David: 4.5 stars, 259 reviews – QuickBooks Apps; 4.8 stars, 863 reviews – Shopify App Store; 5 stars, 456 reviews, BigCommerce App Store. “Finally, we have a real undo option. This solution is a game changer for anyone doing bookkeeping on the cloud.” Geni Whitehouse, CPA, and international keynote speaker. “Knowing that any unwanted changes or transactions can be rewound back in time is a lifesaver.” Kellie Parks, Calmwaters Cloud Accounting. Stay tuned to hear more from our sponsor Rewind later in the episode.
[00:00:34] Episode Preview
Blake Oliver: My former employer FloQast raised $110 million this year at a unicorn, over-a-billion-dollar valuation. I'm very happy about that, given that I own stock in FloQast. I no longer work there. I'm not sure how I would feel if I did, if I was on the marketing team right now, over at FloQast, because do you wanna know what they did with a good chunk of that $110 million that they raised?
Blake Oliver: Today is Sunday, December 19. This is The Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.
David Leary: And I'm David Leary.
Blake Oliver: Merry Christmas. David,
[00:01:18] David's Early Christmas Present - Interns!
David Leary: I've already gotten my gift. Make Christmas to you, and happy holidays.
Blake Oliver: You’ve received your gift?
David Leary: I’ve received my gift. Gotten that ... This is not an English podcast, so don’t get me on that.
Blake Oliver: What did you get?
David Leary: My interns worked on Friday ... For four hours.
Blake Oliver: You were telling me you hired some interns for ...
David Leary: Yep. So, they're accounting majors. They interned at BDO last summer, over the summer. I think they're juniors. Maybe they're gonna be seniors? Don't quote me on that-
Blake Oliver: You should probably know this ...
David Leary: The math stuff, right? Like, literally, they've never seen QuickBooks. They've never used apps, and I had them- within four hours, they were using AutoEntry; using Receipt Bank; using Relay, and using QuickBooks Online, and one other app that I had them using. I'm all caught up. There's nothing sitting around in AutoEntry, or, um, Receipt Bank anymore, and all my virtual cards from Divvy have been frozen and then recreated inside of Relay. They went in with no training, and in four hours, they knocked all that stuff out. It's so awesome.
Blake Oliver: Wow. I'm impressed!
David Leary: Now, the next step is to now start reconciling because I still can't get the bank statements from either PNC, or Divvy into QuickBooks- or not bank statements, but my bank feeds, so now, we have to go get the bank statements and take those next steps. But this goes back to talking about practical knowledge, right? They've never seen QuickBooks. Like I probably taught them three years of education in a four-hour afternoon.
Blake Oliver: Well, my question is what was their reaction to all this?
David Leary: I think they fundamentally get it that you don't have to type stuff into the accounting system. I don't know if they fully digested it completely yet, but the great thing- this is what's sad, right? These students that are coming out as accounting majors. They're super bright. They picked up on it instantly; could navigate, jump around in the apps. They have the technical chops to do this, and they probably aren't gonna get that when they go to work for a big firm or something.
Blake Oliver: No, no. They'll spend six months auditing cash.
David Leary: I dunno, that's what I told 'em, like, "You're just gonna get real-world experience from this; like real deal, real stuff," and I'm probably the typical small business owner. They're asking me, "What's this transaction? Why did you use this credit card just this one random time? And why'd you enter this receipt six times?" I don't know. I forwarded the 'internet I bought on an airplane' email like 10 times, apparently; I kept getting the email, and I kept forwarding it.
Blake Oliver: I feel good about the holidays because I did all my Christmas shopping yesterday on Saturday. Got it all done in one day. It was a miracle.
David Leary: In person? Online? Did you do the ...?
Blake Oliver: We drove around in person. We did some online; didn't have the kid for the day, so we were able to get an amazing amount of work done. Santa is all ready. The stockings are gonna be stuffed, and I feel like I can actually relax.
[00:04:03] Ho, Ho, Ho, Earmark is Almost Live!
Blake Oliver: Oh, and the big thing is the Earmark app has been submitted to both Google play and Apple App Store. It's in review-
David Leary: What’s the next step of this process?
Blake Oliver: Hopefully, by the time our listeners hear this episode, at least one, if not both of those apps will be live in the app stores, in their respective app stores.
David Leary: So, do they review it early on in the process when you're just in the beta, still, or [CROSSTALK] wait until now, and now, they’re starting the review from scratch?
Blake Oliver: When you submit is when they review, but they're pretty quick about it. It's within a day; 48 hours with Apple. They'll tell me if there's anything wrong with the app, and then I'll go back, and we'll make changes, but hopefully, they don't find any issues-
David Leary: It's a rapid turnaround, yeah. It depends on who you used to help you build the app if they were familiar with that process.
Blake Oliver: Yes. That probably would help, right? Of course, I'm not.
[00:04:55] The Kronos Not-so-Merry Christmas ...
David Leary: Unfortunately, there's a bunch of people that are not gonna have a good Christmas, if you are a company, or an employee of a company that uses the Kronos HR systems.
Blake Oliver: Yes. I heard about this- the ransomware attack. Another big ransomware attack hit Kronos. It’s not called Kronos anymore because they merged with Ultimate Software. It's now Ultimate Kronos Group. They provide HR, and payroll solutions to large employers. What do you know about this hack?
David Leary: Kind of working a little bit backwards, apparently there's some open-source code out there that lots of companies use to run server-based stuff, and somebody discovered an exploit in it. This is one of the worst exploits somebody's ever discovered. Everybody's being attacked. They went really hard at Kronos. So, Kronos, if you're familiar with it, is like timesheet/HR/payroll-software stuff. They didn't communicate well. They basically have told their customers to implement their- what did they call it? What's the word they actually used here?
Blake Oliver: Oh, it was like contingency- business continuity protocols.
David Leary: Yes. Even though they didn’t have any themselves.
[00:06:04] Kronos Handing Out Lumps of Coal ...
Blake Oliver: This is probably the quote you were looking for. This is the one that stuck out to me: “Given that it may take up to several weeks to restore system availability, we strongly recommend that you evaluate and implement alternative business continuity protocols to the affected UKG solutions.” That's what they basically told their customers.
