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FTX was using... QuickBooks?? Binance CEO claims the Big Four don't understand crypto; Armanino and Mazars end crypto practices; Will Evolve Bank & Trust crypto exposure impact apps; Plooto raises $20m to win A/P in Canada
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Show Notes
15:00 – Auditor Mazars Pauses All Work For Binance, Other Crypto Clients
Binance says the accounting firm it used to verify its reserves has paused all work for crypto clients
Binance Shows 'Proof' It Has All Your Bitcoin — Critics Aren't Sold – Blockworks
Twitter: What’s going on with Binance?
21:30 – Tether has increasingly been lending its own coins, adding risks to the stablecoin that is an important cog in the crypto system
36:39 – Intuit announces enhancements to tax products
40:50 – Wayne Chang on LinkedIn: What an *incredible* last 5 years!
42:53 – Xero establishes a technology base in India | Xero Blog
45:27 – U.S. banks including JPMorgan Chase are creating a plan to refund victims of scams on the Zelle payment network
45:55 – Build connections in Microsoft Teams with Games for Work, a new Microsoft Teams app| Microsoft 365 Blog
50:53 – Voicemail from Kate Johnson, re: education – Thank you!
54:56 – Crypto.com proof of reserve agreed upon procedures
56:20 – Luke Templin purchased FinDaily.io from Jason Staats
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Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!
David Leary: [00:00:00] So many of us have app fatigue, so many clients, so many apps and so many different payments, charges, receipts, subscriptions, discounts, bundles it's almost impossible to keep track of. What if you could have just one subscription for 50 different integrated business apps? You can. It's called Zoho One. Stay tuned to hear more from our sponsor, Zoho, later in the episode.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:26] The thing that's shameful about this whole thing is like what Armani know and Prager Medicine Masers were doing is they weren't doing real audits. They were doing, you know, these proof of reserves. I'm doing air quotes.
David Leary: [00:00:38] They do this. They're never is like I think they even the interview you just played, they'd never actually look at the liabilities when they do these proof reserves.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:46] It's just looking at the assets at a point in time and it's not even clear what sort of due diligence they're doing on those assets.
David Leary: [00:00:59] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio, this is The Cloud Accounting Podcast.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:09] Welcome to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.
David Leary: [00:01:12] And I'm DavidLeary.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:13] How you doing, David?
David Leary: [00:01:15] Good. You can tell it's starting to get close to the holidays. I feel like there was a lot of accounting news, but there's just like one major accounting news that just was surprisingly bigger than we expected, I think.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:26] Well, and it was perfect because it comes on the heels of QuickBooks Connect in Las Vegas. Quickbooks was in the FTC's scandal. The whole it was centerpiece of the testimony in front of Congress this week. It was fantastic. And so, of course, I brought that clip to play for our listeners in case they haven't heard the whole thing. It's wonderful when when QuickBooks comes out of the mouth of the guy who cleaned up Enron, you know, and is repeated by a congresswoman incredulously, you just got to love it, right? It's cloud accounting in the mainstream media. And of course, everybody got it wrong. David, as you pointed out on Twitter and as we will discuss. So we'll talk about.
David Leary: [00:02:08] Like we've been talking about crypto and EFT, Ericsson, Bitcoin and all this a little bit too much. And I feel like every time we try to get away from it, like it just it.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:18] Pulls, it comes.
David Leary: [00:02:19] Back, it pulls us right back in. Like the biggest headline this week related to this was about QuickBooks, which is silly.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:26] I have a funny story. I have a funny Zoom story for you as well about my mom. That I think you'll enjoy. I've got some remote work stuff. I've got the app news. Oh, audits. We've got the PCAOB. Not too happy with audit firms at the moment. Something like a third of audits are insufficient. Failing their examinations, a whole whole third of audits can't be relied upon. And that might bring us back full circle to FTI. So, David, I'll let you pick first. Do you want to hear my humorous Zoom story?
David Leary: [00:03:01] Yes. Let's start with you. Let's start with your humor. Humorous.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:04] Zoom. Still humorous. I'm sorry. Okay. So my mom and my dad live in our neighborhood, so they were having work done on their house, so they had to get out of the house or my mom wanted to get out of the house while my dad supervised it. So she said, Blake, hey, can I come over to your place and hang out? And it was a weekday, so I said, Yeah, sure, absolutely. I'll be up in my office. You can hang out downstairs, do whatever you want, make yourself comfortable. So she comes by and is working on at the dining room table and then has a zoom call in the afternoon that she wants to make sure that she's ready for. She is a registered dietitian and she's a very spiritual person and she teaches a class on mindful eating. Okay. Mindfulness and eating is a way to, you know, like eat more mindfully. You eat less food. You know, you eat more healthily. Yeah.
