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Congratulations to Blake for making Accounting Today's Top 100 Most Influential People list! Today, Blake and David dig into several significant developments in accounting, including a federal court's decision to block BOI reporting nationwide. They also examine which of the 57% of accounting firms plan to raise fees in 2025 and take a look at the AICPA's Experience Learn and Earn (ELE) program. There's also talk about new PCAOB reporting requirements for audit firms and the recent acquisition of Dext by Iris Software Group.
Chapters
Sponsors
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Chapters
- (00:31) - Celebrating Achievements and Social Media Impact
- (03:16) - Key News Stories: Price Increases and Regulatory Changes
- (04:17) - BOI Reporting Requirement Blocked
- (14:21) - Raising Prices in Accounting Firms
- (17:39) - Experience, Learn, and Earn Program
- (22:26) - AICPA and Overtime Pay Ruling
- (30:12) - PCAOB's New Reporting Requirements
- (34:48) - Debating the Future of Auditing
- (35:50) - Impact of AI on Auditing
- (37:21) - Evaluating PCAOB's Effectiveness
- (38:32) - PCAOB Sanctions and Penalties
- (45:00) - Macy's Financial Controversy
- (48:31) - EY's AI Interview Bot
- (53:29) - AI's Impact on Productivity
- (58:14) - Dext Acquisition by Iris
- (01:01:58) - Closing Remarks and Future Topics
Show Notes
Accounting Today - The 2024 Top 100 Most Influential People https://arizent.brightspotcdn.com/c3/0f/2649ee17493eab95634bbc91f5f7/top-100-most-influential-people-updated.pdf
Federal Court Enjoins Enforcement of the CTA Nationwide; Reporting Companies “Need Not Comply” with January 1 Deadline
Survey Says 57% of Firms Are Raising Prices Next Year
Experience, Learn, and Earn
https://experiencelearnearn.org/
https://experiencelearnearn.org/
Expanded Access Now Available for AICPA-NASBA ELE Program
Texas Judge Tosses Biden Overtime Expansion for Millions
Follow up to the "AICPA is illegally hiding salary info on job postings". After several emails, I convinced them to comply with the law
PCAOB Adopts Auditor Performance Metrics, Increased Firm Reporting Rules https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/pcaob-adopts-auditor-performance-metrics-increased-firm-reporting-rules
Critics see chance to close down US audit regulator under Trump
Macy’s says employee hid up to $154 million in expenses, delaying Q3 earnings
KPMG Survey: AI Adoption Across US Finance Functions Reaches Highest Levels, with ROI Exceeding Expectations
IRIS Software Group Announces Intent to Acquire Dext Software Ltd.
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Transcripts
The full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page
Creators & Guests
What is The Accounting Podcast?
The Accounting Podcast (formerly the Cloud Accounting Podcast) is the world's #1 accounting, bookkeeping, and tax podcast! Join us weekly for a roundup of accounting news, analysis, and interviews. Plus, earn free NASBA-approved CPE credits for listening with the Earmark app. Learn more at https://earmarkcpe.com.
Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!
Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] Why are we struggling to get people into the profession? It's too many hours, not enough pay.
David Leary: [00:00:11] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:19] Hello and welcome back to the Accounting Podcast, the number one podcast for accountants in the world. Your weekly news roundup for the profession. I'm Blake Oliver.
David Leary: [00:00:29] And I'm David Leary and Blake. Not only are we the number one podcast, you are a top 100 accounting today. Most influential people in accounting person. Congratulations.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:43] Yes, I am honored. Thank you accounting today for including me on that list. Um, it's really amazing we were on that list. You and me, David, a few years ago.
David Leary: [00:00:55] We shared it. We shared a slide, we shared.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:57] A slide, and then we dropped off for a little while and now we're back. And earmark got a mention in the in the top 100. So thank you to everyone who tunes in to this show and anyone who was involved. We don't know exactly how this list is compiled, but I believe there was like a voting. There were some judges. So if you're listening in and you voted to include me on that list and earmark on that list, thank you so much. Um, I think a lot of it is just due to the millions of people that have seen this show, uh, on social media. Uh, I did a little analysis that I sent in to accounting today, and we reached something like 15 million people in the last 365 days. And I know that's hard to believe, but that's the power of the algorithm of social media, especially TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts. And so if you are an accountant and you are not on social media, it's it's it. It works. It may take a while. We've been doing this show now for seven years, and it took us a while to crack the code, but we figured it out, and we're reaching. I mean, there aren't even that many accountants in this country, so that means we we are reaching more than just accountants. And that makes me happy that we're bringing accounting knowledge to the non accounting audience through the power of social media. So even though social media gets a lot of like crap and people tend to not like it, I think it has a lot of power. And the reason we're able to do what we do is because of it. So yeah.
David Leary: [00:02:29] So congratulations. So don't let it go to your head and let's bring it back down to like, what's the stories this week? Let's get to.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:35] The news this week. Right. So uh, but first let's thank our sponsors.
David Leary: [00:02:39] Yes. So three sponsors this week we have Old Faithful on pay. We have Zoho Practice and Smartvault. So later on we'll be discussing their ads as we go through the episode.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:50] Awesome. Thank you so much to our sponsors. I want to cover a few stories that we didn't get to last week that I teased, and I apologize. We ran out of time. I want to talk about what firms are raising prices. 57% of firms are raising prices for next year. I want to talk about the experience, learn and earn program that the AICPA is working on as a solution for the accounting talent shortage and the new PCAOB firm reporting requirements, the requirements for audit firms to report new metrics to the PCAOB, which is also under threat from the incoming Trump administration. There was a story in the news about how some of those folks in the incoming administration are talking about eliminating the pcob and putting the responsibility that the PCAOB has to audit audit firms back with the SEC and take it away from this private organization that has been empowered to do it. We'll talk about that. But, um, first, before we get to those follow up stories or those stories we never got to last week, we got to talk about Bowie. Bowie, the beneficial ownership information reporting requirement, which we just found out today has been blocked by a federal court, has halted the Corporate Transparency Act nationwide.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:17] This case is called Texas Top Cop Shop v Garland et al. It's the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, and they have issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the CTA, the Corporate Transparency Act, and that is the act that created this beneficial ownership information requirement under FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The judge in this case ruled that the CTA oversteps constitutional boundaries by infringing upon states rights to regulate Corporations. This is exactly what I thought was going to happen. I knew that this act was unconstitutional, and I expect that it will be upheld as unconstitutional on appeal. The act also, this beneficial ownership information requirement also imposes significant costs on businesses. It's estimated at over $22 billion in the first year. And we really don't know what FinCEN is going to do with all that information. The plaintiffs argued that the CTA violates the First Amendment by compelling speech and association, and breaches the Fourth Amendment due to privacy concerns over required personal information. There are 32.6 million businesses that are affected by beneficial ownership information reporting requirements, And they no longer, as of this injunction, have to file those reports.