David Leary: In the comment threads on their blog posts, people are on fire about that type of a comment. It's to the point where the vice president’s coming in and replying to people personally in the threads.
Blake Oliver: On their own website?
David Leary: Yeah. What it is, apparently, it’s this thing called Kronos Private Cloud. I’m like, okay, what is this? So, I start working backwards, and then, I actually go to the website for this. Kronos Private Cloud, they refer to as KPC Security. “Kronos offers a hosting environment built upon a secure infrastructure, which undergoes examinations from an independent auditor in accordance with AICPA ...” and then it has all the SOC compliance, blah-blah-blah-
Blake Oliver: SOC 2, probably.
David Leary: SOC 2, SOC 3, and privacy, and all of these types of things. It’s located in a third-party data center, blah-blah-blah ... But here we go again, right?
Blake Oliver: It's hosting
David Leary: You outsource your tech, your IT, on these host environments, and they fail again.
Blake Oliver: It's because hosting is not true cloud. It's fundamentally insecure. That's what this was. It was a shared environment, or it was an environment where maybe you had your own server, but obviously, the hackers were able to get into the whole system and block it all down with ransomware, but, yeah, it’s not true SaaS.
David Leary: My understanding is that Kronos is like a physical machine for clocking in and out you could have on prem, but it talks to- it phones home. And so, you're seeing IT people that are like, “I'm shutting down all ports. I won't even let your devices call out anymore,” and then you can't even use these devices without it phoning home. It's super messy, and shame on them because this has been going on now for everybody on these hosted environments getting ransomwared.
Blake Oliver: And what a terrible time of year for this to happen for payroll, and timekeeping because it's- they became aware of it on December 11. They're saying that it's not gonna be fixed before the end of the year. This is when HR departments are scrambling to close out the year, so they can issue the year-end forms-
David Leary: Well, year-end forms, but not only that, like paychecks the week of Christmas.
Blake Oliver: Yeah.
David Leary: How about that? A lot of people do Christmas bonuses, those types of things. It is not a good situation. I think companies are just having to manually calculate payroll and cut paper checks, assuming they even have paper checks to write payroll with.
Blake Oliver: I don't know how they're doing it. Affected companies mentioned in CFO.com are City of Cleveland, Tesla, Temple University, Clemson University, the UK supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Apparently, UKG told the City of Cleveland that the ransomware attack may have also compromised employee information, like names, addresses, social security numbers, and employee IDs, so that creates a huge risk now for those clients.
David Leary: As of right now, they shut everything down, but there's no sign they've gotten things back online; are the backups corrupted? I’m just kinda shaking my head, like here we go again ...
[00:09:24] Clarifying Private Cloud
Blake Oliver: I just wanna be very clear about what I mean when I say this is- and what we mean – you and me, David – when we say private cloud versus true SaaS. This is their desktop software that has been hosted on remote servers that are managed by UKG, Kronos, or some subsidiary, or third party that they've contracted with. It's really, essentially not that different than if you hosted it in your own office; it’s just you're giving that job to somebody else.
David Leary: The reason you're giving the job to somebody else is because you're sold the bill of promises-
Blake Oliver: That it’s gonna be secure-
David Leary: -that they're gonna make it more secure. I don't think you're any more secure, or less secure by having it there because-
Blake Oliver: It could be worse-
David Leary: -I think actually you're probably less secure because if you had it in-house and that server was back there, and you looked at it every day, you'd be like, “I probably should set myself up with a backup plan,” or just a secondary, what is this – alternative contingency plan. But if you don't have it, you're just assuming it's all being handled for you. I mean, that's what you're paying for.
Blake Oliver: Yeah, you’re paying for the security-
David Leary: And that's the problem I have with all this. This keeps happening, and you’re paying- this is the only thing you're paying for is the security of this- to maintain the security of this server. That's why you're outsourcing this.
Blake Oliver: And the convenience, right, of not having to maintain it yourself and all that, but the security is the weak point there, I think. Hopefully, they can get this fixed. They'll probably just end up paying the ransom, right, which is what most companies do. They just pay the ransom, and then they hope they get the data back.
David Leary: Yeah, it just says a ransomware incident. Obviously, they're not clear on it. They'll probably have to pay because ... But this is going for- these are pretty big businesses. People are not gonna ...
Blake Oliver: No, it’s gonna create a big year-end- like you said, the Christmas checks, right? The bonus checks. What's gonna happen? Is Christmas canceled for these people?
[00:11:12] Thank you to our sponsor Tallyfor
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[00:12:27] Hubdoc Doesn't Wanna Play Fetch Anymore
Blake Oliver: Let's continue on this trend then of the negative news, or the news that might cancel Christmas, and then we'll get into the positive stuff, right? We'll have our warm, uh, fireside present opening. So, first, we're gonna go through this Scrooge kind of narrative.
Well, here's something that may upset folks, uh, in the Xero world, or just users of Hubdoc. Hubdoc is shutting down fetch. They sent out an email back on December 1 that was forwarded to me by a listener. Thank you, Eric. It says, “Important update on fetching documents in Hubdoc (blah-blah-blah-blah) Banks, and suppliers are increasingly restricting what the fetch functionality can do. This means that fetch connections don't always work ...”
David Leary: I was gonna say ... Shutting down? That implies, like, it's been working amazingly for the last four years.
Blake Oliver: And I should probably explain what I mean by fetch. Fetch is when Hubdoc, or similar apps log into your bank account, and grab bank statements, and other documents, such as check images, and pull them into the system so that they can be processed with all your other invoices, and receipts that you’ve forwarded in. Fetch is one of those things that- has anyone figured this out, David? No one has, I think ...
David Leary: You're basically screen scraping the bank websites to grab this data, and every time, they change the screen, the UI, but now the banks are purposely blocking these things.
Blake Oliver: Right, because the banks have built their own APIs now and are shutting down the insecure connections, which, you know, probably shouldn't exist, right? Screen scraping is so insecure. But, yeah, because of this, Hubdoc has, uh, “because of this declining performance, we've made the difficult decision to close most fetch connections on April 27, 2022.” Come end of April, they are shutting down fetch.
