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Today, Blake and David explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping accounting, discussing its potential to handle 70% of information-based tasks and impact workflows like data collection, reconciliation, and client services. They criticize the current theoretical approach to accounting education, advocating for more practical, hands-on learning experiences. They also dig into the ongoing 150-hour rule debate, examining recent state board initiatives for alternative CPA pathways and concerns about the accounting talent pipeline. Blake and David tackle the recent Evolve cybersecurity breach and its implications for fintech companies and move on to listener feedback and questions.
Chapters
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Chapters
- (02:40) - Vacation Plans and Quiet Vacationing
- (07:45) - Generative AI in Accounting
- (10:37) - Challenges and Opportunities in AI Adoption
- (18:38) - CPA Firm Dynamics and Partner Retirement
- (28:58) - Survey Insights and Alternative Pathways to CPA
- (33:05) - Arkansaw State Board of Accountancy Pursuing Alternative Pathways to CPA
- (34:19) - Blake and David Look at the California CPA License Survey
- (37:29) - Addressing Concerns About CPA Mobility
- (38:10) - Survey Reflections and Critique
- (42:38) - Listener Mail: Nebraska's CPA Changes
- (43:55) - The Practicality of Accounting Education
- (01:00:38) - Evolve Bank Cyber Attack
- (01:06:35) - Closing Thoughts and 4th of July Message
Show Notes
Millennials call it ‘quiet vacationing,’ but it’s really remote work gone wrong—and it’s CEOs’ worst nightmare
Death, Taxes, and AI: How Generative AI Will Change Accounting
Tech lag named top risk for accountants in 2024 Intuit QuickBooks survey
Finding Qualified Staff Is the Top Issue Facing Most CPA Firms In 2024
Help! A Partner Wants to Retire Early
Arkansas State Board of Public Accountancy – Proposed Rule Changes
California Board of Accountancy
California Board of Accountancy’s LinkedIn Post on CPA Next Survey
CPA Candidates Approved To Sit At 120 Hours Starting 1/1/2025
Evolve Hit With Fed Enforcement Action, But Why Did It Take This Long?
Cybersecurity Incident
Yieldstreet says some of its customers were affected by the Evolve Bank data breach
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Transcripts
The full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page
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: [00:00:04] $24,000 is the average projected investment in accounting technologies over the next 12 months. Rent and most of this spend is going towards AI and automation. So over here, the the VCs are like, look at all this money we can make. And this is being reinforced out of accountants mouth. We're going to spend $24,000 a year on this tech coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:33] Hello and welcome back to the show. I'm Blake Oliver, and.
David Leary: [00:00:37] I'm David Leary. And, Blake, I don't know if you noticed or anybody that's watching the live stream. I got new glasses.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:43] I look good.
David Leary: [00:00:44] Official computer glasses. So I can look at my phone. I can look at the computer screens. If you notice some. Some weeks when I look at my store, I got to kind of squint. If you go back and look at the video.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:52] Yeah, you pull up your glasses. Yeah. Get the, uh, yeah.
David Leary: [00:00:56] And so now I have I'm starting to get glasses fatigue. You know, all these accountants complain about app fatigue. And the whole industry is like shifting, right to maybe bundling of apps versus separate apps. But I'm kind of mixed on that with my glasses. So I have a pair of computer glasses. I have bifocals that I only use in the living room to look at my phone and the television. I can, you know, do a two screen thing. I have a pair of sunglasses. I have my daily glasses, I have a pair of glasses that I use for working out because they don't fall off my nose. It's like I have like six pairs of glasses, but they all have very good functions. And it's made me thinking about like this apps. Like, what side of the fence are you on? Are you like, are there too many apps or is it better to have apps that are really good at stuff?
Blake Oliver: [00:01:34] Uh, well, I definitely err on the side of too many apps, although my advice to everyone is to not have so many. So I'm a complete, total hypocrite. I'm always trying out new ones. But you know, the thing for me is with the glasses is ever since I discovered, um, that I could buy them online for cheap. Now I just buy a pair of glasses for everything.
David Leary: [00:01:55] I guess I could get. They have, like, a trifocal thing. I bet I could get them all built into one glasses, but I don't know.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:02] We need them to be. Yeah, it needs to be like the ski goggles now where you can just buy one one ski goggle that adapts to all conditions. We need the glasses that just change for whatever purpose you have.
David Leary: [00:02:12] And I have contacts in case I play hockey.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:14] So welcome to our live stream viewers who have joined us on this July 4th week. We are recording on Monday this week because David's going on vacation, I think. Is it a vacation, David? You're going, where are you going?
David Leary: [00:02:27] Well, I'm going to go to San Francisco. I fly out today. Um, last week I was traveling to Dallas. Uh, my son had a volleyball tournament. I did meetings last week and worked. I probably will still check email, though this week.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:40] So you are not officially on vacation, correct? But you are on a quiet vacation. Vacation? And you have a story about that. You said to me before we started, we started recording a crazy stat. Yeah. So?
David Leary: [00:02:55] So even though only 10% of employers are closed this week for July 4th, 50% of surveyed employees said they've in the past quiet vacation. So half of everybody's going to kind of take off this week.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:10] Pretty much you're on the clock, but you're not really working full time. Correct.
David Leary: [00:03:15] And this is from a new survey from Harris Poll of 1200 US workers.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:21] So I'm guessing these are knowledge workers. It's got to be.
David Leary: [00:03:24] Say it was it just was.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:25] Can't really quiet quit if you have to go in like to a gas station and work at a gas station, right.
David Leary: [00:03:30] That's true, that's true. There's probably some people. So. So when I was thinking about this, it makes me wonder for anybody that's here in the chat, like participate here. How many of you have shut your firm down this week? Because if anybody could shut down this week, in theory it would be an accounting firm. There's no tax deadlines like this would be a good week to shut down. So, well.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:47] Just based on the number of people who are joining our call or not call our live stream today. Uh, I would, uh, I would say that a good number are out on vacation.
David Leary: [00:03:57] But and then they had a second poll they did the previous month. And it's about out of office culture and 1 in 8 workers plan to do. Quiet vacationing sometime this survey right. And it's millennials Blake. It's the people like you that are doing the most 38% admit to mouse jiggling, 37% admit to taking off work without officially being out of office. 37% of you millennials schedule emails to give the impression you're working out like extra hours, right? You set up emails to go out at 9 p.m.. Things like that. Um.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:32] Why do we do this?
