The Accounting Podcast

Blake and David discuss Trump's proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its potential impact on tax filing and federal remote work policies. They analyze the Pentagon's seventh consecutive failed audit and examine Intuit's ambitious plans to expand its enterprise offerings. The duo also explores a groundbreaking study showing ChatGPT-4 outperforming human doctors in medical diagnoses, highlighting AI's growing capabilities in professional decision-making.

Chapters
  • (00:00) - Welcome to the Accounting Podcast
  • (01:52) - DOGE's Impact on H&R Block and TurboTax Stocks
  • (02:57) - IRS Free File Program
  • (04:49) - Intuit's Response to DOGE Initiative
  • (10:43) - Remote Work for Federal Employees
  • (16:25) - Pentagon's Audit Failures
  • (22:36) - AI Outperforms Doctors in Diagnosing Illnesses
  • (32:12) - Boosting Productivity with ChatGPT
  • (36:09) - Salesforce's AI Irony
  • (38:15) - Anthropic's AI in Action
  • (45:34) - Intuit's AI Strategy and TurboTax
  • (48:36) - Intuit Enterprise Suite and Market Expansion
  • (55:27) - Closing Remarks and Future Topics
 

Show Notes
Coming soon!

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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

Host
Blake Oliver
Founder and CEO of Earmark CPE
Host
David Leary
President and Founder, Sombrero Apps Company

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.

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Blake Oliver: The Pentagon failed to secure a clean audit for the seventh consecutive year. Seven years in a row, the Pentagon has failed to get a clean audit.

David Leary: Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.

Blake Oliver: Hello, and welcome back to the Accounting Podcast, your weekly news roundup for the accounting profession and the number one podcast for accountants in the world. [00:00:30] I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: And I'm David Leary.

Blake Oliver: And David, more news out of the Trump transition team. The Doge committee may be taking on TurboTax and H&R block. Shares of H&R block and TurboTax, well, parent company Intuit plummeted after news that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, aka Doge Doge, Dodge may [00:01:00] be working on a new tax filing app, or may want to create a new tax filing app, and that presents a threat to TurboTax and H&R block. David, I want to hear your take on this.

David Leary: Yeah, I mean, it's crazy that their stocks tumbled. I think H&R block, it was Tuesday, was it? I think it was Tuesday. H&r block tumbled 8.2% and Intuit fell 5.1%. So I guess not tumbled. But that's a that's a good that's.

Blake Oliver: A that's a lot. 8.2% for H&R block and [00:01:30] 5.1% for Intuit. And that's like all of Intuit stock, right? You know, TurboTax is is what like 20 or 30% of their revenues. So that's significant. Yeah.

David Leary: And it's based on an article in the Washington Post. And I'll quote unquote, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. So it's very separated the conversation that's out. Um, but the leaders of the group said they've considered this is an opportunity to improve how millions of taxpayers [00:02:00] interact with the federal government. So it's really not so much about the app, but more of the it's inefficient to interact with the government, including the IRS. And they're thinking about it that way. But it's highly preliminary. They've said, but.

Blake Oliver: It's just an idea, right?

David Leary: It's just an idea.

Blake Oliver: Now, David, I have to stop you there for a second because the IRS already has free file. You can go on the IRS website, and in 12 states, you can file your taxes for free directly with [00:02:30] the IRS. If you have an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less. So how is this.

David Leary: Expanded to 25 this year? Right. I think it's going up more states, right.

Blake Oliver: Well, for 2024 when they when they released that in 2025, I guess.

David Leary: And this is where like for me, I'm trying to connect these dots because six months ago, the GOP is pushing bills in Congress to cut the IRS funding even more. And they wanted to add, uh, specifically about IRS direct file. Prohibits [00:03:00] funds to be used for the IRS to create a government run tax preparation software that Congress has not authorized. So how quickly things have the pendulum has swung in a short six month period. And then I was also here's a bigger question. How come H&R block and TurboTax stocks did not drop the week before the election, when Trump said he wants to eliminate all of federal income tax that didn't impact the stock? It doesn't make any sense. But here's the crazy thing because nobody.

Blake Oliver: Believes that, nobody like you have to separate [00:03:30] what Trump says and what his what his people say into the the stuff that might happen, the stuff that will happen and the stuff that definitely won't happen.

David Leary: Won't happen. That's true. And then any research I've done, I cannot find anything from Trump mentioning direct file like no words of it, nothing. He might not even know it exists for all I know. Right. Um, and then this makes me also think, where does Elizabeth Warren Windfall because she's anti-big tax prep, but she's sure is not a fan of Elon [00:04:00] Musk either. So where does she fall in on this whole are we going.

Blake Oliver: To maybe maybe they'll be strange bedfellows. Right. Uh, they may they may agree on this. Um, David, I want to get into the Intuit earnings because I know that this was addressed on the call yesterday. Was it? Yeah.

David Leary: So before we I think we should just all talk Doge, but we'll talk specifically about this. That was in the earnings call. Then we'll talk about the earnings later.

Blake Oliver: Right. And before you talk about the Doge news in the earnings call and all that, I just want to highlight a crazy statistic. [00:04:30] Yeah. Doge. This this committee highlighted that Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours annually on tax preparation, 6.5 billion hours annually on tax preparation. And that's all Americans. That's not the people who work professionally. Right. Those are the tax payers. So, you know, I'm all in favor [00:05:00] of figuring out how we can automate this for the middle class. You know, like it's crazy that anyone in the middle class has to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to file their taxes. And you might say, well, hey, Blake, you're a CPA, you're an accountant. Um, you know, this is our bread and butter, right? And there are there's a lot of accountants, and this is our job as tax preparation. But there aren't enough of us already. And everyone in our profession is talking about [00:05:30] how we need to work with businesses, how we need to work with high net individuals. I would be very happy if we could just stop focusing on the folks who are making, you know, less than $100,000 and just serve the people who have the more complex situations. And let's just automate everything for the simple returns. Just like like in other countries, they don't have this situation. The the government gets your W-2 information and they get reporting on other types of income [00:06:00] automatically from investment companies and whatever, and they prepare your return and send it to you. And then you get to say if there's anything they're missing, like it should be. That's how it should be. It should be prepared automatically for you by the software. Because the IRS already has this information. There's no reason they can't do it. It would be a wonderful government service. Yeah, that's just my take.

David Leary: And then I kind of agree with this take on one hand, because it's a huge, inefficient thing for lots of people to have to participate in this process. Would you say 6,000,000,000 hours or 600 billion? [00:06:30]

Blake Oliver: 6.5 billion hours?