Direct connections with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Stripe will continue, and they do plan to build and introduce more direct connections with Hubdoc to better meet expectations for accuracy and efficiency. But, yeah, if you're using one of those hundreds of banks that does not have a direct connection through Xero's APIs, and Hubdoc's APIs, you're not gonna have it. All the documents that have been previously fetched will remain in Hubdoc. Really, it's basically turning Hubdoc into processing via upload, or email. That's what it will allow you to do.
David Leary: And I think AutoEntry went down this path. They partnered with somebody to do fetch, and they wound up pulling back on it. It's so unreliable that you're better off just telling people, “Manually download your statements, upload your statements. Let us (either Hubdoc, Receipt Bank, AutoEntry) scan them, and then, give you good results,” versus giving you the impression it may work cause it’s actually a worse experience when it doesn't download them.
Blake Oliver: One of our sponsors has a solution that could help. If you have heard Client Hub advertising on our show, they have a feature where you can task clients every month, automatically; create a task for them to give you the bank statement. While kind of annoying to have to do that rather than just being able to go get it yourself, that's a helpful thing-
David Leary: I wish the banks would just email them. Then, the people could automate these things, right? They'll mail it in the mail, a physical copy in the mail, but they won't email you a PDF. If they just emailed PDFs out, you could forward those to apps like Receipt Bank ... There's so much you could do if they would just-
Blake Oliver: The problem is, it would- email’s like a postcard. So, it'd be like sending a bank statement without an envelope. That doesn't work, security wise. The other solution is use Relay.
David Leary: Yeah, just get a real bank; get a bank that cares about cloud accounting, cares about accountants, and bookkeepers. Exactly. That's why I'm just- I'm done for 2022. I cannot fight with apps, and crappy bank feeds, and all this stuff anymore.
Blake Oliver: Well, you don't wanna fight with banks, and crappy apps, but there are two apps- two companies, anyway, that wanna fight, and that is H&R Block, and Square, and you predicted this, David! Weeks ago-
David Leary: Two episodes ago. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: Weeks ago, you said H&R Block is gonna sue Square. Why did you say that? What is the story?
David Leary: H&R Block advertises Block, a lot of times. It's kind of their-
Blake Oliver: Yeah, “Hire Block ...”
David Leary: They’re a 60-year-old company. That's their edge, right? When they wanna be cool going after the millennials, they just call themselves Block. And so, they have a tax product; obviously, H&R Block does. Remember Square bought Credit Karma's tax product when Intuit acquired Credit Karma, and they rebranded it to Cash App Tax? It's a free tax product; competes directly with H&R Block’s tax product. H&R Block also has banking services. They basically have their own neobank just like everybody else does. And so, there's that big overlap. Essentially, their argument is that Square's capitalizing on the goodwill, and consumer trust cultivated by Block since 1955.
Blake Oliver: Well, and you forgot the most important part, I think, which is that Square just rebranded to Block.
David Leary: Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry ... That’s the thing that-
Blake Oliver: Jack Dorsey was splitting his time between Twitter, and Square. Talk about an overachiever, right – being CEO of two of these massive companies at once. He left Twitter to focus entirely on Square, and he really believes in blockchain technology, and cryptocurrency, so that was the reason, I take it, for the rebrand. Now, it's not Square, it's Block. You’re saying that because Square, now Block, has a tax-prep product that H&R Block is not gonna stand for this. It's totally ...
[00:17:54] H&R 'Meta' Block?
David Leary: H&R Block's saying that they are already experiencing consumers that are confused. I don't know if that's true or not, but they're stating that, and then - I don't wanna say Square - Block, formerly known as Square, they had a Twitter post talking about the name actually represents neighborhood blocks. So, on your block, you're gonna find sellers; you’re gonna find blockchain. You might find a block party of music-
Blake Oliver: Really? That's what they're-
David Leary: -and obstacles. I don't even know what the hell the obstacles are, but they have that. So, they're, they're really trying to make Square be this- Block be this existential thing. Now, here's the funny thing. H&R Block, I talked about they have their own digital bank account. So, they’ve partnered to do that with a company called Meta Financial. Now, here's the really funny part about this-
Blake Oliver: Oh, no ...
David Leary: So, who just rebranded to Meta?
Blake Oliver: Facebook.
David Leary: Facebook! So, Facebook had to pay Meta Financial, and so, Meta gave up all rights to their naming for 60 million bucks.
Blake Oliver: That's a pretty good price.
David Leary: It's kind of funny that H&R Block, now, is kind of in both ends of these massive rebrands of these two massive tech companies. Now, here's the thing. This is gonna settle. How much is H&R Block gonna get, if Meta Financial, who nobody even knew existed, got $60 million from Facebook? They’re gonna get $500 million, a billion dollars out of this deal.
Blake Oliver: So, H&R Block is a public company, right. What is their market cap? Okay, I just looked it up – $4.19 billion. So, they're not gonna go quietly.
David Leary: Oh, geez, Jack could just buy them and be done [CROSSTALK] They spent $29 billion on Afterpay.
Blake Oliver: They spent a lot of money. Yeah.
David Leary: $4 billion’s nothing.
Blake Oliver: Square, now Block- Block’s market cap is $77 billion. They should just buy H&R Block.
David Leary: Wow.
Blake Oliver: Then they could have- they could have tax services for their crypto clients. There you go.
David Leary: All right. You heard it here first. Actually, it makes a lotta sense.
Blake Oliver: And then, Block-
David Leary: This is all set up.
Blake Oliver: -would own ... They’d own Wave, so they’d own a GL, right, ‘cause H&R Block bought Wave ...
David Leary: Square would get their GL. They’d get their GL.
Blake Oliver: I mean a bad one, but ... Right?
David Leary: They would get other things on the “block” because, in these little city blocks they keep imagining, what's on every corner of these little city blocks?
Blake Oliver: An H&R ...
David Leary: Your tax shop. Exactly. This actually makes a lot of sense.
Blake Oliver: And maybe it'll happen. If it happens, you heard it here first.
David Leary: Block will acquire H&R Block; you’ve heard it here first ... Or it’s gonna be a massive settlement, but if their market cap’s only $4 billion, there's gotta be a point where like, why would they settle? Just buy ‘em. It’s gonna be cheaper.