David Leary: [00:03:54] Look in our kitchen I've I've we've tried this exercise a couple of times.
Blake Oliver: [00:03:58] Oh, you have a table. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, well, you know, you eat and you shovel the food into your mouth when you're looking at your phone, Right? All of a sudden it's gone. You've eaten too much, right? All that stuff. Anyway. So she teaches this class and it's kind of new for her, so she was a little nervous about it. So, you know, I make sure she's got the Internet hooked up. She's up in my son's bedroom, going to do the class and everything's going great. She's doing the zoom and she gets towards the end of the class and they do a meditation. And so for the meditation, everybody closes their eyes and they just sit in silence for like a few. I don't know how long, actually, I'm assuming it's like a few minutes at least, right? Yeah. And so my mom closes her eyes and then when she opens them, she realizes that her computer has gone to sleep because she plugged it in, but she plugged it into the socket, which is connected to the light switch. So her computer had gone to sleep during the middle of the zoom. And so she's frantically trying to get back and accidentally turns it off while she's doing it. So she then turns her computer on, gets Zoom, got going. It's minutes and minutes at this point. Right. And then finally gets back into the zoom. Everybody still meditating?
David Leary: [00:05:06] Nobody knows that she left the game.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:08] Nobody knows that she left ... Yeah.
David Leary: [00:05:09] That's great.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:11] And so she says, Oh, everybody, you know, Welcome back. Thank you. That was a little bit longer meditation than we normally do. But you all did great. Yeah. Close out the session. So that's that's a.
David Leary: [00:05:22] State.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:22] On it's a zoom catastrophe. That turned out just fine.
David Leary: [00:05:27] And we're still having zoom catastrophes, you know, 22, almost 20, 23 now.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:31] I haven't had I haven't had like one of those, you know, I mean, man, I used to have those all the time when it first came out. But now it's like everybody generally gets on the meeting, right? Like people have stopped having these, like, audio video, horrible issues, at least for me anyway, I don't know.
David Leary: [00:05:44] And the kids went back to school. So you don't have those people hacking in and just.
Blake Oliver: [00:05:48] Oh, yeah.
David Leary: [00:05:48] Pop ups and uninvited attendees. And actually, I do have a Zoom story. You do? I'm confused by this. So let's jump into FTC's. So scam bank fraud. Yeah, we can call them scam bank fraud. He was supposed to testify to Congress this week.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:04] Sbf was supposed to testify. Did he not do it? I guess he didn't know.
David Leary: [00:06:07] He got remember, he got. He got arrested in the Bahamas.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:10] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't really.
David Leary: [00:06:12] Yeah. And so this is what I don't get. Like, how convenient.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:15] Oh, you think there's some sort of, like, deep state that wants to prevent him from testifying? I mean, they all took his money if.
David Leary: [00:06:24] You put him in. So he's sitting there in jail. Mm hmm. Can he do a zoom with Congress?
Blake Oliver: [00:06:29] Yeah, why not? Right. There's no excuse, but.
David Leary: [00:06:32] He just doesn't get. He just gets to not show up. How? Like, Sorry I got arrested. I don't get to show up to your. Your little meeting you're having. Or is he not there on purpose?
Blake Oliver: [00:06:41] Right. It's a good question.
David Leary: [00:06:43] Tinfoil. These are tinfoil hat things, but yeah, I think it's kind of convenient.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:47] Well, you know, you brought up FTC's and the congressional hearings, so we got to play that clip. How did QuickBooks get into the FTC's crypto exchange collapse story? Now we're going to find out.
Becky Quick, CNBC: [00:06:59] Mr Ray, you have compared FTX as worse than Enron. Can you please elaborate on some of the specific ways FTX is worse than one of the largest corporate frauds in history?
John J. Ray III: [00:07:19] The FTC's group is unusual in the sense that I've done probably a dozen large scale bankruptcies over my career, including Enron. Of course, every one of those entities has some financial problem or another. They have some characteristics that are in common. This one is unusual, and it's unusual in the sense that literally there's no recordkeeping whatsoever. It's the absence of record keeping. Employees would communicate invoicing and expenses on Slack, which is essentially a way of communicating for chat rooms. They use QuickBooks, the multibillion dollar company using QuickBooks, QuickBooks, QuickBooks, nothing against QuickBooks. It's a very nice tool, just not for a multibillion dollar company. There's no independent board. We had one person really controlling this. No independent board. That's highly unusual. Size company. This is QuickBooks.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:27] Quickbooks, QuickBooks.