David Leary: [00:05:55] So I can just take this off our to do list. Yeah, it's on my to do list. I mean.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:00] There was a part of me that thought maybe we should just not do this as, like, a protest kind of thing, right? Um, because I just can't see how this is constitutional. If you think about it, an LLC.
David Leary: [00:06:12] For this. Blake. Yes. You should fight this. It's a marketing expense.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:15] Well, so we are organized. Our entities are organized in Arizona and Delaware and the Arizona entities, like, let's just think about this. If you have an LLC in Arizona and you don't transact across state lines, what right does the federal government under the Constitution have to compel you to do anything in terms of reporting the owners of that LLC? It's it's it is a state thing, right? That is who you incorporate with. And the Federal government doesn't have any right to regulate an LLC in a particular state if it's not engaging in interstate commerce. And I always thought that was one of the biggest issues here. So what do you do if you have filed? Well, nothing really. You already you already did it.
David Leary: [00:07:07] You spent your money.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:07] Pay attention. But if you have not yet filed, um, the filing is not currently required under the injunction. So we are going to hold off. I'm going to hold off doing this for our entities. And I'm going to pay attention because if it changes, if if the injunction is lifted, then we will have to file.
David Leary: [00:07:27] And according to, um, uh, representative Roger Williams of Texas, as of last night, only 14.2% of small businesses in Texas have even filed. So it's still overall, I think the country it's still not even at 15%. So 85% of businesses are just not complying.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:47] So it's a huge compliance burden. Many businesses are not even aware of this requirement and will not be in compliance because they don't know about it, because the government has done a really poor job of educating people. I haven't seen any communication from the government, from FinCEN anywhere.
David Leary: [00:08:05] No, they created their their resource center and they were targeting accountants to go do this dirty work. They really were. It was like this tool kit and social media post for you to use and email templates to send to your clients. And this, like you said, this might have real legs because on Twitter AICPA breaking news on CTA, CTA, BOE rule, major victory Nasba or not Nasba. Sorry. Nsba. So which is the National Small Business Association? A major victory like over and over again, all these organizations that, um, maybe have been on the sideline are like really celebrating this. So this feels like it's a real concrete nail in the coffin for that now. Would you be scared now? There's a lot of startups that showed up. A lot of companies pivoted business models to make a lot of money on this, because I could see that, hey, if you can get $300 a company for, you know, there's 30 million businesses, there's a business model here. Oh, yeah. No, that would be. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:04] If this requirement stuck, I mean, even now, it's still an opportunity for firms. And I even though I think the requirement is stupid and pointless and will not achieve the objectives of the law, which is to combat financial crime, it's definitely something that accounting firms could be helping their clients with. I was just speaking with Michael Lee, the owner of Reconcil'd, about this. He said that they sent out an email to all their clients saying, hey, we'll do this for you for $500. And a bunch of clients replied and said, yeah, sure, we'll do it. $500 to fill out a form that probably will take like less than an hour for the firm to gather the information for and fill out on average for these clients. So like it? It's not. And what's crazy to me is how many firms are saying like, oh, well, we're not sure if we want to take on the risk, right?
David Leary: [00:09:56] Well, it's because if that person gets divorced or moves and they don't tell you, you're tied to that reporting guy. And that's the biggest issue with this thing is you have to keep every time something changes, you got to refile and refile and refile and I know, but like come on, that track of all that, it's so hard.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:11] That's what insurance is for. That's why you buy insurance for your firm. If you're not willing to take on any risk at all, then why would you do anything anyway? It's beside the point. The point is that boy is suspended. The injunction stands as it is today as we record this on December 4th. So stay tuned. Uh, hopefully this stands and we don't have to do this. And it saves $22 billion in compliance costs for small businesses. Uh, and I would be a great thing. Uh, David says vindication for procrastination. That's right. Sometimes it pays to procrastinate. David, thanks for joining us. Um, Adley, thanks for joining us. Mad man. Dan, great to see you, Nathaniel. Uh, boring accountant. Like and subscribe. Thank you. Boring accountant and Gator NYC. Awesome. Thanks everyone who joined us live. Don't forget you can subscribe to us on YouTube. Hit that notification button and you'll get notified when we go live and you can join us. And David, I think it's time for our first AD.
David Leary: [00:11:12] I get the first ad going if you want to go ahead and get your next story ready.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:18] So we'll do that.
David Leary: [00:11:19] I Misclicked hold on.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:21] Who is our first sponsor?
David Leary: [00:11:23] Sponsor is on pay and I'm just fixing the promo here.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:28] Technical difficulties.
David Leary: [00:11:30] Here we go. There we go. That's the correct URL. So on Forbes CNBC rank on pay number one for small business payroll. On pay really knows how to get payroll done right for every client you serve, no matter how complex their software is, easy to use and backed by outstanding service levels, they handle new client onboarding for free and have experts on call to keep you and your clients on track. The system includes multi-state payroll, local tax filings, integrated HR tools, and more with no hidden fees. When you join on Pays Partner program, you get a custom dashboard to easily manage all clients in one place, plus gain exclusive perks like revenue sharing or discounts, free payroll for your firm, co-branding opportunities, premium swag, and more. Onpay helps you run your practice efficiently while providing exceptional payroll that your clients can count on. To learn more about using Onpay for your firm and your clients, that may be farms, startups, restaurants, bars, doctors, nonprofits, gyms, franchises, or dentists. Head over to accounting podcast dot promo slash Onpay that is. Accounting podcast promo forward slash o n p a y. And thank you on pay for being such a great sponsor in 2024.
Blake Oliver: [00:12:44] Sean Smith in the live stream says so many insurance firms said they weren't covering accounting firms to do the boy. That's true. If you went and you asked your your insurance provider if you could do this, some of them would come back and say many of them, I guess, and say, no, no, we don't want to take that risk. But maybe that's a case of like ask later, right? Like if, I mean, I don't know, I don't get it, honestly. Like there's so many things that we do as firms and like the fact that we couldn't fill out this form. And yet here we are doing taxes and audits like just that. It doesn't make.