David Leary: [00:04:34] But but overall, like 55 or 56% of workers in the survey said they take meetings when on vacation, and 37% admit they've gone to a third location, like a coffee shop or something, or hotel to work while they're on vacation. And this is the craziest stat of all. If you ready, 95% of Gen Zers, that's me. Say they would check an email from their boss while on vacation. 95% of Gen Zers will check. So if you email Blake. Email me Blake. I'm going to check it next week.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:02] See, wouldn't it be better if we just took more vacation? If we just took more PTO as a country and didn't have to play these games where we pretend like we're working, we want to seem like we're working like it's it's hard, I think, for a lot of people to enjoy the vacation. Then because you're constantly checking your phone, looking at your work phone. Right. It's hard to.
David Leary: [00:05:25] Enjoy anyways because 40, 47% say they feel guilty when they take time off, and then another 66% said they dread the backlog when they returned to work. So it's like you just there's a lot of mixed emotions around this. And that's why I think for me, I'm going to check email, try to stay on top of things. So I'll still get a vacation in. But I don't want to like ignore everything for five days. It's too hard.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:46] But and that's how I like to work. I've said this on the show before. I don't need to like, go into the whole detail, but I like to do a few hours in the morning even when I'm on vacation. So I'm handling the important stuff. And to me, I don't need to be like out the whole day to really enjoy what I'm doing. And like, for me, I'm, um, I'm escaping the Arizona heat this month. I am in Orange County, so it's beautiful weather out there right now. I could have the window open if I wasn't recording. I'm going to go to the beach later, but I'm working with you right now, so this to me is like my best, like, hybrid approach. But I'm not doing it like, secretly, you know that I'm doing it right.
David Leary: [00:06:26] You're not mouse jiggling.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:28] Maybe we just need to normalize the the semi vacation or the work vacation or whatever, I don't know. Hey Matthew, thanks for joining us live. Matthew says if the holiday was closer to the weekend, I would have grabbed an extra day or two. Steven says my firm is closed Thursday and Friday. They were initially only closed on Thursday, but because we hit some goal, we get Friday two. Hey that's good. So interesting. Maybe. Maybe we will all get to take more vacation in the world of accounting. I, David, and we know that the venture capitalists are working on it because Andreessen Horowitz put out a blog post last week and the headline is death, taxes, and AI How Generative AI Will Change Accounting. And of course, this caught our attention because how often does one of the largest venture capital firms in the world talk about accounting? Not that often, right? I mean, Andreessen Horowitz, uh, I think last year they they put out that, uh, big manifesto about like, uh, techno optimism. Right. But it didn't mention accounting in it. Did you read that one?
David Leary: [00:07:38] No. Um, but but they tend to talk about whatever, whatever they're investing in at the time. And obviously they're investing in a lot of AI and they're stepping back. And I think looking at it industry by industry, because they also use terms like legal AI. Now they're focused on accounting AI in this article.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:55] Yes. And you know, you can go check this out on the, um, Andreessen Horowitz website a16z. Com I like the opening of it. As Ben Franklin famously said, there are only two certainties in life death and taxes. We would argue that I should be added to that list as Llms continue to advance, AI is working its way into everything from marketing to voice agents to professional services at large. So I read through this post and I realized, um, basically this is a way to showcase Andreessen Horowitz investments in accounting and finance applications, because at the bottom, you get this chart of all of their I think these are all their portfolio companies.
David Leary: [00:08:45] It's not it's companies they've came across. It's not really clear if these are in their portfolio or not. But it's we've seen these built I've seen these built for the last decade. Like it has the logos and it tries to put every app in a bucket. You know, you see these all the time. And I don't know, I always am skeptical of them when they when they put bookkeeping. They don't have QuickBooks on there. I'm just like, are you doing any market research? Maybe you're focused only on startups, but like, I don't know, I'm always mixed on that. Um, so let's go through the takeaway then from the article.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:16] Well, so what I found interesting is the jobs to be done, right? So Andreessen Horowitz goes through and they actually define like what are the opportunities in accounting and finance for artificial intelligence. Um, and they start out with the challenges of the industry, right. Pointing out that 75% of CPAs could retire in the next decade. There's a declining number of accounting graduates. There's increasing client demand with fewer professionals available. But then they also mentioned that the challenges with using gen AI in accounting, which is that it's more suited for natural language tasks than for complex calculations and quantitative analysis, but they determine anyway that I could handle 70% of information based tasks today. So even though I is the gen I that we have is based on natural language, it could be used for 70% of the tasks that we do. And they mentioned some of the key accounting workflows impacted. Number one, of course, data collection and ingestion, what we might call bookkeeping. That means automated data extraction from unstructured formats aka taking a bank statement and turning it into transactions that you can import into your GL. Improved reconciliation and air checking research. Ai powered Copilots for tax codes. Accounting standards and regulations. A creation of journal entries, disclosure reports and tax filings. Client service and advice using that for more frequent, high quality insights like we are seeing with variance analysis, like we are seeing with financial report generation. The narrative generation and the opportunity to shift from transactional to advisory relationships. This is all stuff that we've been talking about on the show here. Now the adoption challenges. They mentioned the resistance due to cannibalization of billable hours.
David Leary: [00:11:18] Yes. That was my big takeaway from this article, is they they got into understanding kind of the current state and business model of accountants and accounting firms. Right. And how that's going to be impacted by AI. And then it makes me think, did they just go and take all our episodes and then pump out a blog post in AI? And because this is all stuff we've talked about for three years, right. You know, it's true.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:39] Uh, but it's a good validation of what we've been saying here. Right. Um, it's interestingly, though, they say that audit is not generally priced on a billable hour. And so it would be easy to switch to AI for audit. But what I think they fail to realize there is that the partners, even though the audit might be priced as a fixed fee, they're still building that fixed fee based on hours. And so mentally, the audit teams are still on a billable hour model, which prevents more efficiency. And I think it will be more like like I've said on the show, tech companies coming in and automating audits that will change and challenge auditors. I don't really see a lot of traditional auditors making that change on their own. They also mentioned some other challenges the impact on training staff and development, which is a big one because the way staff are trained today is they're brought in and they do the grunt work. If the grunt work is automated by AI. How do you train accountants? What's the path? Are they going to learn that in school? They're not learning it in school today. So that's going to create an interesting challenge in the pipeline. So all in all, it was a pretty well structured post. I think it basically shows that, you know, Silicon Valley is headed the same way as all of these forward thinking firms that, uh, that we highlight on our show. And watch out.