David Leary: Billion hours. Just wasted time.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: I mean.

Blake Oliver: It's yeah, it doesn't have we don't have to do that.

David Leary: And I could see it could.

Blake Oliver: Be a few hundred million hours per person, you know.

David Leary: But there's a lot of opinions on the other side.

Blake Oliver: Hundred million hours total. Sorry. Go ahead.

David Leary: The other side is like the IRS should not tell you what you owe you, as the citizen should get to decide what you are. So there's always that balance as well. Um, but we can talk about specifically what Sasan Goodarzi, he's the CEO of Intuit, [00:07:00] said in the conference call about this. I'll let you read these comments. We're getting first from the audience if you want.

Blake Oliver: Oh, sure. Hazardous items says 6.5 billion hours. Sounds like a lot until you divide it by actual Americans over the age of 18. It comes to it comes down to about 20 hours of prep work, which isn't so much since most of the hours are made up of more complex returns, which we could bucket easy ten 40s versus more complex returns, and see how many actual hours it takes per category. Yes, that would be great. But like, think about it, 20 hours per person on [00:07:30] average has got to mean that even on the lower end, people are spending like half a day to a day to do their taxes at least a few hours. And like it shouldn't. It shouldn't be harder to do your taxes than to vote, right. It shouldn't take more time that like people.

David Leary: Less research on voting? Yes. I don't.

Blake Oliver: Know. Like, I think we could do a lot to bring that average down for average Americans. Go for it. David.

David Leary: So so Suzanne addressed [00:08:00] this on his own. He wasn't specifically asked about it. So I'm going to speak as Suzanne.

Blake Oliver: Goodarzi, CEO of Intuit.

David Leary: Of Intuit. First and foremost, I am personally engaged with the new leaders and the new administration coming in. I've personally also learned that I think the what really matters to the new leaders and the administration coming in. One, being aggressive on budget cuts and workforce reduction. This really streamlines the operations of government. Two, they really look [00:08:30] at the regulatory environment and reduce it so that it's benefits consumers and businesses. Third, reduce fraud, whether it's identity theft and or loans. Um, and then the last but not least if there's an opportunity. So basically number four is to simplify the tax code. So this is lower priority of all their priorities. It's the sign goes on to say he's excited about these things, and then he gets more into the free tax software of it. And I'll quote his our perspective and my learnings in terms of what's [00:09:00] most important. The last thing the new folks want to do is to add bureaucracy and to add investments in an area where the offerings already exist and private industry is already serving it. With that said, free is available to all consumers. And then he goes on to say, and if tomorrow five new free tax offerings become available in the market, it does not have an impact to the structure of the market because free is a commodity for the do it yourself category. And this goes back to what I've been saying months ago, maybe even longer, [00:09:30] when Intuit kind of backed away from free, they stopped doing free file because I don't think they care. There's way more money in assisted and we'll get into the earnings and talk about that a little bit. But I don't think Intuit cares if they build this well and figure out how.

Blake Oliver: They shouldn't lie about it, then they shouldn't lobby against it. He shouldn't be saying one thing on the investor call, and those lobbyists shouldn't be doing a different thing in Washington, if that's what they really believe. That's true. Um. Anything else?

David Leary: I think they want to attack [00:10:00] other stuff. Doge. Right. Your favorite thing.

Blake Oliver: Remote work came up this week. Uh, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have proposed ending remote work for federal employees, suggesting that those unwilling to return to the office should not be paid by taxpayers. This initiative could be among the first actions taken by the incoming Trump administration after the January 20th inauguration. We are talking about a full time return to office [00:10:30] for all federal workers. And what is really interesting about this is that in the discussions, like they are very honest about this being a way to reduce the federal workforce, Like how we've been talking, David, about how these remote work bring people back to the office. Initiatives, right. The the three, 4 or 5 days mandatory in the office is actually not about necessarily increasing productivity, [00:11:00] but it's about getting your people to quit without having to lay them off. And it seems like this is exactly what they're aiming to do, is trim the federal workforce, cut government spending, and this way they don't have to lay anyone off. People will simply quit if they don't want to come back to the office. So the question is how many might quit out of 2.3 million civilian federal workers, over half already work in person due to the nature of their jobs. Those eligible [00:11:30] for remote work perform an average of 61% of the hours on site. So you take that 2.3 million, you know, let's say it's let's just underestimate here, right? It's a million who can work remotely because they have that ability Of those, you know, let's say 60% are done on site. So basically there's a million people that are going to be impacted here. And how many will quit maybe. What what have we seen in other [00:12:00] companies? 10%, 20% say I'm going to quit. They leave.

David Leary: About yeah.

Blake Oliver: Maybe less. So I don't know. The impact of this might be a little less than what Ramaswamy is saying. Um, Vivek Ramaswamy predicts that up to 25% of civil servants might resign if required to return to the office full time. Um, and, you know, that would be like, uh, I don't know, like 400, 500,000. I don't think that's going to happen.

David Leary: Yeah. And [00:12:30] and I think people that have government jobs, like government jobs because they're stable and you have a good, uh, retirement path. Right? There's a goal that's going to happen. You're going to have a good retirement path. But one thing you've always brought up the best employees aren't going to stand for this. They're just going to leave and go get other jobs. So is this actually going to make the best government employees leave our government, and that we'll just have morons out there running it? Not not that.

Blake Oliver: That's the thing about this. It's like it's a really bad way to trim your staff [00:13:00] because, yeah, people who are really talented know they can go get jobs elsewhere and can get the remote work exemption. So unless they're planning to offer some kind of exemption, like this is just going to make things potentially worse. The most talented people will quit. Um, that's what boring accountant says. The fed agencies would have all the market competitive employees quit, and the less competitive employees would help increase efficiency. Rolling eyes. Emoji. So that is the news [00:13:30] out of Doge, the Doge committee. It's weird that they call it the Department of Governmental Efficiency because it's not actually a department. It's a committee. And it will never be a department because Congress would have to actually create it. And it's hard to imagine Congress creating a Doge for the federal government Department of Government efficiency. But hey, you never know. We have been wrong on this show before, but my gut just says it's going to be like a weird kind of funny thing. Um, [00:14:00] okay, where do we go from here?