David Leary: [00:13:21] Sense. Yes that's true.
Blake Oliver: [00:13:23] Like those things are much higher risk. Nathaniel says that my firm required a separate engagement letter with specific language. Yes. And you should definitely do that for any kind of new offering like this. And use the engagement letter to protect your firm for sure. Um, Ross says, I just spent the entire week filing BI reports for clients. Cool. Sorry. I guess you should have procrastinated like us. Well, hopefully they.
David Leary: [00:13:49] Paid you as long as you got. You charged them for it. It might be okay.
Blake Oliver: [00:13:52] Yeah. Hopefully you're not billing after the fact. Might want to get those bills out soon if you are. All right. Let's talk about raising prices. This is from CPA trendlines. Over half of US accounting firms plan to raise fees next year 57% to be precise. And that's according to a survey by ignition. Among those 57% of firms raising prices, 31% plan, a 10% increase, 37% will limit increases to 5% and a bold 6% aim for a 20% hike. Let's think about this 57% of firms are raising prices. That means the other 43% are not raising prices. If you don't raise your prices and there is inflation, what does that mean, David?
David Leary: [00:14:46] Well, take inflation out of it. I know your costs went up because every software app raised their prices right. Like your direct your cost to serve your clients went up. There's zero doubt on that.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:56] And you're probably giving raises to your employees I imagine. So hopefully hopefully your labor costs, which is the most significant cost in your business as an accounting firm, is going up, and yet you're not raising prices. This number should be 100%. 100% of firms should be raising their prices, at least the inflation rate, which is, what, 3%, 4% right now, at least on.
David Leary: [00:15:22] The clients you hate, at least.
Blake Oliver: [00:15:24] At least on all the clients. Yes, on the clients you don't really want. It should be more right. So I'm just a little bit, you know, I mean, I guess I'm not shocked by this. This makes a lot of sense to me because what is the, um, traditional way to raise your prices in an accounting firm? It is. You don't raise prices for like ten years, and then all of a sudden you realize that you are undercharging by like 50% to maybe 100%, and you have to jack up that price a crazy amount, which creates a lot of discontent with your customers and your clients. If you raise prices 5% every year, you're not going to get that much pushback. I'd be surprised if you lost any clients doing that. And we've heard from firm owners who raise prices ten, even 20% that they may lose some clients, but they actually make more money on the whole. So if you aren't yet planning a price increase, I would encourage you to reconsider this a lot. Um. So. Yeah, that's that's that's basically it.
David Leary: [00:16:35] Does it have any stats? Like, did they do the survey the previous year? Did these numbers change? Are some firms kind of on a high raised prices every other year.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:43] Like I don't have the previous year data.
David Leary: [00:16:46] Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:46] Yeah. Um, so I mean, this is, this is something if your firm is not raising prices at all, they're losing money. That's economics. I feel like not enough CPAs take economics. Is it even required as part of the accounting curriculum? It really should be. Because, uh, if you don't raise your prices and there's inflation, you're losing money. All right, so that's the firms raising prices. Shall we talk about e l e experience learn and earn.
David Leary: [00:17:21] Well, it's more numbers. You have more numbers on that. It's an update I do.
Blake Oliver: [00:17:25] So what is the L program? It's called experience, Learn and Earn. And it was created by the AICPA and Nasba, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, in partnership with Tulane University, to streamline the process for accounting grads to acquire the final 30 credit hours necessary for CPA licensure under the 150 hour rule, which AICPA has acknowledged is a significant barrier to attracting new CPAs into the profession.
David Leary: [00:17:59] And this has been a pilot. How old is this now? How many years have they been piloting this?
Blake Oliver: [00:18:02] I believe this is the third year. That's what my.
David Leary: [00:18:05] Brain's telling me too. Okay.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:07] The program number two or number three? And so where are we? Because this program has been touted as the AICPA solution to the talent shortage. Well, the program currently has 105 students Enrolled.
David Leary: [00:18:25] All at one campus. I mean, have they rolled it out to other universities or is this all at Tulane still?
Blake Oliver: [00:18:30] I think it's all through Tulane, but you can do this online. So the way this works is while you are working at a firm, you take courses online at a reduced rate, which is designed to make the tuition more affordable, reduce that cost, allow you to work. Your firm gives you it's supposed to give you time to complete these courses. So you're working right? It's that's that's why the l the experience learn and earn program. But they only have 105 students enrolled right now. So step back for a second and let's think about how bad the talent crisis has gotten and how quickly this program is growing or not. Is it really going to help? Because we have tens of thousands of accounting grads every single year? It's like I want to say 30 to 40,000 a year, and we've only got 105 students enrolled in this program. So that's my question to the people running this program. The people running the AICPA is, how are you going to solve the accounting talent crisis when after three years, you've only got 105 students enrolled in this? How many students are going to be 105 students anyways?
David Leary: [00:19:42] Without this program, you would have just hit the 100.
Blake Oliver: [00:19:45] How many students are going to be enrolled next year or the year after that? The year after that, I feel like there's just there's no long term thinking about this program and how we're actually going to solve this issue. And the easiest solution is not to come up with some workaround to give students online courses and maybe cut the price a little bit. The workaround is just simply to acknowledge that the 150 hour rule was a bad idea, that the extra 30 credits are not helpful and not necessary for the vast majority of accountants, and to revert to 120 plus two years of experience. That would be the straightforward solution that would have an immediate impact. And I hope that our leaders consider it.
David Leary: [00:20:30] That seems like that would be an easy survey. You could you could survey a bunch of people that have that are not CPAs yet. They have a bachelor's degree, right? They have 120 hours, and they've worked two years at an accounting firm. How many of them, if that limitation is gone, would now go pursue the CPA? This would be an easy survey to do and get real data.
Blake Oliver: [00:20:50] Well, surveys, I agree with you, David. And they haven't done that as far as I know. But like surveys of existing CPAs, current CPAs find that something like 80% of them think the 150 hour rule should go. So I do not know why our leaders continue to hang on to this idea and and make these half efforts, because you might reduce the cost a little bit. But we need to take drastic action if we want to get more accountants and maybe all these issues that we're seeing with financial reporting are tied to this accounting talent shortage. I really want to know what happened at Macy's. Was it, in fact, somebody who was in that job that shouldn't have been in that job because we don't have enough accountants? It's certainly possible. Uh, Nathaniel says alternative pathway is good, but it does not help when you can make 100,000 as an undergrad in other degree areas.