Blake Oliver: Well, we'll just have to leave that to our predictions. We’ve made one prediction for 2022, and we'll follow up with that on our next episode, the year-end episode, where we do our predictions, but I wanna move on now to one of your favorite websites, David. This is a site that you have used-
David Leary: Now, are we still in the bad news category, or are you moving?
Blake Oliver: Well, I think it is, actually, bad news-
David Leary: Okay. I still have bad news, too. Continue on ...
Blake Oliver: Okay, good.
[00:20:45] Thank you to our sponsor, Rewind
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[00:22:03] Payment Automation is on a Slow Roll in the SMB World
Blake Oliver: So, PYMNTS.com ... You've found a lot of articles; you've sourced a lot of stories from there because you’re in the payments world, what with your experience working at Melio. They do a lot of payments stuff, fintech stuff. They did their own survey recently, and they found, PYMNTS found that just 30% – less than a third – of small, and medium businesses have begun to automate their accounts-payable processes to deploy instant payments compared to 58% of larger businesses; almost twice as many large businesses have adopted payment automation, instant payments. Only 30% of SMBs have done that. I just thought it was an interesting data point. I mean, that's a big difference.
[00:22:53] When Same-Day is Still too Slow
David Leary: I saw an article I read this weekend. I didn't bring it to the show ‘cause it felt a little ‘inside baseball,’ but it was about how next-day ACH isn't good enough. Small businesses are going to start demanding ... They're used to this instant deposit stuff, and they really need the instant deposits. This is the next wave we're gonna see with payments, with small businesses, is they'll adopt, if they know they're gonna get the money instantly. They can't have these three-, four-day windows for ACH; even next-day ACH isn't fast enough. They really want the instant money transfers in the same way, if I pay you through Venmo, you can instant deposit it through your debit card.
Blake Oliver: Yeah. That's what people are used to now.
David Leary: That's gonna really push this next. That's the next wave I read in the article, kind of pushing that way.
[00:23:32] Intuit Poaching - Maybe You Need to Up Your Game?
David Leary: Something that got a lot of people upset this week was Intuit. Jan Roberg on Twitter – Roberg Tax – she posted a letter from Intuit with the title of the letter, “We're hiring! Earn additional income working from your home or office.” This letter was mailed to her employees at her firm's address.
Blake Oliver: Let me get this straight into it. Intuit, which has had ... They've been in trouble in the past for marketing to the clients of ProAdvisors. Supposedly, if your client is linked to you as an accountant in QuickBooks, then Intuit has said, “We're not gonna sell QuickBooks Live to your clients.” That's like a commitment they made, but they have failed to do that many, many times, right? For whatever reason, it just keeps happening. So, now, you're telling me that, after all that, Intuit is mailing pitches, or offer letters, or just advertisements to my employees at my firm's office?
David Leary: That's what happened. So, I'll read her exact tweet. “Hey, Intuit! Thanks for sending job-offer letters to my employees at my office’s address. Seriously? If you wanna poach my employees, at least use their home address. Yes, they're awesome, and you do not deserve them.” And, of course, this got everybody fired up on Twitter.
I actually tweeted on top of it ‘cause I was thinking about this a lot. Shame on Intuit for doing this, right? Yes. Totally shame on Intuit, but Intuit wouldn't have done this if they didn't first. They're a big, huge marketing company. They probably sent a hundred of these out once and got responses, and so, that's why they did it again, and they did it massively ... All these people on Twitter were like, "I got one, too ..." It's because they work. So, really, in a way, like, do we shame the firm owners whose underappreciated, underpaid staff are jumping at these offers?
Blake Oliver: I mean, it's just ... C’mon. It’s like ... Can you imagine any other vendor, any other software developer sending out offer letters to our employees, our staff accountants at our offices, in December, in November, before tax season, trying to recruit them? Can I read some of this letter?
David Leary: I think the important part to read really is the benefits; those bullets, right?
Blake Oliver: And I have to agree with you, David. Like, if your staff are actually attracted to this, then that means that you've got a retention problem because we know, actually, that TurboTax Live does not pay very well. Like, it's bottom of the market. Um, but it is flexible, right? So, that's like the perk. The headline is: "We're hiring," right below the Intuit logo. "We're hiring! Earn additional income working from your home or office. Here at Intuit, we value your expertise as a tax professional and invite you to join Intuit's remote TurboTax Live team. You can continue to work remotely from your home or office, your choice."
David Leary: Your office, the one your other employer's paying for.
Blake Oliver: "We provide an easy way for you to reach more customers who are looking for your TurboTax expertise. You can empower and educate customers helping them to improve their financial success and gain confidence in their taxes. I think it's interesting that they're saying, “Your TurboTax expertise,” because like most professional tax people don't use TurboTax to do taxes. So, like, why would you have TurboTax expertise? [CROSSTALK]
David Leary: ‘Cause they probably sent this to the people that are paying for the Pro series TurboTax stuff.
Blake Oliver: “While working remotely, you can earn an attractive hourly wage plus overtime during peak hours with a schedule that works best for you, and you can expand your skills with virtual training as you collaborate with fellow team members to solve tax challenges.” And then it's got the, “Interested? Go here ...” You were gonna talk about the benefits, David, right?
David Leary: Yeah. So, they list the benefits in this, and this is where I think, if you're a firm owner, these are the things you need to compete on. They talk about it's a work schedule that's right for you. You get Intuit employee benefits, and that, to be honest, being a former Intuit employee, it is the top of ... Nobody's probably even seen, especially if you've just worked for accounting, and bookkeeping firms, you have not ever even imagined benefits like this before. It's like the gold standard. Then, you get virtual training, and you can work remotely, right?
Blake Oliver: “Create a work schedule that's right for you.” That's not something that you hear a lot from accounting firms in busy season.
David Leary: But I found a related article that kind of came through for me this week. So, this is actually a post that's on- it's a website called eFinancialCareers. It’s some sort of job-posting website of some type. This is a post by Intuit on this site, and it talks about, “Intuit's culture of positivity and inclusion enables tax and bookkeeping experts to help small businesses, and small business consumers in navigating stressful financial decisions.”