David Leary: I'd like to do the Intuit earnings, but let's go ahead and do our first ad here. Okay. Write in, uh, will you prepare relay. So between Blake and myself, we now have three, four, five, six, maybe business entities, 20 or so checking accounts, dozens and dozens of virtual cards. It'd be impossible to manage all of this if relay wasn't our small business. Bank relay is truly a part of the tech stack we use to run our business. Relay allows Blake and I to each have our own logins. We can grant [00:14:30] access to our team, even our accountant, without sharing passwords or two factor authentication codes. Relay allows us to grow and scale our banking needs without ever going to a physical branch. I recently added an account to receive inbound merchant services with just a few clicks, and had to create a payroll checking account. Again, a few clicks and I instantly had access to my ACH info to give to the payroll provider. With relays virtual cards, we can issue debit cards to our team around the world for needed business expenses. I can instantly spin up a new visa debit [00:15:00] card with both daily and monthly spending limits, and when the team member doesn't need their card, I can freeze it until they need to use it again. Really also has automation features to sweep money automatically from one account to another based on dates, amounts or target balances, or even percentages. For example, inbound payments could be split daily for your payroll sales, tax payable, operating and savings accounts based on predefined rules. To learn more about using relay for your firm and clients, head over to The Accounting Podcast Dot promo Slash Relay. [00:15:30] That's The Accounting Podcast dot promo forward slash relay.

Blake Oliver: So David, I want to get to the Intuit earnings. But I'm going to I'm going to De-prioritize that because I have another government story and we're on the government beat right now, and I want to talk about the Department of Defense. The Pentagon failed to secure a clean audit for the seventh consecutive year. Seven years in a row, the Pentagon has failed to get a clean audit, although [00:16:00] in their press release they did spin it. As we've gotten a little bit better, they improved and they.

David Leary: Went from an F to a D kind of a thing.

Blake Oliver: Well, I mean, it's pass or fail, right? And they failed. So there's no there's no letter grades here. And they they have a commitment internally to achieve an unmodified or clean audit opinion by fiscal year 2028. And they're working on it. So where are they right now? By the way, the [00:16:30] Department of Defense oversees approximately 3.8 trillion in assets. And they still can't get a clean audit. It's a little worrying to me. Um, so where where are they? There are 28 reporting entities, 28 under the Department of Defense that undergo individual financial statement audits. Nine entities out of the 28 got unmodified, unmodified opinions, clean audits. And that's up one from last year. So we went [00:17:00] from 8 to 9, got unmodified. One entity received a qualified opinion. And you know that's basically like they failed. Now 15 entities received disclaimers due to insufficient financial information, meaning that the auditors were not able to form an opinion because they didn't get enough information to do so. And to me, that's also a failure, right? If you can't provide the auditors with enough information for them to even come up with an opinion, [00:17:30] qualified or unqualified, that's an F in my book. So that's 15 out of the 28. Three entities still have audit opinions pending, and that includes the Marines. The Marines. So where are we going to go with this? You know, hopefully, hopefully we'll improve from nine out of 28 to 28 out of 28. But let's see how many years do we have left? Four years. Four. And you know, this is [00:18:00] not like optional according to federal law. The Department of Defense is supposed to obtain clean audits. There was some sort of act in 1990. The CFO act of 1990 mandates all federal agencies to prepare auditable financial statements and undergo audits, and the DoD has never been able to do this.

David Leary: Can you paint a picture of these audits? So they have basically it's 27 businesses or.

Blake Oliver: 28.

David Leary: Entities. 28. And who is doing these audits are outside.

Blake Oliver: No, [00:18:30] it's external auditors.

David Leary: External auditors.

Blake Oliver: So yeah. And in combination with the DoD's Office of Inspector General, which is the internal auditors, internal auditors. And here's a number that's kind of crazy. A taxpayer spent $178 million on this latest audit that the Pentagon couldn't, couldn't pass, and all.

David Leary: 28 entities going to one outside firm or their 28 different outside firms doing this. Is there any insights to that?

Blake Oliver: I do not know. My guess is that it's going to be shopped around to different firms, because it would be just I [00:19:00] can't imagine that one firm could handle it all, but I don't know.

David Leary: That's what I was thinking. What is the size of this audit project?

Blake Oliver: Yeah, it's pretty big, right? A lot of money. A lot of money here. So, you know, given how kind of like, low the bar is to achieve an unmodified or unqualified audit opinion these days. Like, it's it's very distressing to me that the Department of Defense can't do it. And, I mean, maybe Doge could take this on as a priority. Doge could say, hey, Department of Defense entities, if you can't [00:19:30] get a clean audit, you aren't going to get more funding, or maybe your funding will start getting cut automatically 10% every year that you can't pass a clean audit. Right. Like I don't see that would incentivize the military. Right. You're all going to get a pay cut. All all the generals get a pay cut if they can't pass an audit.

David Leary: But Ellen has business interests in things that he's building, that he's going to sell the military. So I don't know if that's a smart move on his side.

Blake Oliver: Light them up in the live stream. Says there are multiple outside firms auditing the DoD. I [00:20:00] used to work for one, and some of them require auditors with security clearance. I guess, yeah, some of those GL entries could be significantly classified. Um, okay.

David Leary: I have an article in the show notes, because I don't think we have time to talk about this whole thing, but it's worth going and revisiting. It's an article from ProPublica and ProPublica in 2018. And the title of the article is How the IRS Was Gutted, and it really documents the [00:20:30] eight years before that. Right. The 2008, 2009, 2010 through 2017, where the IRS really started falling apart because of attacks, attacks, attacks, attacks, compromises, compromises, compromises. So it's a long it's a super long article, but it's interesting. We want some perspective on the movie. We might be living again, which is the gutting of the IRS. Right?

Blake Oliver: Tell me about it. What are we talking about?

David Leary: Well, the I mean, [00:21:00] we're there's with Doge, right? They're going to streamline and make the IRS more efficient. And this was happening before. Right. And I'll quote one of the one of the Republicans arguments in 2013, we deliberately lowered the IRS funding to a level that would make the IRS think twice about what you are doing and why you're doing it, because you don't have a single dime to spare on anything frivolous or foolhardy or even mediocre. So. But that that sense of what's been going to [00:21:30] happen has already been kind of done, and it's probably a good article for people to revisit because it's kind of like this. It feels like the same movies about to happen to the IRS.

Blake Oliver: And what is this article? Are you going to put it in the chat?

David Leary: It'll be in the show notes. It is, um, how the IRS is gutted. It's an article from 2018.

Blake Oliver: Put the link in the chat here for all of our lives in the chat right now.

David Leary: Perfect.

Blake Oliver: Okay. Um, let's talk about let's pivot to AI for a moment. I spotted a story in the New York Times that blew my mind. A [00:22:00] recent study published in Jama found that ChatGPT for not even the latest model, outperformed physicians in diagnosing illnesses from case histories. So have you ever seen the show house, David?

David Leary: Yes, I would.