David Leary: [00:13:07] I mean, the money's you're already starting to see the investment, like, ramp up again. And so it's always make charts like this. But, you know, yeah, three years from now, half these companies won't be on here.
Blake Oliver: [00:13:18] Right. And you know, just think like specifically in your realm, like if you file taxes, right. We've got tax GPT, we've got April column tax and muse for different companies coming after tax filing with AI. And I know it may seem like that's far off because the code is so complex. And there are, you know, like companies like TurboTax have still not managed to do more than basic returns in many ways, but AI is really good at following a specific set of instructions. And what is filing taxes other than, in its simplest form, following sets of really, really complex instructions? You can you can do it.
David Leary: [00:14:00] You can flout these fields, get the number, put it in this number box on this page. Yeah, it's a big map.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:06] You can all it's all doable. You can follow the instructions. People do it. I have a friend who's an engineer who does it every year by hand. So I think an AI could ingest those instructions. The barrier right now to AI is not its capabilities in doing this. It's the the cost, the compute power. If you actually fed an AI, the entire IRS code, the Internal Revenue Code, uh, and asked it to, like, do a tax return. It would it just there's not enough context window and not enough computing power to do it. But that is rapidly being overcome. So some other apps worth highlighting here on this list for our viewers or our listeners who can't see this. There's a whole bunch of book keeping startups here, some I've never heard of before. David. Um, book I that's book with an e entendre. Finance every fondo Genesis. Genesis with a j kick pilot we know puzzle we know reconcile. I don't know that one I know reconciled but I don't know reconcile. Relate and true wind. And there's actually a category here for, uh, practice management. I win canopy Field Guide. Carbon and Laurel are highlighted in the audit world Agentive audit site uplink. There's specialty tax providers I won't read those. There's embedded accounting. We've talked about embedded accounting before. That's the idea of of embedding a GL into any app. Ember layer and teal are working on that. Disrupting QuickBooks I think the.
David Leary: [00:15:45] More interesting ones is the process automation, because they also talk about how like owning the workflow, that's what's going to be impacted a lot. They have a link to another blog post they did, and the workflow is going to be impacted a from a data manipulation I think. But then also the experience. Right. Because when it comes down and that's what those process automation guys like data Sniper does. Right. It's you have a scan and it maps all the fields from that scan to Excel. Right. And those those apps are, uh, docket and Trillian does this, right, but with, uh, lease accounting type stuff that that's going to be more probably if I look at all these apps, that's where the real winners are going to be probably in the next 3 to 4 years. It's the the individual small jobs that have to get automated. I think like bookkeeping itself is still just too broad.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:34] Well, and we know that accounting firms are going to have to embrace this because according to CPA Practice Advisor, finding qualified staff is the top issue facing most CPA firms in 2020. For the AICPA PCPs CPA firm Top Issues survey revealed at the engage 2024 conference, identified finding qualified staff as the primary challenge for CPA firms with two or more employees. While sole practitioners are most concerned with navigating changes in the tax code. So for firms with two or more employees, that's the biggest issue.
David Leary: [00:17:10] And to Intuit to start, QuickBooks had a survey and we don't have to jump into completely yet. But they had a stat in there about struggling to hire good quality people at the graduate or entry level. 20 2023, 42% said that they had this problem and now 60% say they have that problem in 2024. So just reinforcing this struggle that you found in your survey.
Blake Oliver: [00:17:32] Yeah. You know, here's a here's an article that I that's kind of related to this that I've been wanting to share for a while. Um, it's a piece on CPA trendlines and it's called help. A partner wants to retire early. Help a partner wants to retire early. And I feel like this ties into the talent shortage because, uh, we've talked on the show before about how people don't want to wait 15 years to become a partner, which is kind of like what it takes. And at a CPA firm. And they they don't want to stick around necessarily until they're 65 to retire to get the benefits of being a partner. Right. And this article for me, this opinion piece by Mark Rosenberg on CPA trendlines kind of like like points to the the psychological problem with this because basically what he's saying is that like it's a question from a reader who says like that one of their partners wants to retire, and it's creating problems for the rest of the firm because there aren't that many partners, because they're going to have to buy out the partner. And so the article is all about how do you create more restrictions to prevent partners from retiring early.
David Leary: [00:18:49] So I just want to make sure I'm logically thinking this out. I best get my CPA. I bust my ass, I become a partner. I manage my own personal finances in life in a way where I can afford to retire early. I want to retire at 55. I've managed to set my life up for this because it's inconvenient for my business partners. They want restrictions or somebody suggesting we should prevent people from retiring.
Blake Oliver: [00:19:17] So I write, so this this firm, the reader, should I read the question. So here's the question from a reader. Uh, okay. Two CPA trendlines. We didn't contemplate an owner leaving before normal retirement age unless it was because of death or disability, or we had to fire them. However, as we were discussing hypotheticals at a recent partner meeting, we came to the uncomfortable conclusion that currently, there's nothing to stop owners from accumulating large buyout balances and just walking in one day and offering up their resignation pursuant to our partner agreement, thus entitling them to receive substantial buyouts as long as they give us a one year notice. Our vesting provision has a very limited penalty for early retirement. The buyout is reduced by 2% a year for every year before 60 they leave. So if you want to leave at 50, you only lose 10% of your equity. You take a 10% haircut on that buyout amount. So they want to modify their agreement to so that if somebody leaves early but there's a higher penalty and they're asking for advice on that. Right. And so this whole article is about how do you like make it so onerous to leave that nobody will leave before the age of 60. But this is why nobody wants to be a partner anymore. I mean, not nobody, but fewer people like. And I wouldn't want to be a partner because, yes, maybe I have equity, but I'm locked into it. So it's not real to me until I hit that age. I can't take advantage of it. But why would I do that to myself? Why would I lock myself into this partnership for. I mean, let's say I'm 35 and I get made partner. Why would I want to lock myself in for 25 years? So.
David Leary: [00:21:10] So this is that like unintended consequences, stuff that constantly happens. Like they want to keep people in the firm so they're going to put restrictions in, which is actually going to keep people from entering the firm at the bottom. Yes.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:22] Exactly. Nailed it. So then the rest of the article is all of these, like, you know, ways to increase the penalty, right?