David Leary: [00:21:44] Exactly that. That's an alternative pathway making 100 grand somewhere, some other way.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:52] Um, Jose says, my goodness, just go back to one, 20 and two years of experience. It's not that complicated. I'm with you. Okay. In another ruling, legal ruling related to the AICPA, a judge has ruled against paid overtime for accountants and other professional workers. So this goes back to a case that's been dragging on for quite a number of years. The Department of Labor had proposed a new overtime rule in previous years that would increase the salary threshold for mandatory mandatory overtime pay to $58,000 annually. And the AICPA had previously opposed this change, and they specifically cited concerns over increased administrative burdens and higher payroll costs for employers, specifically accounting firms. Now, what's interesting about this is that the page on the website of the AICPA opposing this increase in the overtime threshold was mysteriously taken down, but you can access it via the Wayback Machine on the web archive. And but that has not let the AICPA off the hook, because a Reddit thread about this has done very well on the accounting subreddit with 826 upvotes. It was a top post, and the top comment is for the AICPA with 1.3 thousand upvotes. So, you know, thinking about the AICPA, I just I keep asking myself, what are they doing? If they really want to increase the number of accountants entering the profession, isn't increasing salaries for accountants something that they should be pursuing, but instead they're opposing this overtime ruling? I mean, it wouldn't even.
David Leary: [00:23:49] Supposing they lobbied against it, right? They've been lobbying against these rules. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:23:55] Um, and so the frustration is right at the A of the ASP. The frustration at, I suppose, is the right term is that accountants don't feel the AICPA represents their interests. Average accountants salaries have stagnated. Um, they're not going up, and it just doesn't feel like they're representing the needs of of accountants. And so, you know, why are we struggling to get people into the profession? It's too many hours, not enough pay. Moreover. Moreover. David. Well, I've got more.
David Leary: [00:24:25] But I'll let you. I'm queuing up a tweet that really summarizes this really well. Okay.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:29] And then after that, cue up our next sponsor message. Um, so where do I want to go with that? Job postings. So I was on Reddit, right? I was browsing through Reddit and I saw this post AICPA is illegally hiding salary info on job postings. After several emails, I convinced them to comply with the law. So a Reddit user with the username Doritos do it right. Do is spelled d e w like Mountain Dew. Yeah. Uh, posted an update on the accounting subreddit about the aicpa's compliance with salary transparency laws. The user noticed that the AICPA was hiding salary information on their job postings, which is against certain state laws requiring salary transparency. And I believe one of those states is Colorado, which passed a law that says you have to include a salary range on every job posting. And so this anonymous user says they reached out to AICPA Human Resources via email, but received no response. After being ignored, he sent follow up emails reminding the AICPA that states like Colorado have fined employers for noncompliance, providing a link to the list of fined employers. The AICPA responded by updating only one job posting with salary information, but the user continued to press the issue, and the AICPA HR team requested a Microsoft teams call to discuss it.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:54] He declined the call, suggesting that the that they contact the state regulators if they found it difficult to add salary ranges to postings. And eventually the AICPA did update all the job postings with salary info. Now what is the ispa paying? It turns out that a lead manager role requiring a CPA license and six years of public accounting experience was offering a salary of only $90,000. This is a CPA with six years of experience in a manager role, and the AICPA for an internal post employing a CPA is only offering $90,000. The market rate for such a position in a medium living cost. Cost of living area, like North Carolina is approximately $140,000, and North Carolina is where the AICPA has its headquarters. And maybe that's why the AICPA wanted to withhold the salary information. And again, the response from Reddit is frustration with the AICPA. How can the AICPA claim to represent CPAs when they are underpaying CPAs for their own jobs and not complying with salary transparency rules and trying to get out of it. Trying to pressure somebody to lay off. So, David, why don't we thank our second sponsor?
David Leary: [00:27:22] Well, let me add this to this. This really summarizes your opinion. This is this is from McRib Hard Seltzer on Twitter or X, I guess. And this is from the summer. It was mid-June, and he just clearly says this in one perfect sentence. Instead, the AICPA spent members member dues lobbying against overtime pay at CPA firms that pay their staff less than $47,000 a year. And we wonder why we have a pipeline problem. Pipeline problem? This this summarizes it. It's crazy. They're taking the dues you're paying to fight against, you know, who are they solving for? It's not them. It's their song. It's not what you always say. Certain members. Not all the members.
Blake Oliver: [00:28:03] It's not your average accountant. It's the managing partners, the senior equity partners at firms. That's what it feels like. If you look at the actions that the AICPA has taken over the last few decades, that's who they're benefiting. Let's thank our next sponsor.
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Blake Oliver: [00:29:48] Thank you. Zoho. All right, uh, let's talk about the PCAOB, the public company accounting oversight board. The auditor of the auditors. The PCAOB has adopted new requirements for audit firms with the goal of enhancing transparency and to modernize its reporting framework. What are they requiring? So this is for accounting firms auditing issuers that are accelerated filers or large accelerated filers. So this is going to be the largest firms. And they're requiring new publicly reported metrics in eight areas partner and manager involvement, workload training hours for audit personnel. Experience of audit personnel. The industry experience of the personnel on the audit team, the retention of the audit personnel, the allocation of audit hours and restatement history. And firms are going to have to submit their NLS their income statements to the PCAOB. Now, along with these engagement level metrics, Um, so like, what's an example? Well, it would be like the number of hours that a partner is working on an audit compared to the staff, or that managers are working compared to staff. And it sounds like the goal is to like, figure out, I suppose, our firm's not staffing audit engagements properly.
David Leary: [00:31:20] Yeah, they want to get this additional data to map it to the bad audits. And hey, here's a trend we've noticed. If once once a firm is below this ratio, whatever this magic ratio is for some some data point, the audits have substantial failures. Right. So the spirit of it I get right. They want better data.
Blake Oliver: [00:31:39] The spirit of it I get um but here's the problem. A lot of firms are already struggling with the workload and the staff. So, you know, this creates another requirement. I suppose it's not on the audit staff themselves. It's on the firms from an administrative standpoint. So you know, that's that's you know I'm never a fan of like additional regulation unless there's a really good reason for it. Right. Here's my biggest issue with this is when I look at these metrics, it all seems to be inputs. It's how many hours are you putting into this audit? How many hours of training are these personnel getting? How many years of experience do they have? Um, but is that really what we need to be measuring to measure audit quality?