Blake Oliver: Watch House M.D., right. Great show. Doctor house is like the best diagnostician in the medical profession. People traveled to him from all over the world, and we in the show get to experience the symptoms [00:22:30] of the patient and then doctor House and his team figure out over the course of an hour what exactly is killing the patient and try to save their save the patient's life and usually do. Um, well, that's like a significant part of being a doctor, right? You got to take in the symptoms and try to figure out what's going on. And it's very challenging because there are a lot of symptoms, a lot of diseases, and it's impossible for any individual to [00:23:00] retain all of that information in their head. And guess who can do that? Guess what can do that? I obviously I can synthesize every single case history, symptom, outcome and can do it a lot better. So here's the numbers. Chatgpt four achieved an average diagnostic accuracy of 90%. How did the doctors do? 74%. So doctors get [00:23:30] a C and ChatGPT four, which is not even for 0 or 0 one. Preview the latest models. This is the older one from like earlier this year got an A -90% accuracy. So that.

David Leary: Means almost 15% better.

Blake Oliver: Um 75.

David Leary: To 90 right. Yeah, that's.

Blake Oliver: And that's with the that's with the older model. So the newer one might do even better. So you might want to know how did this work. [00:24:00] Right. What did they actually do. So um, they chose 50 doctors, a mix of residents and attending physicians from various large American hospital systems. They gave the participants six case histories based on real patients sourced from a confidential set unused in AI training. So there's no way that the AI had access to these histories. It did not have this in its training model. These have deliberately been kept confidential for [00:24:30] many, many years so that they could be used in testing. Um, the doctors were graded on diagnosing reasoning and suggesting further diagnostic steps. And the. I was able to do this extremely well. Um, what's really interesting is they also gave some of the doctors access to the chatbot to use to help them, but those doctors only did 76%. And one of the reasons in the study [00:25:00] that is suggested for why the doctors didn't improve is because they did not properly use the chatbot. They did not understand what it was capable of, and so they would ask it like specific questions about explain this symptom or explain this illness, and they would use it to gather information.

Blake Oliver: But very few of the doctors realized that they could just simply take the entire case history and copy paste it into ChatGPT to [00:25:30] help them get to an answer. And they also found that doctors would often disagree with the AI. They had a bias toward their own original diagnosis, even when the AI was pointing them to potential alternative diagnoses. So why do I bring this up? Because to me, this is one of the most compelling use cases for AI is any situation where you have to make a decision and you have to do it based on a huge amount of information, [00:26:00] a huge body of knowledge. Humans, our brains can only handle so much information, and we can become experts in very narrow areas. And that's where we really excel compared to AI right now. But when you have to do something that requires, you know, synthesizing information from hundreds or thousands of textbooks or examples, that's where I really crushes it.

David Leary: And just since we're on this kick of efficiency kind [00:26:30] of a theme of this episode, if a doctors are only correct 75% of the time on diagnosis, you're probably making another trip back to the doctor tying up his time or his or her time tying up the office. Insurance. The amount of inefficiencies around that. If they could move that 15% better, it would. It could change healthcare.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. I mean, imagine if let's say, let's say you got to an emergency room and instead of having to sit there and wait for somebody to meet with [00:27:00] you, write down all your symptoms, then meet with somebody else, who then takes down all your symptoms again, you keep. Have you ever had this experience where it's like, I keep telling my symptoms to like, three different people in the same doctor's office. What if I could just sit in a room and talk to somebody, and maybe there's, like, a voice recorder, like a that's like recording our conversation and I explain all my symptoms and then the human in combination with the I like, create the diagnosis. You [00:27:30] could just save so much time and it would be more accurate. Um, yeah. It's like, I don't know, I had an experience in the last few years where I had some weird symptoms and I couldn't. I went to like five doctors before I finally got a diagnosis. So I think this could be very well. This could be really improved. The whole system is just completely inefficient right now. So Tina says it's always a tapeworm. Yeah. In house, um, [00:28:00] HCG says the insurance companies will likely push back on that efficiency for fear of overpaying in a situation. Essentially, they would opt to spend $100 to save $5. Maybe, maybe. But think about it this way.

Blake Oliver: Um, this is also another amazing use case for AI. I think is processing insurance claims. So right now, insurance claims are processed by armies of people in offices who review all this paperwork that comes from the doctor and are supposed to make objective medical [00:28:30] decisions. And like we know from stories that come out frequently about this that they are pressured to like, deny claims. Claims are denied for stupid reasons. Um, you know, they don't do a very good job a lot of the times. And often the doctors or the nurses who are sitting in those offices making these decisions are not qualified to do so. So imagine if you had as like layer one of insurance claims, you had an AI, an objective, outside vetted AI that made these decisions [00:29:00] about the medical necessity or helped to like, at least automate the processing of like 80 or 90% of claims, how much time that would save and how much money that would save our system. All that cost savings could go into reducing premiums. So I'm actually kind of optimistic because right now so much of our medical system and medical billing and approvals is just really, really inefficient and time wasting. I mean, same thing with this, you know, [00:29:30] 6.5 billion hours we spend on tax preparation every year. Yeah. So yeah.

David Leary: It's not getting. Yeah. I think maybe the way to think of I it's not really going to limit jobs, but everybody's just going to be somewhere so much more efficient and redoing things over and over again. Copy paste. It's just going to it's going to be smoother in the future for sure.

Blake Oliver: I mentioned this in a prior episode, David, where a Reddit user posted on Reddit about they had, quote, automated [00:30:00] an entire job, unquote. And then the AI saved the Reddit post and then the the user deleted their post. But I had saved it, and I assumed they deleted their post because somebody at their company, like, figured out who they were based on the details in the post. This happens all the time. You know, don't post about your job in detail on Reddit if you want to remain anonymous.

David Leary: And you get away with it, don't brag about it.

Blake Oliver: Don't brag about it, right? But I wanted to share this story because it's related to kind of what we're talking about the the benefits of AI. [00:30:30] So here's the original post. I will not say the username, and I just want to describe what this user said. So here's the post. My colleagues and I produce a daily, weekly and monthly reports based off raw data that our employer produces. These reports are humongous Excel files that need to be copied and pasted into each other, and the whole process takes approximately five hours a day, crashes our computers, and is just painfully boring and [00:31:00] mind numbing. For the past two weeks, I've been playing around with ChatGPT and Claude AI, coming up with Excel macros and other types of scripts to automate these tasks, from importing the reports on our computer to processing them through our sheets with formulas, to exporting them to the final report sheets to delete the used up files to sending the reports. The whole thing now takes approximately one hour per day. I don't think that I could ever have done anything remotely close [00:31:30] to this in my life without ChatGPT. So think about that. This is somebody who works in a corporation making Excel reports, manually copying and pasting, formatting, pulling data from one place into another all day long corporation.