David Leary: [00:21:30] To. Oh, like like somebody instead of somebody say this is not a good idea. They reinforce the question and gave suggestions on how to solve this.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:37] Right, right. So instead of 2% penalty per year you make it 5% per year. So if you leave ten years before retirement then you're losing half of your equity, right? You keep them in. Yeah. To get the 100%. Um, and they want vesting to be 15 or 20 years longer or 15 or 20 years total. So yeah, this is this is the problem. This is why people don't want to buy into your CPA firm, because it's based on this employment for life model, which doesn't fit anymore with the younger generation. I don't I can't even think. Do I know anyone who has been at the same job for 30 years or since they started? Like other than my friends who are lawyers? I think that's the one where, you know, people tend to also stick around in their firm. Like, I just can't I can't think of it. So making it more restrictive, like that's the that's the wrong way to go about it. You need to do what firms that are doing esops are doing where they're making it easier to move in and out and to give equity to everyone, not just the partners or the managers at least. Right.
David Leary: [00:22:48] So partners should figure out how to quiet quit. That's the way to go. Just clock in, send some emails, but don't actually work. But the problem, the shortage, they have to keep working.
Blake Oliver: [00:22:58] So yeah, Tyler says, do all of the partners take home a percentage of the profits during their career as well, on top of their salary? Yes, in theory. But those calculations can be complex and opaque and depends on your firm how that's calculated. It's all in the agreement. Right. And there might be a partner compensation committee that ends up actually deciding all of this. And so you have no control as a partner necessarily in what your compensation will be. This is why, like I won't I would never be a partner in a CPA firm because I feel like so much is out of your control when you buy into the partnership. I would rather have the flexibility either do my own thing, own my own business, or, I don't know, do something else.
David Leary: [00:23:45] That's like boring, accountant says in the chat here. Anyone looking to be a partner today is more likely to consider starting a firm from the ground up, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:23:53] Oh, 100% of it. Do what you want with it, right? Sell it whenever you want. That's a much more appealing proposition. So I'm not saying you have to leave accounting. Right. But like, you could do your own thing and not be locked in like this. To me, in a lot of firms, being a partner is like it's just a glorified job and so many partners are not even being made equity partners anymore. They have the title of partner, but they have no equity. They're just highly compensated employees with the title of partner. So what is partnership anymore anyway, if that's the case? And and actually I've heard that a lot of firms are like making their Dei numbers look better, more women partners by making them non-equity partners. Right. It's just bullshit.
David Leary: [00:24:40] I've always liked questioned this because I feel like I've not seen it in other industries, but a lot of accountants, partners at big firms, either they put partner or they put shareholder on their business card. Right.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:51] Shareholders better than partner because at least it indicates that you have shares in the company. But it's.
David Leary: [00:24:56] Just.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:56] Partner can be odd.
David Leary: [00:24:57] It's like part of your business title. I mean like when I worked at Intuit, I was a shareholder. I had stock, like, it just it just feels really odd to me. Like only accountants seem to like. It's almost like a justification, like a brag. I don't know, I just find it strange, like it's the the culture of that. Like I'm a shareholder and you're like, you peons aren't shareholders. I don't know, it's just weird to me. I have the Intuit QuickBooks account in technology survey if you want to talk about some of that.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:24] Any interesting tidbits in there? Yeah.
David Leary: [00:25:27] So 98% I think last week I mentioned it, but 98% of surveyed accountants and bookkeepers have used AI to help their clients and businesses in the last 12 months. 98%, 98%.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:38] So this is a survey by Intuit of.
David Leary: [00:25:41] Us accountants and bookkeepers. 707 US accountants and bookkeepers.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:45] I'm guessing this is on the small side, QuickBooks side, obviously, because it's Intuit.
David Leary: [00:25:49] Yeah, yeah. So basically only 2% said I have not used AI to help with any client services over the last 12 months.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:55] So what are they using AI.
David Leary: [00:25:57] For a lot of data entry processing. So it's probably bank feeds, right? I mean ultimately they're couple that caught my uh that I found interesting was fraud detection and prevention. Half say they use it for that. I don't know what tool or what they're using to do that with, um, real time financial insights. So these are going to be your dashboard type apps. Financial forecasting tax services 30%. Auditing services 26. So those are the two where you keep saying that's the next bump for I like Sis 7,069% is data entry bank processing. That's bank feeds. That's bookkeeping when taxes and audit. Now get up to that 6,970% mark. That's game changing.
Blake Oliver: [00:26:33] Right? Right. And it depends what you mean by AI. Are they defining AI as just any kind of artificial intelligence or is it specifically generative AI? Because if it's any type of artificial intelligence, we're all using it all the time. We're all using bank rules in our QuickBooks software. We're all that's that's AI. You know, we're all using, I don't know, automatic calendar booking apps. That's AI.
David Leary: [00:26:59] So so you're right how do you measure. It's interesting. But the other parts of the data really tie well with that uh a16z article. So a lot of them think that, uh, the failure to keep pace with tech advancements is probably the downfall of the accounting industry. So 27% believe, like, even more than the labor shortage, like you accountants that don't stay up on this tech, it's going to be in trouble. $24,000 is the average projected investment in accounting technologies over the next 12 months, right? And most of this spend is going towards AI and automation. So over here the the the VCs are like, look at all this money we can make. And this is being reinforced out of accountants mouth. We're going to spend $24,000 a year on this tech. Um, they're saying 95% agree that a willingness to learn and adopt technologies is just as valuable as knowing accounting. Wow. Now you've got to be able to do that. Yeah. Um, and then they believe, like 94%, you're going to need the technology more than ever for the success of your own firm in business. Um, and the other piece that was interesting, this ties back to the hiring in that stuff. Regular training and skills development. Right on. Tech is like 45% believe like that's really helps them attract and retain talent. You have to invest in your people, which goes back to the 8 to 16 article talked about that, you know, how do you how do you fit AI in and take those entry level people and then the one you're going to love that was in the survey because it's all over the place. Flexibility to work from home or create your own work schedule. 42% believe that both attracts and retains talent.
Blake Oliver: [00:28:34] Only 42%?
David Leary: [00:28:36] Yeah, 29% believe it attracts 27% believe it retains. Yeah, but only 2% say they don't know. Like I don't know. The 2% are. That's a little questionable.
Blake Oliver: [00:28:47] There's always 2% that don't know. There's always 2% that don't know.
David Leary: [00:28:50] But but the the gist of it is, is they're all recognizing that in the current world of labor and the way they're running their firm, you have to accent with AI now. Like that's the really the vibe of the survey. And then they did, believe it or not, ask this question, Blake, about believing in an alternative pathway to CPA. Guess what percentage of these 700 accountants and bookkeepers believe in an alternative pathway to CPA?
Blake Oliver: [00:29:15] Ooh, I have to know. Tell me.
David Leary: [00:29:18] 98%, 90.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:20] 98%.