David Leary: [00:08:29] Yeah, it kind of remind me a little bit of when Mark Zuckerberg was testifying to Congress and it was very clear like nobody in Congress has any clue about technology.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:39] Yeah.
David Leary: [00:08:40] And now, I mean, we do know there are some people represent us in the Capitol that understand accounting. Some are actually accountants, not enough. But like, she seemed very confused.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:52] Was that Congresswoman Wagner saying QuickBooks? Like, what is QuickBooks or QuickBooks? As in they were using QuickBooks.
David Leary: [00:09:01] What is this word you said? Yes. It was not it did not come off as she's like, Oh, yeah, I've heard of QuickBooks and they shouldn't have been using it. It didn't come off that way.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:10] Oh, really? So to me, it came off that way. That's how I interpreted it. Like the incredulity of the of a multibillion dollar company using QuickBooks. But I could see how it could go the other way, too. Like, doesn't even know what it is.
David Leary: [00:09:24] And what prompted me about this, this was really tweeted out out of context from somebody who's been covering she's let me get her exact title here. She writes the number one finance newsletter on Substack and she's been on Fox and Bloomberg and she's. What is her name? Genevieve Roach, Director, CFA.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:46] Yeah, I follow her. She's awesome. So.
David Leary: [00:09:48] So she she tweeted this this quote, basically, basically what you played. Yeah. And she just flat out said, use QuickBooks for accounting and then put a little emoji red flag.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:56] Yeah.
David Leary: [00:09:57] And like, that's just so out of context.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:00] Right? Right, right. So then you very astutely and correctly said it's it's not that use QuickBooks that's not why it collapsed but you know you could.
David Leary: [00:10:10] Have had any any expensive ERP and it doesn't matter. Well it was.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:14] So there's two things there's there's two statements in this clip that we just played that don't make sense put together. One is Mr. Ray, the guy overseeing this whole cleanup, whatever. John Ray, the third, he says there were no records, but then he says they were using QuickBooks. So what is it?
David Leary: [00:10:33] Well, they maybe they sign it for everybody starts to do business. You have really like, hey, let's go get accounting software. They sign it for QuickBooks and probably never actually did anything with it. Right? It's probably empty.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:44] So on Twitter, the net sweet sales reps were having a field day with this, you know, saying, oh, well, you know, if FTC's had been on net sweet, this never would have occurred or making that I guess it wasn't on Twitter, it was on LinkedIn, because that's where they love to live, right?
David Leary: [00:10:58] Yeah, The sales reps. The sales pros.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:59] Yeah. Yeah. The sales pros. Yeah. No, it's funny, though, right? Like, I mean, we accountants, accountants know that you can do fraud with any accounting system. Like, it doesn't matter what technology you're using. If you're going to misappropriate customer funds, you can you can pretty much do that. It doesn't matter what the recordkeeping system is.
David Leary: [00:11:20] But the giveaway to me that they weren't using QuickBooks. I think you found some other tweet. Yeah. Or some information that said they didn't even have a bank account at EFT. They were just using validations.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:32] Yeah, well.
David Leary: [00:11:33] Such companies bank account.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:34] This is not totally clear to me, but when they started FDX, I guess couldn't get a bank account, so they were just using Alameda, the related entities bank account and then doing like a do two from kind of thing. Eventually FDX did get its own accounts, but the.
David Leary: [00:11:49] Balance sheet to say like, why would you use QuickBooks Connect to a bank feed if you have a bank bank account, like right if you're going to bother.
Blake Oliver: [00:11:55] The the balance sheet that SBF sent to the investors was in Excel you know, whatever they were doing in QuickBooks was not happening to the extent where they were publishing financial statements using it. But yeah, it was funny. It's it's just like a weird situation. And now I have a really great sound clip that I'm going to play every time that you mention the word QuickBooks. David Yeah, it's fantastic.
David Leary: [00:12:21] It reminds me of this old like Nflx meme, that still meme. He goes around, Oh, coach of the Indianapolis Colts. And they asked him about making playoffs and he was like, playoffs kind of like that. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like that.
John J. Ray III: [00:12:32] Quickbooks, QuickBooks, QuickBooks, QuickBooks.
Blake Oliver: [00:12:36] There it is.