David Leary: There's people that do Excel reports and there's people that do PowerPoints. That's most of the jobs in corporations.

Blake Oliver: So this person and their team was you know, I don't know if this is just this one person, but they're saying are computers. So there must be more than one [00:32:00] person on this team, right. That does this. They're saying it takes five hours a day before. And now it's taking one hour a day, because they used ChatGPT to learn and create the code to automate this process. And like we have had that exact experience. If you are doing something manual and you can describe it to ChatGPT and you can upload the documents you're working on, it can help you create the macros and the code to automate the process. [00:32:30]

David Leary: You did that dance, I did that, it's a dance. I knew it could be done, but it would have taken me weeks to work on and figure out and do the research. So I described it. I need to connect this spreadsheet to these children's spreadsheets. And then it didn't work. Then I said, hey, this didn't work. It gave back this value. Oh, and then ChatGPT would apologize and then try this, this, this, this formula instead. And then that would, you know, it was a dance. But yeah, it saved hours. I mean, we're still using it six months later. It's working perfect.

Blake Oliver: And this is pretty sophisticated. [00:33:00] In a edit to the post, a follow up, the user said, I won't paste the code here, but the main takeaways are that it's multiple subroutines. It uses variables, it deactivates auto calc, visual activity, and user prompts. It does a lot of error handling. For example, if it can't find one file to import, it keeps going and tells me which files weren't used. It also tells me how long it ran for, because I wanted to be able to tell my colleagues how long to leave it be before they have to worry it crashed. Like, this is sophisticated [00:33:30] coding in Excel. And the user said, if you want to do a similar thing, ask GPT how to do it. Seriously, I started off by mapping all our work processes and identified what was repetitive Excel on Excel action. I told GPT what I wanted and it birthed code. It then explained what parts of the code to replace with what file, directory and names, sheet names, table names, etc. I asked it stuff like could I automate such and such with code and it explained [00:34:00] how to do it. I was worried about hallucinations on that front because it is quite ready to say yes, even if the answer is no, but I found it wasn't so true with code. The main issue is with segregating different approaches. It tends to mix up different parts of a programing language that don't interact too well with each other, so I would start a new chat, paste the code I already had, and tell it to improve that the chat that produced version one is a bit reluctant to change its approach, whereas a new chat has new eyes to look at it and will more readily see the issues.

Blake Oliver: So just like you did, [00:34:30] right? David, you come up with a first version and if it doesn't quite work, you start a new chat, you paste the code in, you ask it to fix it or to improve it. And if you iterate like that, you can achieve incredible things. Um, now what's interesting is that this user decided not to disclose the use of ChatGPT to their boss. They did disclose the productivity improvement, but not the use of the ChatGPT. They also said they didn't paste proprietary data in. They just used [00:35:00] GPT to create the code, which was then used on the local machines. So I just love this example. It's an amazing example of like a basically A5X productivity gain from AI right now, and it backs up what I'm saying about how cloud accounting. Gave me an immediate 5 to 10 x boost in productivity. We are starting to see that now in all sorts of other areas of accounting with AI.

David Leary: Ai. [00:35:30] Since we're on AI, I have a what I say is a ridiculous AI story.

Blake Oliver: Tell me. All right.

David Leary: So Salesforce, we're familiar with Salesforce. Everybody's very familiar with Salesforce. They have an AI product called Agent Force. And based on the screenshot it's literally a bot for service and sales and support. Right. Sales. And this product is so great. And the demand for this product is so high that Salesforce is going to hire [00:36:00] a thousand human salespeople to sell it to other companies. Am I the only one that sees how ridiculous this is? They're not using their own agent force product to sell the product. They're going to use humans to sell. There are product for somebody like us to buy to be a robot salesperson for us. It's it makes my head explode.

Blake Oliver: So the product is a chat bot that acts like a sales agent. Yes. And they're going to hire humans to sell the chat [00:36:30] bot. Yeah.

David Leary: Correct.

Blake Oliver: Well, you know, I mean, okay, I see the irony, but yeah, there is that is valid in the sense that an AI chatbot can only do, let's say, anywhere from 50% to 80% of the job. So there is that part of the job that will always be there for salespeople. So, you know, maybe they're really bullish. They're going [00:37:00] to have 1000 humans managing 10,000 chat bots, helping to sell this chatbot product.

David Leary: That that was not disclosed. Maybe there's a multiple type thing, right?

Blake Oliver: But but that's how I view like all this AI is going to work. Um, it's going to reduce the time like this user experience by a factor of five. And so you can be five times more productive. Uh, one person can manage, you know, a process that [00:37:30] used to take five people. But you're still going to need a person for a long time. And we saw that, uh, this past week with a study that came out about anthropic computer use mode. Remember that video that I played last week showing?

David Leary: Oh, side by side? It was moving the mouse, and.

Blake Oliver: The desktop app can now control the mouse and the keyboard. And there was a demo that anthropic put out of the computer. Use desktop agent finding information [00:38:00] in a CRM and copying and pasting it into a purchase order system. And I love that example, because that is something that we as accountants do constantly because systems don't integrate. And there was a study that tested this out and VentureBeat reported on it. The study was done at the National University of Singapore by four researchers, and they tested Claude on tasks including web search, workflow, workflow completion, office productivity, and video games. And the [00:38:30] computer use mode successfully performed a number of complex, multi-step tasks that required planning and coordination across different activities. One of the examples where it was really successful was going through Amazon and copying and pasting information from different Amazon listings into a spreadsheet to do research. You could use that for like e-commerce research or something like that. I think web scraping is like a really good use for this, because it doesn't have to be 100%. Um, [00:39:00] but, you know, they also had examples where it was like manipulating Excel.

Blake Oliver: So think about this right now in order to create all these complex macros and formulas. To automate a lot of stuff, you have to very tediously paste your spreadsheet into a chat. Put your instructions what you want to achieve into the chat. You have to then take what the code you were given and put it into Visual Basic. I don't know whatever, right? It's a lot. But imagine if you could just describe what you wanted to do, and then the AI starts to like put [00:39:30] the formulas into the correct cells and starts to write the macros. That'll be I mean, that will be incredible when that starts to happen, when you can just talk with your computer and you see the cursor move around and the keyboard move around, it'll be like that movie Minority Report with Tom cruise, right? It's like the dream of computing or like there were episodes of, uh, uh, what was that show? Um, Westworld, where one of the characters is interacting with her [00:40:00] computer in that way. So like, it's.