David Leary: [00:29:21] We're almost 100%.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:22] That's incredible. Well, we're seeing some changes start to happen. You brought up the alternative pathway, so I'm going to run with it. David. Uh, one of our listeners sent us a document from the Arkansas State Board of Public Accountancy, the meeting minutes from one of their January meetings. They are pursuing alternative pathways. So let's see what they said here. A motion was made stating that the board was in favor of pursuing legislation to change accountancy law to allow alternative pathways to CPA licensure. This motion was seconded and passed unanimously. So there you have it, folks. Arkansas is moving towards an alternative pathway that does not require 150 hours of education to become a CPA. Now what exactly that will be? We do not know. But it's nice to see them joining Minnesota and South Carolina and some other states in Oregon in exploring other options.
David Leary: [00:30:24] The writing's on the wall in states like California and Arizona and I think Alabama. The writing's on the wall. So this is coming.
Blake Oliver: [00:30:31] It's going to happen. Um, we've got some listener mail and I think we should definitely take a look at that. Thank you to many of our listeners for sending us the California Board of Accountancy survey link. I also received this because I'm still on their mailing list since I was initially licensed as a CPA in California. Um, Cynthia gets the credit, she said. I just received an email from the California Board of Accountancy asking me to fill out a survey about the current requirements to become a CPA. They asked if I thought you needed 150 to be a CPA, and I got the Survey Monkey link, and I was actually thinking, David, that like, maybe we could, uh, I haven't done the survey yet. Do you want to do the survey with me right now?
David Leary: [00:31:17] Please pull it up. Because I'm wondering, was this a question buried in another survey, or did they flat out like this? Is the question like this is the survey.
Blake Oliver: [00:31:25] So this is called the CPA next survey. And they give on the first page all you see is CPA. Next survey a definition of some acronyms and a summary of the current CPA licensure requirements, which include a bachelor's degree or higher with a specific number of courses in accounting, business related, and ethics subjects, and a total of 150 semester units. One year of general accounting experience and the passage of the CPA exam. That's all we see. So I'm going to hit next and we are going to take the survey. Number one, are you a partner or hiring manager of an accounting firm? Uh, no. Next two. Which of the following best describes you? Let's see. I, uh, in my college or university faculty? No CPA license, three years or less. No CPA license more than three years. Yes or future CPA okay, so I'm a CPA license.
David Leary: [00:32:18] I should ask, are you a CPA with 120 hours or 150 hours?
Blake Oliver: [00:32:22] They should. Honestly. Um. Three currently, the CPA California Board of Accountancy requires students to earn 150 semester units and a bachelor's degree with a specific number of courses in accounting, business related, and ethics subjects. I believe the CPA requires too little education to become a CPA, the right amount of education to become a CPA, or too much education to become a CPA. I think we all agree on this show that it's too much education to become a CPA for. I believe in an applicant with a bachelor's degree in accounting should fully meet the educational requirements for licensure. Let's see. Yes, so long as they complete one year of general accounting experience. Yes. So long as they complete two years of general accounting experience or no, I believe the educational requirements should be higher than a bachelor's degree. I think bachelor's with one year of general accounting experience. I like the.
David Leary: [00:33:18] Two. I like the.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:19] Two well, so I liked it because it swaps, right. And it used to be two. So I feel like let's let's keep two. I think two is good. You need to go through at least one full busy season, I think. All right. Number five, I believe the 150 semester unit requirement and bachelor's degree for CPA licensure is necessary to support safe and effective practice by entry level CPAs. Agree. Neither agree nor disagree or disagree. I'm going to disagree with that. It's not necessary. Six how concerned would you be with the removal of the 150 semester unit requirement in California if it impacted a CPA's ability to obtain practice privilege rights in other states? See, this is this is the fear mongering rule or the fear mongering question here, right? The mobility question.
David Leary: [00:34:07] They should ask how happy would you be? You know.
Blake Oliver: [00:34:10] I'm going to put not concerned because like there's very little actual evidence that this would create a huge problem for firms. And I've said firms can hire anyone anywhere now, right? Yep. So just hire people with the right license in the right state. If you want to operate in that state, just do it. All right. Seven if you resided in California when you obtained your CPA license, did you have to relocate for your first job? No, I did not have to relocate. And that's it. That's the survey. Seven questions.
David Leary: [00:34:46] Now, what I liked about the survey, it was all focused just on 150 hour rule. Right. They didn't they didn't stick it as a side question in a different survey, like.
Blake Oliver: [00:34:56] I know, but also like if you're going to do a single subject survey like that, maybe like do a better survey, like have more questions about the value, like, like, do you believe that the extra year of education adds value?
David Leary: [00:35:16] Maybe we didn't ask questions because you said you weren't a partner. Maybe, maybe if you said you were a partner, you would have questions about based on the people you've hired recently.
Blake Oliver: [00:35:25] Right. But I mean, maybe I was a partner in the past. I have hired people. In the past, I've managed people with CPAs. I could answer that question for myself. For others like these surveys are not even scientific that these boards of accountants you're doing, like hire a research firm to do this. You're the freaking board of accountancy in California. Do you not have resources? These people paid good money. They did a survey monkey. So anyway, it says thank you for submitting your responses. Data from the survey will be presented at the next CBA meeting, July 25th to 26th, 2024. So hopefully that'll be in the minutes. I think it has to be because it's a government agency, right? Or a I don't know what it is, but it's government. So there you go. There's the survey. If anyone else wants to take this survey, we should put the link in the chat here. Uh, so it is surveymonkey.com/r/cpa next. And I'm going to put that here. Take the CPA survey. It's going in the chat. Make your voice heard in the profession. Seems like there's one really important question. There is what would you support? Interestingly, they don't ask whether or not you are a California resident, and they don't ask whether you are a currently licensed in California. And so like, I mean, now that our listeners know about this, I think we know how our listeners generally feel we're going to go in and skew those results, right?
David Leary: [00:37:02] Yeah. I mean IP addresses that are in California, who's running?
Blake Oliver: [00:37:05] Who's running these boards of accountancy, like, how can I get one of these cushy jobs where you can just be totally incompetent at running a survey like this that's going to determine the future of CPA licensure. This is truly awful. I mean, I'm glad they're.
David Leary: [00:37:20] Asking the question. Great way to phrase it. Like this is one of the most important things that they've done in a decade is this survey. And you're right, it's.