David Leary: [00:32:32] Well, especially since everybody lies about their timesheets anyways, right? Exactly.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:36] Like this is this is input data based on falsified information in many cases, or at least unreliable information. And I don't think it's going to do anything to improve audit quality. If you want to improve audit quality, you got to measure outputs. You got to measure the actual quality of the audits, and you've got to penalize firms that are doing crappy audits, and you've got to incentivize firms to do better audits. Um, you know, one, one idea the Pcob floated this past year, which seemed like it could really make a difference, is naming the companies that had audits that have significant deficiencies, which right now, the.
David Leary: [00:33:23] Simplest data point that probably will provide the most impact.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:26] Right. Because if a company is on that list, they're going to talk to their auditor and they might fire their auditor. And that would actually create a lot of incentive for the audit firms not to have part one deficiencies, deficiencies that are so significant that they shouldn't have issued the opinion. And yet here we are, more reporting about stuff that doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter how many hours the audit took. What matters is how well the audit was done. If you spend a lot of hours doing a crappy audit, that's not going to make the audit better. Putting more hours into a broken system doesn't help. So I'm I'm with the AICPA on this one. You know, they're of course, opposing this or they express their weariness over it. I don't know if they've actually explicitly said they oppose it, but they they.
David Leary: [00:34:14] They said they're still studying the components, but they think that these rules will place a significant burden on small and mid-sized audit firms and could lead to some exit public auditing altogether. Now, that's the weird one. So they're they're quoting off a survey. So they said they did a survey. The AICPA said they did a survey of top 500 firms, and 51% said they would rethink engaging in public company audits if the requirements are approved. But I'm thinking, aren't we currently in an environment where the top 500 firms are already half of them are thinking to get out of audit anyways?
Blake Oliver: [00:34:49] Well, they always say that.
David Leary: [00:34:50] Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:34:51] Are they really going to do it right? This is of course, what you say is like, well, if you increase our requirements, we're just going to quit. We won't do it. Um, that doesn't make sense to me. It would probably just increase the cost of audits on the clients. That's what should happen, right? When you increase the regulatory burden on the audit firm, they pass through the cost. So that's what will end up happening. They're not going to quit auditing. I mean, maybe the firms that are not doing a lot of audits will quit. And they probably should quit because the worst audits are the ones that are by dabblers the firms that don't do a lot of audits.
David Leary: [00:35:23] That should have been the episode title audit Dabblers maybe.
Blake Oliver: [00:35:26] And what's silly about all this is that with automation and with artificial intelligence, as pointed out by our listener, boring accountant firms don't need to be measuring staffing levels. Ai reduces staffing needs by 90%. Now, it may not do that right now. I actually have a data point on that about how much it is going to reduce staffing, but I think that over the next ten years, ten let's say 20 long term, I is going to reduce the need for manual work in auditing by 80 to 90%. It's exactly the experience I had with cloud computing in the world of client accounting services and bookkeeping and outsourced accounting. I think we're going to see that same thing with auditing. But if all you're measuring is hours in, like you're not capturing any of that improvement. So PCAOB, if it actually wants to be relevant and it wants to help improve the accounting profession needs to focus on measuring quality of audits and incentivizing firms to have higher quality. Maybe a solution is to actually rate audits, give them a letter grade like health inspectors grade restaurants, and give the firms a rating and make them display it on their website if they audit public companies. This is our rating. This is how we did last year, according to the PCAOB. We got a B, we got an A, we got a C, we got a.
David Leary: [00:36:51] D. They do this to public schools. They do this all over our society. Yeah right. Why not accounting firms.
Blake Oliver: [00:36:58] So, you know, maybe this is why Pcob is at risk of, like, getting, getting deregulated or, you know, shoved back into the SEC. Um, there was a story in the Financial Times about how opponents of the PCAOB see an opportunity to possibly eliminate the agency if Donald Trump if Donald Trump returns to the white House while he is returning to the white House.
David Leary: [00:37:25] I feel like in his first term there was a lot of talk about this. He wanted to kill it.
Blake Oliver: [00:37:30] There was there was some mention of it. Uh, maybe it'll actually happen this time. I mean, if you think about it, the PCAOB costs a lot of money. And what do we get from it? Like, does it actually increase audit quality? I think most people would say no, that it has like no impact on audit quality.
David Leary: [00:37:47] It's drawn a lot of attention to it, though I would argue it's it's, you know, if Congress people talking about it's it's drawing attention, but is it worth the expense?
Blake Oliver: [00:37:56] I don't know, maybe in our world. Right. Maybe because we talk about it. But I don't think anybody outside of accounting knows what the PCAOB is.
David Leary: [00:38:04] I think members of Congress do. I think other people talk about it now. It's gotten to the level of attention, maybe.
Blake Oliver: [00:38:10] Um, and, you know, there's also the issue of the fact that, like, the fines that the PCAOB issues are toothless, they're they're meaningless. They're they're immaterial. When you look at them in context of audit firm revenues and the the penalties are pretty minor, rarely are individuals held accountable, and rarely are they actually even required to admit wrongdoing. They just settle and they pay a fine, and maybe they get suspended for a few years, and then they can reapply and do it again. So unless they're willing to give the pcob more teeth. I think it should be eliminated, so it needs to go one way or the other. It's either you empower the Pcob to actually improve audit quality and to hold auditors accountable, or you just get rid of it because it's a waste of money to do anything else.
David Leary: [00:39:01] And it's a weird non true government agency as well.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:05] It's right. It's not actually part of the SEC. It's like a nonprofit that operates independently. I mean you know and like for, for the pcob directors, you know, make a lot of money. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm searching for this on perplexity right now. What are the salaries of the PCAOB directors?
David Leary: [00:39:30] 500 to 900. You know, the.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:33] Pcaob chair, Erica Williams, earned $673,000 annually, and the other board members receive $547,000 Dollars per year. Their budget is $384 million. I think that's money that could be put to the IRS elsewhere.
David Leary: [00:39:53] Give to the IRS.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:55] There you go. Um, yeah, it's the PCAOB or employees 946 staff members as of 2024. And I would love to see evidence, and I'm happy to hear from the PCAOB. If anyone's listening at the PCAOB, I would be more than happy to learn how you quantify the impact of all that money that is being spent on auditing the auditors on audit quality. Can you prove that audit quality has increased at all as a result of this? And if not, maybe your organization should not exist. And I hope that's something that, like the Doge takes on the Department of Governmental Efficiency. This is a great starting point. You know, make them justify their existence.
David Leary: [00:40:41] Was this established just post-enron?