And if you really read this, they profile two, or three TurboTax Live, or QuickBooks Live bookkeepers, or accountants, and they profile them. They're really talking about how ... This one person’s name is Qu; has worked remotely in her home in Los Angeles. She joined in 2013; in May of 2020, she was offered a year-round position at Intuit. What she loves about it is the flexibility to choose a schedule that accommodates her personal life. She works early in the morning in order to take care of her elderly parents later in the day. “It's just so flexible, and I'm so grateful.” Um, another person's talking about ...
These are the things people want. People want diversity. It's talking about how they've consciously made an effort at Intuit to hire a diverse mix of cultures and backgrounds, and they also provide training on how to speak to other clients, regardless of their background, race, age, gender, sexual orientation. They talk about the values of being supportive. You can reach out to any of your colleagues, managers, experts, and you're gonna get support in the business units.
So, if your firm's not doing these types of things ... Continuing education. They're helping them become enrolled agents. If you're not doing these things for your employees, of course, Intuit’s gonna poach your employees. Intuit’s not secret about it. I mean, they’re blog post here that says the values- what the employees are valuing.
Blake Oliver: Yeah, and I think the flexibility- I mean, there's a lot of good stuff in there. I think the flexibility is the winner because a lot of firms still, even though we've gone through this whole remote work thing, are not offering flexibility in terms of hours. You may be able to work from home, but you’ve still gotta be on the clock. There was a Twitter thread. I'll take you to another Twitter thread, David-
David Leary: Before you jump to that one, let me summarize this last powerful sentence they have in this. “A career at Intuit is for those who want to help other people and leave clients feeling positive and valued, and this approach is twofold. What works for the clients is clearly also working for Intuit tax and bookkeeping experts.” That's an amazing pitch line, right?
Blake Oliver: It's good messaging. It’s good.
David Leary: To summarize it that simply; like, why would you wanna work for my firm? You're gonna be able to leave clients feeling positive and valued, and you're gonna feel the same way. Super strong message.
Blake Oliver: Yeah. You're gonna make a difference. Yep, it’s good. It’s good. I think a lot-
David Leary: So, you have a Twitter thread?
[00:30:09] Tax Season Vacation?
Blake Oliver: Yeah, it was related to the flexibility; not so much the messaging, but just more like the practical thing about working for a firm. One of the things that sucks is the busy season schedule, and Brian Wolfe, CPA asked, back on December 1 on Twitter, he said, “Hey #TaxTwitter, do your firms have a no-vacation-time-off policy during tax season, February 1 - April 15th?”
He got quite a few responses ranging from Josh Lance saying, “We allow vacation time during tax season. As long as it's planned for, we can manage capacity and expectations. Most everyone on our tax season will ¬– I think he meant team – will take some vacation time during tax season.” There’s one approach, right? It was just, as long as you plan for it, you can do it. And then, there's people that are like, “Absolutely not! Never! Are you kidding?!”
David Leary: What's gonna happen to those employees if they work for that firm, and they get a letter from Intuit?
Blake Oliver: To me, those are the kinds of employees who would say, “Whatever. I’ll take the pay cut. I'll go work for Intuit because I get the ultimate flexibility of being able to set my own hours.”
David Leary: My understanding is Intuit lets them do the stock purchase plan, so you get to buy Intuit stock at 15% below market.
Blake Oliver: Oh, that’s really good.
David Leary: At the beginning of a six- usually it's a three-month, or six-month window. Whatever the price is on, whatever, June 1, you get to buy it at that price; 15% below that price, as it goes up. So, even that is a hard thing to compete with, if that's the only thing they offer, the way Intuit’s stock’s been.
[00:31:43] Thank you to our sponsor Client Hub
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[00:33:08] Fact! FloQast Revisits The Office
Blake Oliver: We get to pivot our show, David, now that we're at about the halfway point, to redemption. What is positive this week? I know I have something that’s-
David Leary: Jump right in.
Blake Oliver: Well, okay, this is just hilarious, and it's gonna either be amazing or it's going to be a laughingstock. My former employer, FloQast, raised $110 million this year at a unicorn, over-a-billion-dollar valuation. I'm very happy about that, given that I own stock in FloQast. I no longer work there. I'm not sure how I would feel if I did, if I was on the marketing team right now, over at FloQast, because do you wanna know what they did with a good chunk of that? $110 million that they raised?
David Leary: They finished that, bank-reconcile tool? They built, um, some new way to manage your client relationship, or the monthly close- they did something to improve the monthly close? I'm just throwing some ... You know, like a tech startup. You've got a feature- hire product managers, some engineers ...
Blake Oliver: Good guesses. I don’t know if that's happened or will happen, but, uh, what did happen is that FloQast created a subsidiary called FloQast Studios. Yes, FloQast is located in Los Angeles. They have opened their own entertainment studio, and they are producing- they have already produced a web series, a six-episode web series called PBC to be released in January. The best way I can describe it from the trailer is that it is a, uh ... It’s as if The Office was just a bunch of accountants. They clearly used the FloQast headquarters, where I used to work, as the setting for this, during the lockdowns, I think. Yeah, it was-
David Leary: And not only is it like The Office, they have two people from The Office in it, which is kind of ... I don't know.
Blake Oliver: Yeah. Kate Flannery, and Creed Bratton from The Office are regulars, apparently. Well, I don't know if they're regulars, ‘cause they're not in the picture, but they're in this show. So, they got them. They got Danny Trejo. My feeling on this is it's either gonna be amazing ... If it's funny, it's gonna be amazing ‘cause everyone's always said, why aren't there any shows about accountants, right? There's no shows about accountants. We've got doctors, we've got lawyers, all the professions-
David Leary: Policemen-
Blake Oliver: Policemen; firemen.
David Leary: There’s no shows about plumbers. There's no shows about construction people ...
Blake Oliver: Plumbers? Super Mario Brothers, David. They had their own movie ... But there’s no accountants.
David Leary: But that wasn't about their construction work, or their plumbing work.
Blake Oliver: Well, none of these shows are about the actual work.
David Leary: That’s true; that’s true.
Blake Oliver: Like, do you think any of these medical shows are about the medicine? No.
David Leary: That’s true.