David Leary: Come to the point where if you can describe your problem and also describe how you might think you want the solution to be, it can help bridge those gaps. Everybody becomes a coder.

Blake Oliver: Yeah, and every accountant can be a ten x accountant. It's sort of like this concept of ten x engineers that you have in Silicon Valley. Everyone wants to hire. If you have a startup, you want to hire a ten x engineer. These are people that use AI and use tech to like and probably a lot of Adderall to code ten [00:40:30] times more than anyone else.

David Leary: I always felt like accountants are. They have engineer brains. They're very process driven and they understand how they're very logical, but they just don't know how to actually write code. So this is going to bridge that gap and let lots of accountants create all this great stuff, because they don't need to know the syntax of code. They know tax code. They know accounting code. They don't need to know Visual Basic or any of that stuff.

Blake Oliver: For my next AI story, David, I want to highlight a company that is fighting [00:41:00] fraud with AI, and they're doing it in a really funny way. The UK's largest mobile network operator, O2 unveiled a new chatbot named Daisy, designed to frustrate and occupy phone scammers. Here is the video if you want to see how.

AI Phone Scam Protection: I can help you. Do you want to lose all your money? And if you want to resolve the matter.

AI Phone Scam Protection: 7 in 10 Brits [00:41:30] have been targeted by scammers and it's not just our grandparents. I was one of them. But this film isn't about getting scammed. This is about getting even. Meet my friend Daisy.

AI Phone Scam Protection: Hello scammers, I'm your worst nightmare. I'm an AI created by O2 to waste phone scammers time. So WS then A dot.

AI Phone Scam Protection: Three times w and then dot.

AI Phone Scam Protection: I think your profession is bothering people, [00:42:00] right?

AI Phone Scam Protection: I'm just trying to have a little chat.

AI Phone Scam Protection: It's nearly been an hour. For the love of.

AI Phone Scam Protection: Gosh, how time flies. It's showing me a picture of my cat, fluffy.

AI Phone Scam Protection: It's showing you a picture of your cat, fluffy.

AI Phone Scam Protection: You stop calling me dear. You stupid.

AI Phone Scam Protection: Got it dear. Because while they're busy talking to me, they can't be scamming you. And let's face it, dear, I've got all the time in the world. [00:42:30]

AI Phone Scam Protection: So whilst you're out enjoying life, Daisy and oh two are here fighting scammers, taking calls and wasting hundreds and hundreds of hours of scammers time. If you want to help Daisy and O2 ruin a scammers day, you can report scam numbers to 7726. Because you can't do it all on your own, can you, Daisy?

AI Phone Scam Protection: Who says I am love? Speak soon. Scammers. Scammers.

Blake Oliver: Is that great or what?

David Leary: That's great.

Blake Oliver: So the mobile network operator, you report the number [00:43:00] and I'm I'm assuming that they will then forward calls to the I granny who takes the call and then wastes the scammers time.

David Leary: That's great right?

David Leary: Do you want to can you read the next ad while I get the Intuit earnings ready?

Blake Oliver: You got it.

David Leary: All right.

Blake Oliver: Thank you to our sponsor, Sharelink. Juggling dozens of client documents, signatures and file requests can feel like an endless maze. If you've ever wished for a better way to manage all of this, you'll want to hear [00:43:30] about Sharelink. Sharelink is a document management system built specifically for accounting professionals. Imagine it having all of your client requests in one dynamic list, updated in real time and accessible by everyone on your team. No more hunting through email threads or wondering if you have the latest version of a document. What makes Eurolink special is its ability to automate your most time consuming tasks, with customizable templates for recurring work, built in e-signatures and real time tracking [00:44:00] of every document status, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it. Plus, your clients don't need any special software. They just drag and drop their files. And with a clear audit trail of every action, you maintain complete transparency and peace of mind. Whether it's a massive QuickBooks backup or an obscure compressed file, Sharelink handles any file size or type. No limitations, no headaches. And here's what's really impressive firms using Sharelink report cutting their document, gathering time by up to 50%. That's [00:44:30] time you can spend actually serving your clients. So if you're ready to simplify your document management and focus on what you do best providing top notch accounting services, head over to The Accounting Podcast promotion link. That is accounting podcast promo. Forward slash Sura link.

David Leary: Thank you.

David Leary: Sure. Link. All right so let's jump into the Intuit earnings. Um I'm going to break it up into kind of three parts we'll talk [00:45:00]about a small statement they made about AI in regards to AI. We'll talk about TurboTax and we'll talk about Intuit Enterprise. So the first, uh, this is an interesting statement that was made in regards to a question about AI at the company. And the response in the conference call was, our entire strategy as a company is to create done for you experiences. Marketing is done for you. Quote to cash is done for you. Your books are done for you. Your accounting is done for you, your taxes are done for [00:45:30] you, and connecting you to financial products that are right for you as a consumer are done for you. The customer is always in control and always with the path to an AI powered human expert. I just don't feel like I've seen Intuit be so blatant that we're going to do these things for you. Ai is going to do these things for you. I thought that was kind of a new presentation of their company strategy. Maybe they're still vetting it out, but have you seen them be so forthright about we're going to do these things for you?

Blake Oliver: Well, and what things exactly [00:46:00] do they say?

David Leary: Well, marketing quote to cash your books, your accounting, your taxes, uh, getting you connected to the right financial products. They're going to do all that for you with AI and or a human powered AI.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. I mean, AI is going to do everything eventually, right?

David Leary: Yeah. And but now now Intuit's making that their company strategy, which I thought was an interesting comment. Uh, let's go to TurboTax. So an analyst liked the TurboTax commercial, right. So that was kind of the start of the question. [00:46:30] And Intuit responded back that their strategy within the consumer group is to disrupt the assisted tax category. So they shifted marketing dollars early into the season because that's when people that use assisted tax partners make a decision on who they're going to use for 2025 and in January. So when they ran these ads, that's when people are deciding, should I have Blake do my taxes or somebody else? Yeah. Um, this is the crazy part. They saw a strong lift in traffic. They [00:47:00] believe it was a good spend. Good ROI and bolsters their confidence for the full year. And when asked again about the commercial, they said I would love. I would tell you that the results were overwhelmingly positive. It raised heads. There was engagement better than we thought, and the price was a significant factor in a very positive way. So that commercial for all the accounting people that got very upset over it, it was a home run for Intuit. Home grown commercial.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.So no apology, right? No. No mention [00:47:30] of.

David Leary: Not to the analyst.

David Leary: You're not going to apologize to them?