Blake Oliver: [00:40:43] Yeah, but that's like more than 20 years now.
David Leary: [00:40:45] And fraud is no less bad. Audits are like nothing's changed. It's like we created these organizations, these rules and all this overhead. And nothing has gotten better because of this.
Blake Oliver: [00:40:55] Exactly. I don't see any evidence that it has. And if there's no evidence that it has, then maybe it shouldn't exist. So I'm with I'm with Trump on that one or his administration. Here's an example of like a sanction. Right. So the Pcob sanctioned a firm. And this came out in the news like this week. Raines and Fisher was sanctioned. Personnel like deceived the inspectors at the PCAOB. They they hid changes to audit work papers. Um, they they went back and they, like, put together the work papers after the fact and submitted those to the pcob, that kind of thing. Um, and they settled and the penalty was like, uh, the, the the partners, there's three partners that were barred from associating with pcob registered firms. But like the one who got the worst penalty, Ullman, he can petition to get back in after five years with additional CPE requirements. Maybe he'll get a CPE with earmark. Uh, Fisher and Searle were barred with the right to petition for termination of their bar after three years. So. And the fines are, like, uh, $200,000 on the firm, 125,000 on Ullman, 75,000 on Fisher and 65,000 on Searle. I mean, these are.
David Leary: [00:42:20] Judgment they probably made millions on.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:21] Yeah, these are audit partners who probably making over $1 million a year. And so in the scheme of like how long they have been doing this and doing substandard audits and getting away with it, like the penalties are meaningless. In my humble opinion. So that covers us. For all the stuff we teased last episode that we didn't get to. I am so happy that we caught up.
David Leary: [00:42:48] So we want to catch Macy's. Um, because there's a follow up on the Macy's story. Yes. I also want to show you this weird e crazy AI metaphor. Hiring bot, I think, might be a good way to end off the show with that, but we should do our next ad. So I'm going to go ahead and pop up the URL for our next ad, which is smartvault. Thank you. The ad right now.
Blake Oliver: [00:43:08] Thank you. Smartvault.
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Blake Oliver: [00:44:32] Thank you. Smartvault. Do support our sponsors to support us. Let's talk about Macy's. We we spent like half of the episode last week talking about it. And there's been a little more information that has come out. I spotted this in Accounting Today. Uh, what what did you notice? David, that was new. What's new?
David Leary: [00:44:55] That somebody went and looked at all the old earnings calls and earnings releases for the last few years, and Macy's has kind of been bragging about how they've been reducing their shipping and delivery costs and controlling those costs. It's kind of interesting that that this thing you're drawing all this attention to happens to be the thing this employee was quote unquote, lying about or fraudulent or whatever. We still don't know what they did. But yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:26] Adding that piece of information, uh, makes me reconsider the possibility that there was a conspiracy at Macy's to hide delivery expenses. The other possibility is that Macy's management was looking at the financials and seeing small package delivery expense decline year over year over year, and they were excited that it was going down. And we're bringing it up on the investor call as a as a bright point. And yet it was just due to an accounting accrual error.
David Leary: [00:45:58] But I still think um, so the retailer and its financial chief told the Wall Street Journal in May of 2021 that its largest headwind for profits was delivery expense. And I think you nailed that last week. And you said kind of incidental, like the profit they made was almost identical to this number. Yeah, it's pretty close.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:19] The thing that makes me think it's not a conspiracy or it wasn't manipulated is that the the accrual error started in profitable years when they were making over $1 billion, I think 2021 and 2022. Or maybe it was 22 and 23. They had profit. No, no. 21 and 22. They had a billion in profit. More than that. And then it was 23 where they had that small profit that was less than the amount of the error. But the error started compounding before that. But maybe, maybe they knew about it earlier but didn't do anything about it until now, because it would have wiped out their profit in 23. That is possible. I'm just speculating here, but that seems like it. It could have happened if there was some sort of collusion involved.
David Leary: [00:47:09] And maybe this wasn't like deliberate collusion, but it's that indirect groupthink, if that makes sense. Because this was a priority. They were doing more and more shipping deliveries. They're growing their e-commerce business. Um, they were focused they were calling things like process reengineering initiatives. They had a company goal to reduce these these expenses. And it's one of those nobody I'm trying to think, what's that movie A Few Good Men and remember, he's on the stand and he's like, where's the directions on how to walk to the mess hall? And everybody knew it, but it's not documented. And I kind of feel like it's like that type of a thing.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:48] You can't handle the truth kind of thing.
David Leary: [00:47:50] Yes. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:51] Maybe. Maybe. Well, that's all we know for now. Uh, can't wait to learn more about the results of Macy's investigation. And of course, Macy's has not said anything, did not reply to requests for comment. And KPMG, the auditor, has not either. David, I really want to see this e bot and I want I want to I want to see it before we go. So are you ready to show it off?
David Leary: [00:48:17] I am ready to show this off. Do you want.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:18] To set the stage for this? Like I'll put it on the screen.
David Leary: [00:48:22] Okay. And give me an idea like warning message that's on the screen first. The big huge button that.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:27] Says, what does it say?
David Leary: [00:48:28] Please read.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:28] It says please read. What you are about to experience is an AI system that enables you to learn about these benefits and how best to prepare for interviews. You can ask questions such as what is a behavioral interview? What is a case study? Interview? What benefits does E offer? And then there's a big disclaimer and a big continue button. Okay so this is a bot for what.
David Leary: [00:48:49] So in theory you're applying for a job at UI. And there's the time before you get your real interview. But you might have some questions about UI, maybe the culture. What's my 401 (K) like those types of questions. So they've created instead of just having an FAQ, they created a bot to do this, and it's just weird enough that you might not want to work at UI. I don't know, so let's hit continue and jump in and meet our bot. So this is Evie.
Speaker3: [00:49:16] Hi, I'm Eve or Eve. I'm here to help you prepare for your interview process at UI. Feel free to ask any questions about E culture and benefits, interview prep, and case study examples.
David Leary: [00:49:28] So I was trying to ask it hard questions like Will I have to work 80 hours?
Blake Oliver: [00:49:33] So while you type that in I just want to point out this sort of looks like Second Life or like fallout three. Like, I mean, it's I'm not exactly I.
David Leary: [00:49:44] Don't I can't.
Speaker3: [00:49:44] Provide specific information on your working hours at EA. If you have other questions related to EA or the recruiting process, please let me know.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:53] What did you ask? You asked? Well, I work 80 hours to work eight hours.