Blake Oliver: It’s about the drama, the interpersonal drama. The studio is headed by entertainment-industry executive Josh Sims, and digital creator Drew Carrick, best known for his Rapping CPA persona, who will be brainstorming and advising on creative content. Something to look forward to. It releases, I believe it's January 13 when it starts streaming. You can look for that on YouTube. They filmed it over 10 days in LA. I really wanna know how much they spent on this, David.
[00:36:08] What's the Real End Game for FloQast Studios?
David Leary: The article in Accounting Today has a quote at the end by Carrick. It says, “Next year, if it's popular, maybe we pitch to Netflix.” This feels like the most LA thing, right? You know, in LA, every waiter, and waitress is an actor, or actress. Is FloQast just a front? ‘Cause the people- everybody at FloQast – founders, etc. – they really wanna be in the movie industry, and like FloQast was just an ends to a mean to get into the movie industry.
Blake Oliver: Well, you know, Mike Whitmire, CEO/founder at FloQast, he's an accountant. He used to work at- he worked for one of the Big Four in audit, auditing companies in like Santa Monica. He's from LA. This was one of those things that he would just like toss out during brainstorm meetings as, you know, a funny idea, but he actually did it! I can't believe it actually happened. This was-
David Leary: They set it up as a subsidiary, right? This is like a Dave Barrett Expensify move; you know what I mean?
Blake Oliver: Well, and maybe, Expensify should buy FloQast. It would be perfect. They’d be a great cultural fit because, you know, what did Expensify go do recently? A few years ago, they went and spent what probably was their entire marketing budget for the year on a Super Bowl ad that featured 2 Chainz rapping. I wonder what kind of return that delivered. Probably nothing, right? Otherwise, you would’ve heard more about it. That's what I wonder about this – is this actually going to, after spending millions of dollars, what has to be millions of dollars, on this, is it gonna deliver a meaningful return on investment, given that-
[00:37:32] Expensify and the Case of the Missing Accounting Conversation
David Leary: Speaking of Expensify, I don't have a news article, but I did get a text, a photograph, a cellphone photograph, of a deck from the Expensify investor presentation.
Blake Oliver: Oh, really?
David Leary: Basically, it has their roadmap from back in the day, how they added travel, and invoicing, and bills, and card, and now, they’re working on payroll, and expenses.
Blake Oliver: Is this an old deck?
David Leary: I just got the screenshot this week, and the thing that's still grayed out that they haven't started yet is accounting.
Blake Oliver: Oh ... Yeah, that's inevitable, I think. I mean, given how ambitious- [CROSSTALK]
David Leary: -they build out the super app ... We’ve talked about super apps before.
Blake Oliver: Given how ambitious Barrett is ... He wants to turn accounting into a conversation; all just chat-based-
David Leary: Maybe he should try to- maybe he should make a play at H&R Block. If you're building one of these super apps, maybe you should buy H&R Block. This could be a very valuable property all of a sudden.
[00:38:27] Do You Want Your Coworkers to Determine Your Salary?
Blake Oliver: That's right. Well, I’ve got another story about Expensify since we're on the topic. This headline is from CBSNews.com. “At tech company, Expensify, workers vote on each other's pay raises.” So, we've all known that Expensify is a non-traditional company. There's only 140 people who work there, and that’s one of the things that’s amazing-
David Leary: I always knew this, but this is like an article; it's like out in the public.
Blake Oliver: Yeah. I don't know how it came about; if they pitched it to the press, or if it leaked, and then they decided to go with it. Who knows? It's a really deep dive, and they got a bunch of people to talk about it. Barrett's quoted.
Here's how it works. If you work at Expensify, here's how you get paid. Negotiating for pay is banned. You cannot negotiate your pay at Expensify. When you get hired, it is set based on their internal metrics, and you either accept it or you don't. That's the first thing. Then you start working there.
How does the comp review process work? At most companies, it's one of those things where it happens annually. You negotiate; maybe you go get an offer, and you use that as leverage; all that traditional kind of stuff, right? Well, there's none of that at Expensify. Every six months, every employee at Expensify gets the choice – it's voluntary – to vote on compensation. So, your compensation is set by your fellow employees. This includes, apparently, David Barrett.
It's voluntary, and what you do is, if you're an employee, every six months, you log into some sort of app and you vote. The way that you vote that you see two cards on the screen, side-by-side – an employee name, and their accomplishments for the last six months, next to employee number two, and their accomplishments for the last six months. You're asked the question, “Who do you think should be paid more?”
David Leary: Oh, it actually has the names. It just doesn't show the accomplishments-
Blake Oliver: No, it shows the names, too, and you have to click on which one you think should be paid more. You keep doing this until you have voted on every possible match, which means there's as many as 9,000 pairs that you have to vote on, so this process can take 10 hours per employee to go through this.
9,000 votes, right? So, you sit there and, you go through this for 10 hours. The quote about this from the head of marketing is incredible. It’s Gabi Horowitz. She says, “There definitely have been weekends when I spent my whole weekend doing comp review. It feels really important. It's a way we can all acknowledge and reward each other for our hard work.”
David Leary: I got our exit. We're going to make a show of what it's like to work at Expensify.
Blake Oliver: That would be a good show. That would be a really good show. They’d probably be in on it. They'd probably be happy to use the brand-
David Leary: They could spin up their venture, or their-
Blake Oliver: Oh, my God ... FloQast Studios could make the show. Um, we'll produce it. First of all, I think it's funny that it takes 10 hours to do this ‘cause that just seems insane that you're gonna have 140 employees spend 10 hours every six months. So, they're spending basically- and that's 10 hours of work, right?
David Leary: Have you ever participated in the review process at a company? It's 10 to 20 hours of that week when that stuff goes on.
Blake Oliver: I guess. I hate that stuff so much. Oh, my gosh. I could never do it. That’s why I could never work for a big company. So, they trim out- I’ll continue on this flow, okay? So, you do all that, and it's voluntary, so not everybody does it, which is interesting to me because I feel like if not everybody does it, then how good is it gonna be? But, anyway, at least the people who care about it do it.