Blake Oliver: [00:37:29] Not even not even they're half assing it, right. They do a survey monkey. Oh my gosh. Okay, more listener mail. Uh, this is from Evan. It says Evan Lewandowski. Is that that's is that a real that's that's a, uh that can't be the real name. Right? That sounds familiar.
David Leary: [00:37:50] Well, it sounds like The Big Lebowski. I think Evan.
Blake Oliver: [00:37:53] Lewandowski is a quarterback at the University of Wisconsin.
David Leary: [00:37:59] I don't know.
Blake Oliver: [00:38:00] I mean, maybe somebody's making a joke, but I don't know enough about sports to get it. Anyway, Evan says, I just discovered your show in May and immediately subscribed. You're doing amazing work. I don't know if you've seen this, but Nebraska has made this change and forwarded us a link to the Nebraska CPA online magazine. The society in Nebraska says that CPA candidates are approved to sit at 120 hours starting January 1st, 2025. So basically in Nebraska, they haven't changed the 150 hour requirement, but you can now sit for the CPA exam with 120 hours, which makes everyone wonder why do we need the fifth year? If you can sit for the exam at four years? Moving on.
David Leary: [00:38:46] That's a natural experiment. That's gonna that's gonna be great.
Blake Oliver: [00:38:49] They've been doing that in a bunch of states now. So, like, it makes you wonder, like, what's the point of 150, right? If. Anyway, um. We got an email from David Wait at Utah Valley University, who you and I have met in person.
David Leary: [00:39:06] He's been at my house.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:07] He's been at your house. We did a little bit of, uh, advisory for Utah Valley University on what they should do with their accounting program. And David has been working on a practical applied accounting course to add into the curriculum, which we think is just fantastic, because if you ask me, the number one problem with accounting education is that it's totally impractical. It's all theoretical. And so students don't know how to do anything when they get out into the real world. Um, so David wrote us an email after the episode with Doctor Akpan, and I want to summarize what he said because he had a lot of opinions. And David, I just want you to know, David, wait, if you're listening, uh, we really appreciate your feedback. And I acknowledge that I was not exactly, uh, in the best mood for that episode. Not an excuse, but I was a little hard on Doctor Akpan, and I think I was taking out all of my frustration on traditional education on one guy. And Doctor Akpan was great. He was, uh, he was a real sport about it and even shared out the episode later. And he had some really good points. And I think the point that anyone who listened would remember is when he asked, uh, Blake, do you even like accounting? And I had to say, yes, I love accounting.
Blake Oliver: [00:40:31] I just hate so many things about accounting firms and accounting education. But accounting is great. So anyway, um. David gave me that feedback. I want you to know, I take it to heart, and I don't blame all accounting educators, but I do think there are serious problems with accounting being way too theoretical and too many people running accounting departments who have only ever worked for like a year in public accounting and have spent the rest of their entire careers in education and academic establishments. How can you possibly train the next generation of accountants with hardly any practical experience yourself? And when your curriculum is completely theoretical? And this is why I think accounting salaries are low, because you come out of school and you don't know how to do anything, so the firms have to teach you. This is not the fault of the firms if you think about it, the salary that somebody gets coming out of school is really an indication of their value to their employer. So who's to blame for that? After somebody spends all this money going to school for accounting and they aren't making very much money starting out, maybe it's because they're not learning what they need to know. And that's why people are.
David Leary: [00:41:48] Going into a lot. I don't want to pay you very much yet. I want to see you learn stuff and see what you can do two years from now. Then I'll finally give you a raise or pay you a little bit more.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:55] Yeah. And we all know, like, most staff can't do anything on their own for a year or two, right. So like if we want to increase starting salaries, maybe accounting programs should become more practical again, more, um, applied teach, teach students how to do actual audits while they're in school.
David Leary: [00:42:17] And I think Doctor Atkin, if I remember correctly, like he's doing some stuff with AI with his students. Right. And then you have David here at Utah Valley State, right? Is that.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:26] Utah Valley University.
David Leary: [00:42:27] Utah Valley University. And he's trying to create a new curriculum that's like scannable, use QuickBooks, use bank feeds like run a mini business on accounting software like learn the actual products and the technology stacks. Right? I know we've talked to Jennifer Johnson, who's at the University of Texas Dallas campus, and she has her students doing practical type things, but in general, they don't get that. And then I've had talked to accountants who have done some QuickBooks Proadvisors have done some moonlighting, some community college teaching and things like that. And there's places that won't let them teach QuickBooks or an accounting software package in the classroom, because they have to teach whatever the fake one is in the back of the book on the CD. Right. That's just the world we're in. And I think David even didn't he say in his email he also got some grief about his program.
Blake Oliver: [00:43:10] He's struggling to get this practical course in the curriculum, because he's got professors saying that they don't need to learn anything practical. It's shocks me. It blows my mind. Who are these accounting PhDs who think that you don't need to learn anything practical? If you surveyed our listeners right now, like everyone listening right now, tell me, do you think it's more important to get work experience or to go to school in accounting? Where do you get the most value? Seriously, like because I feel like there's a lot of professors who don't get it because they are up in their ivory tower and they're living in accounting. La la land of theory. And if you want to see some crazy stuff, just go look at all the papers that are being published by accounting PhDs. Like the research that is being done in accounting. I mean, it's it's I, it's hard to read. When was the last time accounting theory changed it? Actually, I've said this before. The best thing the PhDs could do would be to go out into the real world, look at how businesses are actually doing accounting outside of like what's mandated by GAAP and like actually try to bring that into the theory because we don't learn any of that in school. And my favorite example is software as a service metrics SaaS metrics. It's a whole branch of accounting that exists outside of GAAP, that is not taught in school and is the most valuable accounting theory that you can learn. And it's not taught in any program that I'm aware of. And it's been invented because traditional accounting can't measure subscription businesses properly, it can't value them. So we had to come up with all these metrics CAK and MRR and RR and LTV.
David Leary: [00:45:11] One of my favorite things to do with Blake is when we're at conferences and we don't go to many sessions, and occasionally we'll go to a session and like real accounting will be happening in the session. And Blake gets so excited, like that's real accounting. Like that's what we do. That's just real accounting that nobody ever nobody does anymore. Nobody does real accounting or it'll be a thing about crypto. But then the person's really showing the debits and credits of recording the transactions, like real accounting, not this fluff and theory stuff.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:36] Hazardous items in our live stream brings up one of the common objections to teaching a particular general ledger. Hazardous, says IMO, teaching different ERPs is a challenge because every company uses a different one. If you taught QuickBooks, Intuit would have a vested monetary interest and would and would create conflicts of interest. Okay, I go, David, I'm going to call bull.