David Leary: [00:49:56] Actually, here's a good one. Do you have pizza parties?
Blake Oliver: [00:50:01] Oh, yeah. The pizza parties are really important. That's like the top of my list. When I apply for a firm, I want to know how many pizza parties there are. Do they have pepperoni?
Speaker3: [00:50:10] Regarding company events like pizza parties isn't available in the provided context. Would you like to learn more about Aei's work culture or other aspects of working there?
David Leary: [00:50:19] So you tell me, Blake, would you like to learn more about that?
Blake Oliver: [00:50:22] Yeah, sure. Why not?
David Leary: [00:50:24] Yes. She looks at the ceiling.
Speaker3: [00:50:29] She's thinking at why the organizational culture is built on a shared commitment to building a better working world. This culture encourages collaboration, growth and professional development, focusing on inclusivity and diversity. If you have any specific questions about Aei's workplace culture or benefits, please let me know.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:51] Um, could we ask it, like, ask her? Uh, like, how do I ace my interview? All right. Amanda says it's not that informative, is it? Nathaniel says as long as you like to work 80 plus hours a week. Did you type it in? Yes. Thinking.
Speaker3: [00:51:12] Ace your interview at EY. Follow these steps one. Research the company. Understand Yui's mission values, products, services and recent news. Align your answers with the company's culture and industry context. Two. Understand the job description. Identify core duties and required skills for the role. Prepare examples from your experience that demonstrate your ability to handle these responsibilities. Three. Anticipate interview questions for common and behavioral questions.
Blake Oliver: [00:51:45] Yeah, this is a pretty generic situation.
Speaker3: [00:51:48] Behavior impact. Prepare answers to standard questions about your strengths, weaknesses, and reasons for wanting to work at Yui. Review any relevant technical concepts, if applicable. Four. Practice your.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:01] Responses. I mean.
Speaker3: [00:52:02] Conduct mock interviews and record.
David Leary: [00:52:05] Yourself.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:05] Yeah. This is this is so like this is one of those applications of AI that is just disappointing. It feels like they just hook this up to like a generic ChatGPT. Like, I could I could just ask this. I would get a better experience if I just used the ChatGPT app voice mode. And then you.
David Leary: [00:52:23] Wouldn't have this. Weird, because in general, these AI animations, if you've ever played sports games, football games, or the boxing ones really, because they don't have helmets on, they have that soulless eyeball look to their face. And that's what you're staring at when you're interacting with that. This. And you're right. Maybe they're just trying to text.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:40] They're just trying to prepare you for what it's like to actually stand face to face with somebody who is is in HR at UI.
David Leary: [00:52:48] So it's it's it's kind of fun. Maybe go play with it. The link will be in the show notes, but it's a it's a little it's a little on the scary side, I must admit. Um, should we cover one more story before we go? Because Iris acquired, uh, acquired dext, which is kind of a big deal.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:04] Yeah, I want to talk about that. And I want to talk about a Gen Z Gen I study. Can I do that?
David Leary: [00:53:09] Do you do the I study? Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:11] Okay. So this this comes from another big four firm, KPMG. Uh, did did some research, and they found that artificial intelligence currently enhances worker productivity by about 14% using existing technologies. Now, this is not just workers at KPMG. This is a study of global businesses. So 14% increase in productivity. And earlier if you were paying attention, you know that I estimate that eventually we will automate, you know, 80 to 90% of work over the next couple of decades with gen AI tools. Um, and it makes sense to me, actually, this 14% number, because we're only a couple years in to we're almost exactly two years into the release of GPT 3.5, which is the version that was really first impressive. So 14% increase in productivity. What does that mean for companies? Well, of the 10,000 companies, they they analyze 10,000 companies. And they predicted that that productivity bump would lead to anywhere from a 3 to 17% increase in EBITDA. So 3 to 17% increase in the in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. That is a lot. And that's possible today. Uh, now, you know, studies like this might be a little bit optimistic. But even if we pull that back a little bit, I don't see any reason why companies couldn't increase their EBITDA. Let's cut it in half. Right. Like 8% 9%. So it really adds.
David Leary: [00:54:54] Up because if you can get 10% more productivity across the board for every employee at your company, that's just amazing, right? Nothing has done that since. Machinery replaced manual labor on farms. There hasn't been that kind of a efficiency boost.
Blake Oliver: [00:55:09] Big productivity gains. And the gains are small right now. So like unless you were in a job that is extremely limited and can be completely replaced by AI, like you're just an accounts payable specialist entering bills and processing stuff in the ERP system, like that's going to get automated away. But if you're doing anything else, it might make you 10% more productive right now maybe, and then 20 and 3040. But it's it's not going to get to that 100% level for you. So like the upside for American workers is actually really big and American businesses because it means we can grow productivity while not working more hours. And ideally, we can reduce the number of hours we're working. And at public accounting firms where people are working 60 or 70 or 80 hours a week, there is no need to do that if you implement this technology correctly. But but doing that is going to require a huge mindset shift away from inputs, billable hours and time to outcomes and saying it doesn't really matter how long it takes, because if I empower people with technology, they can be more productive and they can achieve the same or more in less time. And we're seeing that in the small firms, and I really hope that it comes up from the grassroots level to the bigger firms so that we can work less and make more. And by the way, I just did a great interview on my earmark podcast with Yuri Kapilovic, and that was the title of the interview was Work Less, Earn More. And we talk about how after you left public accounting, he started his own firm, and he works just 10 to 15 hours a week in the off season, and he works no more than 40 hours a week during busy season. He has a solo practice. He makes the.
David Leary: [00:56:59] Guy I think he is on. I think I've seen him on the Instagrams like he he's in Miami. He's got he's always on the boats, like he's really living his best life.
Blake Oliver: [00:57:08] He's not in Miami. He's up in new Jersey. Okay. I believe, and, uh, a little different, but, uh, he could be. He could be in Miami. I don't know, maybe that's when you saw him, but he's the fun CPA on social media. So go subscribe to the earmark podcast. That's podcast earmark Cpcomm if you want to hear the interview right now, you can watch it on YouTube. We streamed it live. Just search for Yuri, um, and earmark. I'm sure it will come up. Uh, y u r I and earmark, uh, and you'll be able to get CPE for listening to that. So you want to learn how to earn more, work less, work less, earn more. That that's one option. Okay. Um, do you want to talk about decks? Yeah.