David Leary: [00:12:37] That's it. So it's locked and loaded now.
Blake Oliver: [00:12:39] Forever locked and loaded. I can use it whenever I want.
John J. Ray III: [00:12:41] Quickbooks, QuickBooks, QuickBooks.
David Leary: [00:12:49] This episode of the Cloud Accounting podcast is sponsored by Alicia Blake, and I talk a lot in the show about client experience. A great client experience may be the biggest impact on a firm success. Did you know that Lucio is so focused on improving the client experience that they have even gone as far as trademarking and I quote client experience 2.0 licious all in one client experience starts with your own firm's experience allowing your team to do more together, having everything in one place, like secure messaging, client facing task file exchange and storage, electronic signatures, client invoicing and client emails. When you improve your team's experience, your client's experience will follow with lists. Your clients can use the app on their phone to easily e sign anything, scan and send you documents from anywhere. Send messages and best of all, pay you if you want to save 40% of your time by having everything in one place and start delivering a client experience. 2.0. Head over to Cloudaccountingpodcast.com Promo slash Lucio That is Cloudaccountingpodcast.com Promo Ford slash Elyse CIO. So that's not just what else happened. Right. And so with us again, crypto. Yeah. Yeah. For us talking about this on the show again. Yes because of that. But then all of a sudden now accounting firms are saying like, hey, we're not we're going to kill, we're going to stop doing crypto stuff.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:16] Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's the other part of the story is now, which.
David Leary: [00:14:20] Makes us talk about it too, right? Like it keeps coming back to accounting.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:24] Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So, so this is all the accounting angle on this. So Binance, which is the largest crypto exchange, the one that actually arguably caused the downfall of FCX, the founder caused the downfall of FCX by saying he's going to sell all his FTX tokens, which were the currency or whatever. He basically, you know, caused the bank run on on FCX. Well, they are now under scrutiny because they're the largest exchange there, the biggest one standing, and they've never been through an audit, they've never done a proof of reserves report and they engaged previous to all this going down I guess in early December, engaged mazars to do their proof of reserves, which is just to be honest, like a BS, not really an audit thing anyway. Right. And then now all the accounting firms are terrified of all the heat that's happening and have pulled out of doing any crypto stuff so. Aam and you know killed its crypto practice masseuses took down all of the proof of reserves reports they've done from their website and they have shut the doors on that and I haven't heard about Prager Metis which was the firm that audited FTC's I haven't heard anything about them but.
David Leary: [00:15:40] They're being sued.
Blake Oliver: [00:15:41] They're being sued. Yeah but, but like all the firms are running away from this. Finance is under a lot of pressure. And now, you know, Masers isn't going to do it. So the question is, you know, what's going to happen with with Binance and sees the the founder of Binance was pressured on television about this, the lack of an audit. They haven't been through an audit. Do they actually have the reserves to back up? You know what they say they do. And I'm going to find that clip for you and I'm going to play it.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO, Binance: [00:16:09] We want to be transparent. We want to set the golden standard for reliability, solid ness in the space.
Becky Quick, CNBC: [00:16:15] Would you be able to handle it if somebody asked you for $2.1 billion back, Would that be okay? Would you be able to still withstand things?
John J. Ray III: [00:16:22] We're financially okay.
Becky Quick, CNBC: [00:16:24] Including you have $2.1 billion to give away. If somebody came to try to claw that back. You'd still be fine.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO, Binance: [00:16:30] Well, let the lawyers handle it. We are financially strong. Even after fttp prices dropped over the last year, we still have $500 million worth of it. $580 million worth of it. On the day when we transfer it from the address we received a year and a half ago, we never touched it. We actually actually kind of forgot about it. But thus far you haven't disclosed your liabilities. And I wonder. Why that is and whether you will. So we are working with firms to do the audit of financials like liabilities, etc. but the audits don't reveal every problem. So but an audit.
Becky Quick, CNBC: [00:17:06] For auditor would reveal that if you could get a Big Four auditor to say that if you're saying that some of them don't want to work with you, that raises questions too. They don't want to work with you because you don't have the files and the data that would make them feel comfortable signing off and giving that stamp of approval.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO, Binance: [00:17:23] Actually, many of them don't even know how to audit crypto exchanges. They don't. They don't. They don't really when they so when they order, they are very used to auditing our firm, those Coinbase. Coinbase has a big four. Coinbase has a big four auditor. Actually, I don't look at Coinbase. We don't really look at all though.