David Leary: [00:46:00] Crap on this because when I was in college, you could go buy a mac at a super great discount from the bookstore. You could get Microsoft Office for $22, right? The whole that system of exploiting college kids and get them into hooked on a product has been there for as long as colleges have existed, including them getting them on their first credit card. Right? This has been there forever. I don't buy it.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:20] And I would say you don't have to teach this stuff in QuickBooks. You could do Xero, you could do both. You could do honestly. It could be any accounting product. It could be one of those free, weird free ones on Linux. The key is that you just need to get experience making the journal entries, booking the transactions in the software, and seeing the result in the financial statements. Yes, it's important to be able to do that on paper in T-accounts, but you also need to see what it looks like in an accounting system. I learned how to do it in a.
David Leary: [00:46:52] System called a bank statement, and match it to a transaction on the screen and truly reconcile.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:56] Something. Do a reconciliation, and it doesn't necessarily matter what the interface is like, because all reconciliations in software are fundamentally the same. You need to learn how to do it in software as well as on paper. Because guess what? In the real world you're going to be doing it in software. I mean, it would be like if doctors went to medical school and they just like looked at pictures in books and they never actually operated on a cadaver or something. Right. You need to actually, like, pull the organ out and hold it in your hand.
David Leary: [00:47:27] You're right. That's how I county education is kind of. You're right. Because if you were a painter, you can't just look at paintings or you're going to build a house. Yeah. You gotta.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:36] Let's just let's let's have all of our contractors just study architecture for four years and then go out and build houses. That'll go real well. Liz says, I agree this is a major problem, but don't most fields have this issue? Possibly, but perhaps to a lesser extent. I majored in music and we didn't spend four years doing music theory. Then go out in the real world, and we actually took lessons and played in string quartets and orchestra. You know, like if you want to be an orchestra musician, what's the best way to learn to be an orchestra musician? It's to play in student orchestras. So I've always said, like, the best way for accounting students to learn how to do audit would be if they actually worked on simulated audits, or even real ones in combination with firms in the area who could do audits for nonprofits or organizations that struggle to afford a proper audit, you could actually learn how to do it. You could take an auditing course and do an audit while you're learning how to audit. That would be the best way to learn, just like how I learned GAAP. And I could do the journal entries.
David Leary: [00:48:49] It upsets me that now that I'm sending a child to college, I'm going to pay all this money. And I look at my interaction with accounting grads, and why am I the first person to show you QuickBooks or teach you what a reconciliation is? Or, you know, hey, there's these things called hotkeys in Excel. All these things like how do they get through four years of school and nobody, nobody's telling them that these things exist. And it's it's a travesty of the education system.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:14] Boring. Accountant says I think a master's degree should equate to the experience requirement, and experience should equate to education requirements. Historic minority groups also have the greatest barrier to education. I agree, um, education is expensive and so allowing people to swap experience for education seems fair. And it seems especially reasonable, uh, for those who can't afford the education, regardless of what group you're in. Mad man Dan welcome mad man Dan mad man Dan says with the amount of offshoring occurring across the industry as a whole, these kids need a leg up. Having the theory down pat packed isn't the same as being able to hit the ground running with experience, 100% agree. Matthew says we were taught Peach Tree when I was in school. That's great. Any anything is better than nothing.
David Leary: [00:50:07] If I was back in school now and I was an accounting major, I would find my favorite restaurant or bar, find out who the owner is right there, all local, around the colleges. And because, you know, they have a point of sale, they got goods being shipped in. It's a and, you know, I guarantee you they have a complicated bookkeeping mess. And you go to any restaurant bar, it's a bookkeeping. Nice. And just be like, hey, I'll do your books for free alcohol and just do a trade for drinks, free alcohol and food, food and drinks and just do a trade. And you'd get all this experience and then you wouldn't spend any money on alcohol and food. Like, that's what I would do if I was in college right now.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:41] There you go. Maybe you can get lodging out of it too. You can live, live.
David Leary: [00:50:44] Live in the.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:45] Bar. Live on the bar. Boring. Accountant says I can also have an E and run my own tax firm for ten years, while also not qualifying for work experience requirements and not qualify for a CPA. Right. So that's the challenge the CPA has is because actually big picture. Let's step back for a second. The CPA is a license, but for 80% or more of CPAs it doesn't work like a license. It works like a certification because we don't actually need the license to do our work. So this is the problem is we treat the CPA as a profession like it's a license, when really we should be treating it like a certification. So stop putting barriers in place of people entering and create more value for the people who have it right. We're doing exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. What what the AICPA did under the leadership of Barry Melanson, was put more barriers in place, making it more expensive and more time consuming to become a CPA. Yeah, really, they should be working to create more value to people who have the CPA make the CPA more valuable, and that could mean restricting the practice rights of people who don't have it.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:00] That's one way to do it, to increase the quality of people in the profession overall, you know, create less competition for the people who have it. That would be one way to do it, or the other way is simply to like reduce the the cost while keeping quality high. David says the 150 hour rule is the only reason why masters of accounting programs have any value right now. I bet accounting leaders are fearful. Yes. Um, and that's happening. We're already seeing a masters of accounting programs not having enough students. Right. Because people don't want to become a CPA. They're not going to do the masters of accounting. These programs are running out of money and they're shutting down. And so, yes, if you are a bad masters of accounting program on the lower end of the scale, you should be fearful. But if you're a good Masters of accounting program, there's always people who are going to want to get a masters of tax or accounting because they know it increases the value because it's a good program. So these programs should stand on their own. They, you know, they they're protected right now by this requirement. And all it does is get more money to these universities and colleges that don't deserve it.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:10] Yeah, Tyler says. I also think some of this responsibility should be placed on the students themselves. You have to know that once you get out of college, you will need some actual experience. I agree, and so that's why I say the best thing you can do is to get a part time job doing bookkeeping or tax work while you are in school learning this stuff. It will help you immensely. I had that opportunity. I was freelancing when I was in school, so great. I don't know how my fellow students learned anything without that experience, Jarrett says. Our university used Ultra Techs and QBD QuickBooks desktop and did, uh, Vita required. We blew others starting at jobs out of out of the gate with experience compared to BYU. And this was a cheap university with just five good professors. That's awesome. So you're saying that you guys could outperform the BYU students because you had experience ultra tax and QuickBooks desktop? Awesome. Like spectacular. Jonathan says the Masters is only for prestige and the 150 hour rule, the more expensive it gets, the more it's like you are just polishing a turd. Wow. Shiny.