Then, they trim out the outlying top and bottom scores. Then, all the workers are ranked on a scale from one to 140, which is their head count. So, you’re ranked in order, based on that vote. If you land at the top of the scale, you get the biggest pay hikes. Those at the bottom may see small, or no raise. No one's pay is ever cut.
That's how they set it. It's kind of crazy, but I also kind of like it. I see some problems with it, but, you know, this is- this is what sets Expensify apart. Expensify also has no dedicated managers. That's another interesting thing that I'm curious to see how that works in practice.
David Leary: Including The Street, the way the structure is ... Other than producing some financials, they really don't have to report to The Street either.
Blake Oliver: Yeah, they don't because of the way it's set up. There's no accountability to The Street because of the way the voting shares are set up. Barrett, and two of his key people have all the control. To cite the success of this, Barrett says that the average tenure at Expensify is four years compared with some bigger tech companies who see workers leave after about two years. That's a sign that it is more successful.
At the same time, I feel like four years is kind of short still, you know? Like, if this was really successful, it would be more than that. I don't know, maybe the people who leave after two years- most companies, it’s because the only way to get a really big pay bump at most companies is to job hop. If you stick around, you're not getting the 20% or more pay bump, but with this method, if you're really performing, and everybody in the company agrees, they can make the top of the scale; the top performers get big pay increases, right? I wonder where Barrett is on the ranking.
David Leary: Well, if there's no managers, there's just more money for all the employees.
Blake Oliver: That's probably the best thing about this, actually, David-
David Leary: I will go back in time. I will go back in time. This is 15 years ago. People talk, right? People talk about these processes. And I know a manager who was told by another manager ‘cause that's how these things work, right? There's a pool of money, every year, of a budget, and if you give some of that budget to your employees, that's less budget for you.
Blake Oliver: Yeah, less for your bonus.
David Leary: That’s when it comes to raises, and these things like this. So, maybe Dave's onto something here. Expensify-
Blake Oliver: So, that thing there, in parentheses in this article, “Expensify has no dedicated managers,” I want them to drill into that more. I wanna know how does the company work like that? ‘Cause I've heard of other companies like this. There was one other. I can't remember the name. They've been doing it for a long time. Very famous. I think it's the company that created Gore-Tex. I could be totally wrong about this, but I think they are also a small company, like Expensify, that had no direct managers, or no dedicated managers. I could be wrong. There are some other ones who have done this-
David Leary: The Cloud Accounting Podcast.
Blake Oliver: Yeah. No direct managers ...
David Leary: Should we jump into app news, or do you think we’re-
Blake Oliver: I mean, we're already- we've been in it for the whole show, right?
David Leary: Yeah, to some extent.
Blake Oliver: Let's play the music.
[00:44:50] Is DiviPay Coming For Divvy?
David Leary: I have some, app news from Down Under. There's an app from Down Under called DiviPay; not to be confused with Divvy, which is owned by Bill.com. The reason it's really confusing is because they basically do what Divvy does. It's spend management. Now, they're looking to build out their product offering; they just took $20 million.
They want to build out. They wanted to get into bill payments and come to the U.S. market and grow. Now, that's gonna be interesting because how do two companies with the same product have that close of names? I guess we’ll find out when they get here. What's interesting about this raise is one of the people that invested was Practice Ignition's Guy Pearson.
Blake Oliver: Oh, well, tell me more. Why-
David Leary: He invested.
Blake Oliver: Oh, he invested. Got it.
David Leary: He invested, yes. He's made a couple of other- I think he invested in a Hubdoc, originally; he had a little a piece of that. So, he's really such a success story because he had his own firm; started his firm from scratch, basically; created Practice Ignition, and he's really been able to utilize some of the money he’s made, and he's just been smart and making good decisions and investing in companies along the way.
[00:45:58] OakNorth's First Acquisition – Fluidly
David Leary: So, Fluidly, which is- this is out of the UK. Fluidly was like a cashflow-forecasting tool-
Blake Oliver: Did you say Fluidly?
David Leary: Fluidly. They are a cashflow-forecasting tool. They had about 1,300 UK accounting firms. OakNorth, which is a bank, purchased 100% of the company. So, again, these banks on these marches, right, to own the apps ...
[00:46:21] Affirm Raises $25 Million
David Leary: Affirm- Affirm’s another one of those buy-now-pay-later companies, and they’ve spun out a secondary company called Resolve, which is gonna specialize in doing buy now, pay later for B2B. They just raised $25 million ‘cause they want to offer loans, and capital, and they wanna get into bill pay. Something to watch coming on the market.
Blake Oliver: That's huge opportunity is buy now, pay later for B2B.
David Leary: Yeah, except for I have some thoughts on that in another episode, when we talk about predictions on that.
Blake Oliver: Okay.
[00:46:51] Built for Building - Built Technologies Partners with Melio
David Leary: Built technologies- so, Built is construction software for big, huge commercial construction projects because, you know, that money has to kind of go in an escrow, and there's lien waivers, and all that type of stuff. Then, it trickles down, all the way down to the subcontractors. They announced that they're gonna have built-in bill pay, and it actually turns out it's powered by Melio.
Blake Oliver: Oh, congratulations!
David Leary: They're gonna offer Built ... It's free; it's part of their product. It's basically the Melio offering built into this app called Built Technologies.
Blake Oliver: Nice.
[00:47:22] Airtable's $735 Million Series F Round
David Leary: We've talked about Airtable, and NoCode. Airtable. just took another round at- a $735 million round; Series F. It takes their valuation up to $11 billion.
Blake Oliver: Wow. Where do you think they're gonna go with that?
David Leary: So, they have a lot of big companies, right? Because it’s this whole world of NoCode. I think you talked about it on the podcast two weeks ago, about, you know, companies are- when you went on your rant about the IT department. Employees are self-coding; they’re just fixing problems themselves, automating these things with tools like Airtable. They’re talking about how Netflix, and Shopify use them, and more than 300,000 companies, and they said a good portion of the Fortune 500. So, it's funny, like, in our world, it's a lot of us small guys using it, but what's happening is, in these big Fortune 500s, people are solving their own problems with Airtable.
Blake Oliver: You could build a whole consulting business just on top of Airtable, like setting up apps. Somebody was even saying in this thread, uh, about it- I don't know if you were on this thread on Twitter. They built an entire app on Airtable-
David Leary: Yeah, our sponsor, Bookkeep, who sponsored before. He basically built it on Airtable first, the whole entire thing. I’ve seen it.