Blake Oliver: Well, but I think it just it just backs up what Suzanne basically said in his non-apology at Intuit Connect, which was this is what we're going to do. And like, I mean, effectively felt like sorry that it came off like, sorry you didn't like it. But this is where we're going. That's that's the vibe I got. Right? This is what we're doing. Apologies you didn't like how we did it.

David Leary: Yeah.

David Leary: So then let's talk about Intuit Enterprise Suite. [00:48:00] So a few episodes I think I was estimating with you, maybe there's 250,000, 300,000 potential enterprise customers. They stated they have 800,000 mid-market customers in their franchise who can grow into our Qbo advanced and Intuit Enterprise Suite offerings. 800,000. They think they can move into that and they view it the total market.

Blake Oliver: Did you say 300,000 or 800,000?

David Leary: 800. I thought it was about 300. Okay. Now into saying it's 800,000.

Blake Oliver: There's 800,000 that are [00:48:30] currently on QuickBooks Enterprise Desktop.

David Leary: On.On.On. Intuit in the Intuit franchise already that can be moved to these more expensive products.

Blake Oliver: So midsize what they define as midsize companies that are already on some sort of Intuit product.

David Leary: Yeah. And they're viewing this market total addressable market is an $89 billion mid-market. That's what they're going after in fiscal year 2024. Qbo advanced customers grew 28%. [00:49:00] The online ecosystem for advanced. Grew 36%, and the average revenue of cost per customer was five x. The rest of the QuickBooks base.

Blake Oliver: Quickbooks advanced five times more revenue per customer.

David Leary: Yeah, for that versus the regular QuickBooks base, they actually gave two examples of Intuit Enterprise customers. They they really say like we signed because they're doing contracts with these companies, right. An eight entity RV park operator with $10 [00:49:30] million in revenue. And that company was evaluating competitor solutions when they chose to get.

Blake Oliver: Enterprise Suite,

David Leary: Intuit.Enterprise instead, and then an economic development organization with more than 60 million in annual revenue across 18 corporate entities. They've also adopted bill pay payments and payroll. And they actually got into numbers. So they mentioned specifically $20,000 is the average revenue per customer for AOS.

Blake Oliver: Say that again.

Blake Oliver: What number?

David Leary: $20,000 [00:50:00] is the average annual, uh, revenue per per the quick Intuit Enterprise suite. Customer is 20 grand.

Blake Oliver: Wow.

Blake Oliver: So that's more than we thought. We thought it would be like ten. Well, that's at the high end. We thought it would be.

Blake Oliver: 12,000 to 20,000. So they're saying it's average is $20,000 a year for that product.

David Leary: And and mid-market grew 42% when the rest of all of QuickBooks only grew 20%. So their mid-market is already growing [00:50:30] this last year before they even introduced this product.

Blake Oliver: So they go for it.

David Leary: And they also added uh, 200 account managers, business development folks, all geared towards outside selling. And they also addressed because the $20,000 seems expensive. But for the business owners, they said the money isn't the object. The businesses are now getting consolidated reports in minutes. They have a daily understanding of where their business is, performance, performing, and that's game changing. [00:51:00] So they're not looking at the.

David Leary: Price, right?

Blake Oliver: Well they are though. I mean like realistically it's Intuit's average price for that product. The enterprise suite is $20,000, which is basically the like, I don't even know if anyone can get NetSuite or intact for less than that or even for that price. So Intuit's in a really good spot. And I think this is actually a really good news for NetSuite and Intacct implementers, because those companies are going to have to compete now on price, [00:51:30] and prices are going to come down for the mid-market because of this competition from Intuit. That's my hope anyway. And if I were a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, I would get certified as soon as possible. If a certification exists yet for Enterprise Suite, because think about the consulting work that will be available to help companies Implement enterprise suite.

David Leary: Especially if I is doing the basic bookkeeping. Like just in the same way tax.

David Leary: Like [00:52:00] the bottom is getting to become a commodity that's free. What if basic bookkeeping becomes a commodity and it's free? What kind of is like all these apps are just adding basic bookkeeping in Shopify just launched.

David Leary: Like almost an accounting. You could make.

Blake Oliver: An argument that basic bookkeeping has been like 8,090% of that has been automated for ten years now, because you can do it yourself with bank feeds and bank rules and smart automations. It's, you know, and there's now all these tools, like, we did an earmark [00:52:30] expo yesterday and we saw a tool that will be able to, like, pull detailed transaction data out of QuickBooks in a filtered way, allow you to change accounts and classes and locations and push it back into QuickBooks. Like, I could use that along with these, like, let's see this RV park. I'm doing the bookkeeping for this RV park you mentioned with six eight locations, I could have spreadsheets connected to each qbo file monitoring for all the uncategorized transactions, and I could actually just be doing the bookkeeping [00:53:00] very quickly in Excel and pushing it back into the GL and doing the consolidated reporting and like the value of me on an outsourced basis, doing that for that client for eight locations, I could charge thousands and thousands of dollars a month for that. And if I've done it right, I might only be spending like a day, a week, maybe less of my team's time. And if I was doing it as an individual, I could probably handle, you know, [00:53:30] ten of those kind of clients. Right. And that's how you get to.

David Leary: The point where you only.Work three days of.Work week.

Blake Oliver: Exactly. We work as much as you want, right? It's not about the time anymore. It's about the value you're creating. And those midsize businesses are totally ready to hire a controller, but they can't find a full time controller, nor do they quite need one yet. So like this is the perfect place to be if you want to do outsourced accounting work. It's fantastic.

David Leary: And they might get a little competition here. So ODU, who sponsored [00:54:00] our podcast a long time ago. They're an open source ERP. They kind of been playing in that Sage Intacct NetSuite space, and they have 80 apps that span a bunch of functions, including the ERP. They have a 50,000 person community. The last time they took money, they took money eight years ago, but with 5 million users and 40% growth per year, they actually are aiming to hit a billion in revenue by 2027. But they just [00:54:30] did a raise of $527 million to go after more mid market. Now my understanding is they have a lot of traction in South America, some other countries non US. But if they decide to go to the US this could, this could be competition for Intuit at that that price level.