David Leary: [00:57:53] So decks, which at one time was called Receipt Bank, you know, over time grew and grew and grew. They made their own acquisitions over time. But now they've been acquired by the Iris software Group. I don't know how much how familiar with Iris, because they're out of the UK, Blake. But they've made almost, uh, what's the total 27 acquisitions? Um, and really, they they got really hot in the 21 with six acquisitions. They're trying to make a stamp and a presence now here in the US market. And they own payroll companies and practice management companies. And it almost reminds me of like Sage in a way. Right. They're just buying this like umbrella of these companies. And they just bought Dex. They acquired Dex. Now there is no, um, valuation or no number of what that came out. And the reason why is Iris in December of 2023, they were valued at about 4 billion after a private equity investment. So they're not a public company. They don't have to disclose all these acquisitions. They keep making what they're spending on them. But it makes you wonder, though, something like Dex, who took hundreds of millions of VC money, where the valuation is on this, like, what do you think?
Blake Oliver: [00:59:04] Yeah. So I put this to perplexity and, um, it gave me an estimate of 290 to 436 million before the recent sale. So I was always curious what Dex's exit would be, because it'd be really hard to get acquired by like, another software company. But it seems like they found their exit and it's essentially private equity, right? A roll up. That's what it.
David Leary: [00:59:34] Sounds like because Xero bought Hubdoc, Sage bought auto entry, and they were all about the same size at the time. And this happened in QuickBooks at that time. Decided to build their own scanning, whatever that means. And Dex was kind of left out there on its own to to survive and figure it out. Now, I did look at some of Dex numbers, which is a little on the like. It's way bigger than I thought. So they have 12,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms and 70,000 businesses that are using Dex. And so I did a little math. So at $24 a month, that's over $200 million in annual recurring revenue that Dex would have. And based on that, that if it's 70.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:13] 70,000 companies times $24 a month.
David Leary: [01:00:17] Did I get an extra zero? No, 700,000 businesses. 700. 700,000.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:22] Really? Wow. Yes. Well, they're probably not all paying full price, right?
David Leary: [01:00:26] Yeah, maybe some are paying a little less. I mean, but that's the cheapest plan. So some maybe are paying more. Some are paying less.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:31] But I think you did have an extra zero or something because I'm coming up with 16.8 million. If you do 70,000, this is the problem when we do math.
David Leary: [01:00:40] Oh no it's yeah, it's 288 billed annually though, right? Did you do it monthly?
Blake Oliver: [01:00:45] Oh yeah, I did it monthly. Okay, this is embarrassing. So 700,000 times I.
David Leary: [01:00:52] Did this and screenshotted it. So I would have the numbers here.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:55] Okay, but you didn't do it in Excel, did you? So you can't audit the formulas.
David Leary: [01:00:58] Well, it's windows calculator.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:59] But that's crazy. I just can't. How can they be valued? How can they have $200 million a year in recurring revenue and not be valued at like, billions of dollars? Well, it'll.
David Leary: [01:01:09] Be 1.4 billion to 2.4 billion based on Google's. I, uh, I overview for a SaaS company like that. So it's interesting like how like Iris is just barely bigger than that kind of I mean, okay, twice as big, but this is a major acquisition. And how how is this happening? Did they take more private money, you know.
Blake Oliver: [01:01:28] Right.
David Leary: [01:01:29] But they're not public, so they don't have to disclose.
Blake Oliver: [01:01:31] Right, right. Um, well, David, this was a real pleasure. I'm glad we caught up on our stories here. Um, what are we going to talk about next episode? I don't know, it'll depend on what happens in the news, but I'm definitely interested in talking about private equity. There was a story in the New York Times about how private equity funds could hurt Americans under Trump, and there's been a lot of discussion about private equity buying into the big accounting firms. Something like a third of the top 100 now have taken private equity money. So I'd love to talk with you about that. And, uh. Oh, yeah. There was a story here about the Harry Potter star, Rupert Grint. He's, uh, he's going to pay a big tax bill. He tried to get out of it. Didn't work. Maybe there's a lesson here. I guess that's in the UK, though, so I don't know if that will necessarily apply to American tax. And I want to talk the la la homeless Authority uh, did not did not pass their audit. So many things we could go on. We could go on and on and on. Thank you.
David Leary: [01:02:43] Everyone. One day we should do a four hour show. Just for fun.
Blake Oliver: [01:02:46] Just for fun. Uh, just see how long we can go. Just an endurance episode. Maybe it'll be, like a fundraiser or something. Uh, until Blake and David lose their voices. Thank you. Everyone who joined us live today. Don't forget you can find us on YouTube. We are at The Accounting Podcast. Like and subscribe and you can earn CPE for having joined us. You stuck around for an hour listening. You should get CPE credit. You can get it for free with earmark. Go to earmark Dot app or download the mobile app for iOS or Android. Sign up for free, find the The Accounting Podcast and earn a free CPE every week. And if you want to get unlimited because maybe you procrastinated and you need to get a bunch of CPE before the end of the year, it's only $150 a year for unlimited turns off the ads as well. It supports us. We really appreciate all of our members who have subscribed. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
David Leary: [01:03:46] And if you're one of those people that have been getting all your CPE done during the year, we just had a new release of earmark go out. It's going out as we speak, and we put all these ways for you to download all your certificates and PDFs and bulk downloads. And I think a zip file, I don't remember now all these different ways people want all these ways to get their certificates. And we added a bunch of new ways to download your certificate. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [01:04:09] And I'm really pleased to say our certificates now are one page instead of two pages. That was a very attractive top top request. We've improved the formatting. Um, yeah. And if you have suggestions for the earmark app, I'm all ears. You can email us at support at earmarks. Com that's support at earmark Cpcomm. Let us know what you think. I read through these messages and it informs our development roadmap. And if you want to let us know as host of the accounting podcast what you think. Email us at The Accounting Podcast. At Earmark Me. That's the The Accounting Podcast at earmarks me and we will see you Around next week. And we got one more comment that just popped in. Sean says not a CPA. Just learning more. Not sure I even want to be your tax on. I caused me to use it to build a Python code that strings invoice data into an Excel sheet for uploading. That's awesome. Um, hey, if you want to share more about that, Sean, go ahead and send me an email. I'd love to hear what you're up to and any of our listeners who are using AI in practice. I'd love to hear how it's working out for you. It is a core technology for earmark. It's how we've been able to issue over 100,000 Cfps now 100,000 CPE credits, and we're going to blast through that or blast above that this this month. So thank you all and we'll see you here next week. Bye everyone.
David Leary: [01:05:44] Bye everyone.