Blake Oliver: As the test product, and then rebuilt it, or is it all built just on Airtable?
David Leary: Yeah, because basically, he built that for his own- he owned some wine shops, and restaurants, and so, he kind of started to get into restaurant bookkeeping a little bit, and he was building it as an internal tool, and then, it spun out to, now, it’s a standalone, but yeah, it was built on Airtable. I wouldn't be surprised if some parts are still running on Airtable ‘cause you can really- you can do everything with it.
Blake Oliver: It's a great way to test out whether or not the product will solve the problem. Build it in Airtable. Then, if it works, go custom code it.
David Leary: Let’s say, on your website for your firm, you wanna do like a three-tiered pricing-
Blake Oliver: Like dynamic pricing-
David Leary: Well, not even dynamic, but like the gold, silver, bronze pricing plans; $200, $300, $500. Well, you could create a table with all the different features of each of those three, but then, because you can change views, and there's no code, you can turn them into three cards and just embed the cards with a button that says, “Buy now.” So, you could do your planning work in a table, like a spreadsheet you're used to doing. Then, when you're ready to put it on your website, you just change the view to a card view, and embed the cards on your site, and you're done. It really cuts out extra work of code. Literally, there’s no code.
[00:49:51] We've Got Mail, and We Have Much to Talk About!
Blake Oliver: We got a bunch of listener mail. I have four emails, but I don't think we have time to do them all justice. So, I wanna save those-
David Leary: Let’s give gifts for Christmas. Let's do all four.
Blake Oliver: All four right now?
David Leary: Are we gonna get into discussions- deep discussions on this?
Blake Oliver: That's the thing is, it's discussions-
David Leary: Okay, we can save this.
Blake Oliver: Greg wants us to talk about how do we set boundaries with clients, and how do we respond to clients? How quickly? Lauren has feedback on QuickBooks Desktop, and QBO, and why accountants are reluctant to make the switch. We've got feedback on the 150-hours requirement. I've got an email from Thad about NASBA not going to release the CPA-exam data. So, I don't wanna just rush through them. We'll save them for next week-
David Leary: A teaser ...
Blake Oliver: And there's probably not gonna be that much breaking news, right, so we'll save that. We’ll get to it, guys.
David Leary: It’s a teaser. All right-
Blake Oliver: Just hold on. Uh, but we do have a review. I caught this, David. I've been watching to see if they came through, and as a reminder to our listeners, we haven't asked in a while, but the reviews make a really big difference to our ranking in the various podcast players. It helps us get surfaced to new listeners, people who've never heard of The Cloud Accounting Podcast.
So, if you wanna do us a giant favor to close out the year, if you wanna give us a present, go write a five-star review on Apple. You just scroll down on your podcast player, and you'll see the “Write a Review.” You can give us a rating; give us whatever you think we deserve, but, uh, hopefully, you feel it's five stars. If you're not an Apple person, you can go on- what is the site?
David Leary: Podchaser.
Blake Oliver: Go to Podchaser.com; search for The Cloud Accounting Podcast; give us a review. And that really helps us out. This review came in this week. It is from teichorncpa. “Great info and news for a CPA practice owner. I have listened to every episode since starting my own practice in 2019.” Listened to every episode since 2019! Man, that is awesome!
David Leary: I'm smiling. You can’t hear it, but it’s ... When you comprehend that for a second, it's pretty impressive.
Blake Oliver: I mean, that's like 200-plus episodes. “It helps me think through the strategic issues like technology, staffing, and trends in the profession. Thanks to Blake, and David for your diligence in bringing us a quality podcast week in, and week out.” Aw, thanks so much for that review! That makes it all worthwhile, honestly.
[00:52:13] Contact Us!
Blake Oliver: And if our listeners wanna follow you online, David, get in touch with you, where should they do that?
David Leary: I'm on all the socials at @DavidLeary.
Blake Oliver: And I am @BlakeTOliver. Shoot me an email: blake@blakeoliver.com. Let me know your thoughts on these stories, or anything we've discussed, or what you think we should discuss. I highly encourage you to send me a voice memo – optional, of course. Voice memos we can play on the air, so that's always fun. Send me a voice memo, and we'll take a listen. We’ll likely play it. That’s all I’ve got this week, David.
David Leary: That's it. Short week, and we'll see everybody in a couple days.
Blake Oliver: Merry Christmas!
[00:52:51] Classifieds
David: Time for the classifieds.
[00:52:57] Fast track a scalable 7-figure firm with Future Firm Accelerate
David: If you're looking to quickly grow a scalable, systematic seven-figure accounting firm without having to work 50-plus hours per week, check out Ryan Lazanis' online coaching membership, Future Firm Accelerate, designed around Ryan's experience taking his cloud firm from scratch to sale, so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
You'll get online learning, and topics that help you automate, and systemize all aspects of your firm. You'll get coaching when you need help with implementation, and you'll also join a collaborative community of hundreds of other forward-thinking firm owners. For more details, head over to www.futurefirmaccelerate.com.
[00:53:34] Oh My Fraud: A True Crime Podcast for Accountants
Blake: Hey, podcast listeners, it's Blake, and I wanted to let you know about a new show I'm working on with CPA/comedian, Greg Kyte, and blogger/former CPA, Caleb Newquist. It's called, Oh My Fraud, and it's a podcast all about financial crimes. That's right, a true crime podcast for accountants by accountants.
Caleb, and Greg are gonna come together every couple of weeks to unpack their favorite frauds, and explore the circumstances, psychology, and interpersonal dynamics involved. They also fully indulge in victim blaming the defrauded widows, orphans, infirm, and feebleminded because who can resist?
If you fancy yourself a trusted advisor or prefer your true crime with spreadsheets instead of corpses, listen to this show to learn what to watch out for, and to keep your clients, your firm, and even yourself safe. To subscribe, go to, ohmyfraud.com, or search "oh my fraud" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:54:34] How to advertise in these classifieds
David: Want to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Why not let the listeners of The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad? Hit the show notes for the link to get more info.