Blake Oliver: Well, David, I would love to keep going. Um, and there's a bunch of stuff we didn't get to. We have to get to next week. Like. Like this, this stat that expense fraud costs companies 5% of revenue. That was [00:55:00] in a Wall Street Journal article. I really want to talk about that. So stay tuned to next week. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about firms raising prices. Um, and then I also want to report on some of the travel I've been doing recently. We didn't fit it into this episode, but I want to thank Beach Fleishman, the largest Arizona based accounting firm, for having me out to speak at their annual conference in Tucson. That was a real honor. It was so much fun to talk about. I live in front of a whole firm. Um, I also got to meet up with Dark Horse CPAs [00:55:30] recently when they were here for their conference in Scottsdale. And thank you to the Asccp, the American Society of Cost Segregation Professionals, for having me down to Tempe a couple of weeks ago to speak about artificial intelligence and how that will impact cost segregation professionals. And I've got something I want to share that I presented. I'll do that next week, hopefully. So do we have one more ad we need to read David before we go?

David Leary: Yeah, we got to get I actually have two more ads. We could either do [00:56:00] them back to back and then do you have a closing up story you.

David Leary: Want to tell?

Blake Oliver: You what David? Why don't you go? Because you got to go to a webinar. I'm keeping you and I will finish up with the ads and close this out.

David Leary: Okay? Perfect.

Blake Oliver: All right. Thanks, David. Bye, David. And thank you to Smartvault. Does managing client documents, chasing down signatures and worrying about security keep you up at night? Let me introduce you to Smartvault, your new best friend in cloud based document management and client collaboration. Imagine having unlimited [00:56:30] storage for all your firm and client documents accessible anytime, anywhere. With Smartvault, you can securely request, share, organize, and collaborate on documents across teams and clients in the cloud. From the moment you engage a new client to storing final tax returns. Smartvault automates and streamlines your entire tax preparation workflow. It automatically creates standardized folder structures and auto routes documents as clients share files, complete forms, and e-sign documents. Keeping your firm organized and everyone [00:57:00] updated throughout the process. Security is top notch with bank grade encryption, custom access controls that give you and your clients peace of mind. And here's a bonus Smartvault is the only document management system that directly integrates with Intuit tax programs, and it works seamlessly with any tax software you use. So if you're ready to boost your productivity, enhance client collaboration, and give Smartvault a try, head over to The Accounting Podcast promo slash [00:57:30] Smartvault that is The Accounting Podcast dot promo forward slash Smartvault. Also, thank you to our sponsor artifacts. Are you tired of wasting countless hours managing investment portfolio, bookkeeping, meat artifacts, and automated investment bookkeeping solution specifically developed for accounting firms and family offices across Canada [00:58:00] and the United States.

Blake Oliver: Imagine reconciling portfolios in minutes, not hours. Artifacts transforms raw, unstructured financial data from PDF statements. The book of records for tax compliance into the reporting you need. Eliminating manual data entry and streamlining your workflow with artifacts. Secure cloud based platform. You can achieve up to 80% savings in operational time. Yes, you heard me right 80% savings artifacts seamlessly ingests [00:58:30] and processes data from over 300 broker statements, ensuring accuracy and giving you total control. Plus, it offers the flexibility to validate, adjust or modify any data point at any time. Developed with extensive input from CPAs artifacts ensures the accuracy and detailed compliant reports you need. Free yourself from time consuming tasks and focus on what matters most, delivering strategic advice and proactive tax planning for your clients. Accounting [00:59:00] firms across North America are already unlocking the power of artifacts patented technology to discover how artifacts can handle your investment portfolio. Bookkeeping in minutes. Head over to The Accounting Podcast dot promos artifacts that is The Accounting Podcast dot promo forward slash a r t I f f e x. And thank you to everyone who joined us live today. Really appreciate you. If you want [00:59:30] to join us live, let's say you're listening to the podcast right now and you thought, man, it would be great to chat with Blake and David and give them a piece of my mind.

Blake Oliver: You can do that, go to the The Accounting Podcast on YouTube. Just open up YouTube, type in The Accounting Podcast. We will pop right up. Hit subscribe and notify and you'll get notified whenever we go live. If you've got YouTube on your phone, you'll get a notification right there. You can hop on wherever you are. Um, [01:00:00] and don't forget, you can earn free continuing professional education for having listened to this. You spent an hour with me today. I think you deserve a free CPE. Download the earmark app on the App Store, or just go to earmark Dot app in your browser. That's earmark app. Sign up for free and you can take one CPE for free every week. If you want to support the work that we do to make continuing education affordable, accessible [01:00:30] anytime, anywhere, you can subscribe for just $150 per year. What better way to get your CPE requirement done before the year end deadline. I know many of you have a. Year end CP deadline. Why not get it done listening to some podcasts? Maybe while you're traveling? Are you going somewhere for Thanksgiving? Are you hitting the road for a whole day to get where you're going? You could knock out eight hours of CPE in one go.

Blake Oliver: Oh, and you can listen at 1.5 x and maybe do it [01:01:00] a little faster. I don't tell anyone I told you that. But you know, it's as far as we know, there's no restriction on that, according to Nasba. So, you know, if you feel comfortable, go for it. Thanks, everybody. Uh. Appreciate you. Hey, drew. Drew says, come on, you guys need to be more Rogan ish. Three and five hour podcasts. These one hour podcasts are way too short. Uh, you know, drew, I would love to to approach the Rogan level. [01:01:30] You know, we've only been doing this now for seven years. I just got the, uh. I just got the notification on LinkedIn. We've been doing the accounting podcast for seven years now, and it feels like we're just starting to hit our stride. So, you know, maybe, maybe someday soon we'll have those three hour episodes and then, you know, we'll have like an army of people on YouTube who just make clips for us and highlight the best, the best parts. I mean, it's crazy. I've still got like four more stories [01:02:00] I could talk about. I mentioned, like the percentage of firms that are raising prices. I want to talk about that next time.

Blake Oliver: It's only 57%. Only 57% of firms are raising prices. It should be 100%. And the question should be how much right. That expense fraud statute. Wild story in the Wall Street Journal with some great examples. Uh, the guy who, uh, another story for next week. The guy who defrauded the Panthers football team. Florida. [01:02:30] I think it's the bears. The Jaguars, I forget, but, um, he's suing FanDuel, claiming that FanDuel, got him addicted to gambling and that's why he defrauded them. And then we've got updates on AICPA, Nasba stuff, the Ell program, all sorts of good things. So yeah, maybe maybe we will need to just do this all day long. I really enjoy it. It's a lot of fun and, uh, boring. Accountant says seven years and still waiting for a journal entry [01:03:00] on the podcast. Well, you know, it's it's a little bit risky. I prefer to do live demos over doing my t-accounts and journal entries, especially math on the podcast. You know, I got to pull up Excel, a true accountant, you know, never does math in their head. Right? It's like got to use Excel for that. Thanks everyone. Great to see you here on this Friday. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And if if I don't see you soon before then happy [01:03:30] Thanksgiving.