out. The fun part is the art. It's figuring out the why behind. It's knowing what question to ask. And if I think about the power of technology, technology is just a tool that augments our potential is the way that I think about this stuff. And it's been fascinating for me to watch one of my kids using GPT three to think better, right? So he'll he'll kind of ask it a question. It gives you a very generic response. Then he'll write his answer and then he'll load it in and see how would it change his answer. And then what also happens, right? You can't trust these models, right? They talk it in the industry, They talk about the models hallucinate. They come across as very confident, but they're totally wrong. Right. And so there's still a premium on the human intelligence to fact check. I think one of your one of the values that your buddy provides in your example is are these numbers right? Did somebody get something off by a zero? And it's nonsensical. Right. And kind of the intelligence in the pattern matching again, which I think technology will get better and better and be able to provide. But I think it's always the power of the human to say, why are we asking are we asking the right question with this? Right. I haven't seen technology.
David Leary: [01:00:41] It's that smell test, right? Like humans can do the smell test instantly. I got to do my ten nines on Monday and the last minute and the ten, nine, nine report in QuickBooks has PNC Bank on it. I'm like, Why the hell is PNC Bank on there? They're not a vendor. I've never paid them and finds out other I have been using in my workflows, took took the bank statements and put them in as bills in my QuickBooks, which I had no idea was doing that this whole time all year. But as soon as I saw PNC, it's the smell test and I don't think I can do that yet. But that like no instantaneous gut feeling, gut instinct. Yeah, I don't think you rebuild.
Ted Callahan: [01:01:17] In.
Blake Oliver: [01:01:17] Reviewing the work, checking the work, but I also think you like, give people too much credit. David I've met many, many people in this world who just can't look at something and tell if it's right or wrong.
David Leary: [01:01:26] You don't have faith in humans.
Blake Oliver: [01:01:27] Well, it's something that and I want to talk about this more on the next episode. It's something that our educational system fails at. Traditional education is about transmitting knowledge information. Often it doesn't teach people how to think critically, how to look at something and know if it's true or false, how to spot misinformation, how to ask why do we do things a certain way? And I've always been a difficult student because I would always ask the teacher why. And a lot of professors don't want to be asked why. They just want you to remember the information, regurgitate it on a test. And I know we've made progress in this country on that in some areas. And if you go to a good school, like, they'll teach you to think critically. But unfortunately, I think most education is is really just about transmitting information and then people memorizing it. And you look at the CPA exam, that's what most of the exam is still. So we got to change how we train people. If we want to have people that can oversee these A.I. bots.
Ted Callahan: [01:02:31] Yeah, I agree with you. If I think about my best teachers, professors, they were the ones who I remember. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Baker. Amazing. Sally Baker, if you're out there listening. Thank you. She said, Hey, if you learn if you learn your multiplication tables, well, this year, math is going to be a breeze for you because you won't be second guessing yourself and doing all this extra work when you're in sixth grade and seventh grade in eighth grade. She was 100% right. She imparted the passion, not just the technical skill, because she gave me the why, the why. I think about one of my favorite professors in business school. Amazing, amazing teacher. The rigor with which he taught us to think. Blake. It was never about regurgitating, right? It was always challenging us. And one of his practices that he he did that I thought was so cool. Is he committed to reading people he completely disagreed with every week to sharpen his thinking? Yes. I mean, to me, that's true. Intellectual honesty.
Blake Oliver: [01:03:33] Yes.
Ted Callahan: [01:03:33] And so I think but I also would say not everybody has the luxury of getting to go to college or graduate school. My grandfather never went to college. He got he went into World War Two and then right was was working. And he was one of the smartest man I ever met because he was crazy observant. He was always paying attention. And the wisdom he gave me just by paying attention is so powerful. And so I feel like there's so many opportunities for us to always learn, whether it's formal or informal. And that that goes back to my answer On how to differentiate yourself in the industry. It's just like, pay attention, right? Be more observant than the people around you. There's always power. And I think we can always be improving our own critical thinking by by being with those who challenge us and also holding ourselves accountable in terms of intellectual honesty. So.
Blake Oliver: [01:04:25] Well, Ted, I think that's a great way to wrap up this episode. It looks like David has something to say. So, David.
David Leary: [01:04:32] I was just going to I wanted to plug a job posting. You know, I always I peek at these job postings as they come through because they say the word QuickBooks, etc. in them. So this might have been the greatest job posting I found so far and brought up to the show. Blake It's a controller for the National Women's Soccer League in New York City. In New York, essentially, the National Women's Soccer League is the top professional women's soccer league in the US with 12 teams, 300 of the best soccer players globally, blah, blah, blah. They're hiring a controller. Their main job, though, will be to transition the system from QuickBooks to NetSuite. I noted this is not good timing for you here and partner with the CFO and our other partner, Deloitte. You ready? Salary range 175 to 200000.
Blake Oliver: [01:05:12] Pretty good.
David Leary: [01:05:13] Not bad. Good if you can get it. So it's not a bad job. So if if you've graduated past if you're one of these people that have grown through the Intuit prosperity area and you're you're done QuickBooks Live bookkeeping ready to graduate, this would be a good job. But yeah, this is not a bad job posting I saw come through.
Blake Oliver: [01:05:29] Yeah, yeah. That's the that's the thing that's so crazy is that we have this we have this gap in recruiting into accounting because the starting salaries are so low coming out of traditional accounting programs. But then like the, the upside in your career, you make it to controller CFO. It's like enormous.
David Leary: [01:05:46] Well, they want 15 years experience and you've got to have, you know, so that's the CPA.
Blake Oliver: [01:05:51] That's the gap. So that's what we got to figure out. Ted, is how does how does Intuit train if I'm serious about this, if the traditional accounting firms, the big Four and the universities aren't training enough accountants, how do we get into it to fill the funnel of managers and directors and partners? That's the next that's that's the next thing that you guys got to tackle is given those people, you know, room to grow up.
Ted Callahan: [01:06:20] Yeah, I love airlines.
David Leary: [01:06:21] Are doing that, right? They're training pilots from scratch.
Blake Oliver: [01:06:24] Yeah right So into it could be training future controllers.
Ted Callahan: [01:06:29] Yeah I love I love to come back and or not necessarily on a live episode kind of brainstorm with you all Where where are those real opportunities? To me, it's more about how can we partner with industry? I think there's opportunity to clarify the standards, find ways to then really augment and accelerate education so folks can play that role sooner. And again, I think how how can increasingly folks need to be technology literate to serve their client needs? Right. How are you using technology as that tool to augment your potential in serving what you need with your client? I think those are the future managers, fractional CFOs that are going to make a big difference.
Blake Oliver: [01:07:11] Ted, thanks for your time. We'll let you go. All right.
Ted Callahan: [01:07:15] You. Thank you.
Blake Oliver: [01:07:16] Thanks, everybody, for watching.
Ted Callahan: [01:07:18] Bye bye.
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