David Leary: [00:54:23] All right, I'm going to take you off the soapbox. The one 50 hours. Um, because we do have a little bit of follow up we have to cover. So remember we talked about evolve the last 2 or 3 episodes now. Yeah. The synapse.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:35] Evolve fiasco. Yeah.
David Leary: [00:54:37] So just to give a five second rewind, they were kind of tired of the FTX mess, right? They were in the bankruptcy mess with synapse. We talked about the pig butchering. Right. The Federal Reserve last week or two weeks ago. I'm trying to keep track now. They had some regulatory action against them. And now Blake, guess what? They were the victim of a cyber attack.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:58] So I'm really worried about this because I am probably in that cyber attack, having used a bunch of these apps that were on evolve, even though relay is no longer on evolve. I think my history could be in that.
David Leary: [00:55:11] Yeah. So what was exposed? It's about 33TB of data, including 20 gigs of outlook. Pst files from senior VP's. Right. Oh, God. Um, they unencrypted uh, un hashed names, addresses, social security tax IDs, numbers, dates of birth, account balances, email addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, um, on about 155,000 accounts. And this was all done to really is leading the story on this is Jason McCullough of fintech business Weekly.com. He's been hammering this story so much that he got a cease and desist from evolve Wow lawyers to stop publishing stuff, but I think he's doing the right thing. You got to protect the public. So they had a huge list of all the bank partners. So I'll run through the list of ones that I think our listeners might have clients on. So you have a firm Airwallex Dave Earnin Equityzen. Melio. Mercury pay stand relay row. Shopify via Treasury. Treasury is another app Treasury, stripe, Treasury, Tabcorp and Wyse. So if you use any of those products, you probably have P2 information that that's out there. It was an interesting the way this came out because they a lot of people, the, the lockbit, the Russian hackers that did this, they were claiming that they had a Federal Reserve hack, so they were claiming they were going to release data from the Federal Reserve Bank. And what it was is they actually had hacked into evolve. Oh, so it's not good like at this point, is this this bad luck? Is it evolve just horribly mismanaged, like, should the FDIC come in and just take over this shit show because it's just too many problems and I've heard about other things, even I remember when I was at Melio and like, customers would get an envelope and the check would be blank, like blank check stock. So we would be mailing out paper checks, blank check stock or all the checks. Let's say you paid like ten bills, write all the checks would be in one envelope. Like it's crazy.
Blake Oliver: [00:57:07] Well, so does this mean that evolve is going to have a bank run? Because if you have any accounts that have evolve account numbers and routing numbers, you should close those and move the funds out immediately, because that's on the dark web, and it doesn't take much to process an ACH transaction and pull that money out of your account. But you don't want people.
David Leary: [00:57:29] You don't have an account at evolve, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:57:34] But if you know, let's say you are using one of these apps that uses evolve still now a lot of them have moved off, right? Relay doesn't use evolve anymore. And there was another one that moved off Mercury Rho. Mercury Rho. So if you.
David Leary: [00:57:49] Have moved off.
Blake Oliver: [00:57:50] If you have an account that was recently set up at one of those fintechs, you're good. Your account number has not been leaked onto the dark web. But if you are at a fintech that is still using evolve, you should get off of that to one of these other banks.
David Leary: [00:58:08] Or if you just have a regular old bank account, evolve, you're a legit bank account. It may not be wise to be on there, um, because you need a new account number.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:14] Right? Because, uh, unless you somehow have like, positive pay turned on on your account, anyone can do an ACH from your account with the routing and account number.
David Leary: [00:58:24] The part I thought was funniest. So evolve has their main blog post or their official statement about this, and one of the bullets says there is no evidence that criminals accessed any customer funds. Now the funny thing about that, if we go back to we talked about with the synapse bankruptcy missed, none of the letters are reconciling. Like how does evolve even know no funds are missing.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:45] Like yeah they don't. They're just saying it.
David Leary: [00:58:49] Oh man. So I think just be aware all your clients I'm sure I think I've seen Mercury do a I've seen some of these apps and companies do either a public statement on, um, Twitter or LinkedIn or they've sent out emails to customers. Now, I think, um, TechCrunch reached out to some. I know they got like a statement from Melio and a firm. Those founders replied back in the in the article, I think everybody's going to get, oh, you got one year free of free credit monitoring. Oh, boy. I have like 25 of those subscriptions now, possibly for free.
Blake Oliver: [00:59:22] Uh, well, I'll tell everyone what I do is I lock my credit. I don't want anyone to be able to sign up because my Social Security number could be out there. My address. Like the information that you need to sign up for, like a loan or a bank account is not that much, and it's probably already out there somewhere on the dark web because of stuff like this happening over and over again. So just put locks on your credit with all three. What is it? Equifax, TransUnion and I forget the other one. Lock those down. You can create online accounts if you haven't already. You should do it. Create an online account for each of those for your social and put a lock on the credit. And it also has the side benefit of every time somebody wants you to sign up for like a store credit card, you can just say, oh, I'm sorry, I can't do it because I've locked my credit. I got to go and lock it before I can do anything. It has. It has a great impact of reducing the number of credit cards you sign up for. All right. David. Well, I think that is it for us for this week. Thanks everyone who joined us live. If you are listening on the podcast feed, don't forget you can subscribe to us on YouTube. Search for The Accounting Podcast on YouTube.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:33] Subscribe. Hit that notification icon. You will get notified when we go live, and you can join us on our live streams and chat with us. It's so great having you all here today. Um, don't forget you can earn free CPE for listening to this episode. You. If you were hanging on to this episode for an hour, you'd deserve an hour of continuing professional education credit. Go to Earmarked App and create your free account. Uh, when this episode goes live. Well, it's live now because we're live streaming, but basically in a few days we're going to turn the recording into a CPE course. You can then find that on the accounting podcast channel on the earmark app, and take the quiz to get your CPE. What I'm trying to say, in a very roundabout way, is it takes us a few days. So if you are watching this on YouTube, it may not be available yet, but you can go get CPE for all the other episodes you've watched. And if you want to support us, subscribe to the earmark app. It's just $130 a year right now. It's going up at the end of July to 150. So subscribe now. Lock that price in and we will honor that price, uh, going forward. And I think that's everything we have to share. Are there any other things that we didn't mention yet? No.
David Leary: [01:01:48] I got to catch a flight and you're headed to the beach. I think that's the plan.
Blake Oliver: [01:01:52] Have a great fourth, David. Bye.