Blake Oliver: [00:17:44] So that was Binance CEO on CNBC being grilled by the anchors and you can't hear it in the podcast version of this, but the eye roll from the anchor. When he refused to answer the question about whether they had the $2 billion was just spectacular. And and what that was referring to is FDX bought out sees his share of ownership in FTC's at a certain point and they gave him FTC tokens which are the FTC's coin which are now worthless because everybody realized it's everybody decided it's not worth anything anymore. Right? It's not tied to anything. So the question is legally, is Binance going to have to pay back the $2 billion in value that it received from FTC's to the creditors to the depositors in the bankruptcy? Because if you receive money that was obtained fraudulently, you might have to give it back.
David Leary: [00:18:44] That's I mean, that's what happened. Newton So. The big Ponzi scheme.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:50] Madoff.
David Leary: [00:18:51] Madoff. Right. Some of the early people who maybe invested a million got 3 million. Had to give 2 million back years later.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:57] Yeah. Exactly. And we have that rule for a reason, right? It's to prevent people from gaining from frauds. So even if you're ignorant of it, that's no excuse. So Binance could be in a whole lot of trouble. $2 billion they might owe to the creditors and depositors. Former depositors that have to. So, yeah, lots going on there. And I mean, of course, just this this idea that, oh, the big four don't understand cryptocurrency, right?
David Leary: [00:19:24] Some accountants, you can't audit us. And of course, Ponzi is too complicated.
Blake Oliver: [00:19:29] Coinbase is a US exchange that is public and is audited by Deloitte. And so, yes, the big four could audit Binance. Why won't they? I'm going to guess it's because Binance can't get an opinion.
David Leary: [00:19:45] And I think what's what's happening here and there's an article in Forbes that talks about the Army maintaining its crypto practice and dropping these clients. Yeah. And there's a paragraph in there that when you read it. It really makes you think of what's happening here. I'll just read it, I guess.
Blake Oliver: [00:20:01] Yeah, go.
David Leary: [00:20:02] Ahead. The unit may be folding under pressure from Ahmed Nino's non crypto clients, concerned that reputational risk to the firm will throw their audits into question. According to a source with knowledge of the firm's crypto offerings. So this is kind of amazing to me. So it's happening, right? Is I'm legit business w I don't want to be associated with you are in my books because you're going to come looking like an idiot for auditing this crypto company stuff wrong. Then people are going to think my audit is going to be questionable, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:20:32] Yeah. And as they should. Right? Like you wouldn't want to go get an audit from Prager Metis if it turns out that Prager Metis did a crappy audit of of FTC's and, you know, like, deliberately, like, didn't like if you're an investor, that's a huge red flag, right? So, yeah, it's good. The thing that's shameful about this whole thing is like what Ahmadinejad and Prager, Metis and Masers were doing is they weren't doing real audits. They were doing, you know, these proof of reserves. I'm doing air quotes.
David Leary: [00:21:04] They do this. They're never this is like I think they even the interview you just played and I've seen, they'd never actually look at the liabilities when they do these proof reserves.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:13] It's just looking at the assets at a point in time and it's not even clear what sort of due diligence they're doing on those assets. So this goes all the way back to our discussions of tether. Back at the beginning of the year, Tether has been putting out these proof of reserves or I think they call them attestation reports from they had this tiny little firm in the Bahamas doing it. Cayman Islands. Yeah. And then they got BDO Italia now to do them. But all it is is a snapshot in time of assets and it may not even be all their assets. It's definitely not their liabilities. And the idea is, oh yeah, we're proving to our depositors or our investors that yes, we have the money, the money's there, right? But it's only at a point in time and it's not really clear what kind of due diligence the auditors are doing on this to actually know that it's there, that it belongs to the exchange or the company. It's just a agreed upon procedures, engagement. So it could be different from engagement to engagement. It's not assurance, It does not provide assurance, which is what an audit is supposed to do. And this is why it's unethical, in my opinion, for these firms to have done these is because they provide these reports, these agreed upon procedures, reports to these crypto exchanges, and then the crypto exchanges turn around and say, look, everybody, we passed a gap audit, we're totally legit. And they and.
David Leary: [00:22:44] They basically the consumer.
Blake Oliver: [00:22:46] Thinks, yeah, so the end user then thinks that they're okay, they're safe. The audit firms brand is attached in none of these firms when all this was happening did anything about it that their client was misusing this information like Masers didn't do it. You know, Armadillo didn't do it. Prager Metals didn't do it. Whatever. They all just let it happen because you know why? Because if they open their mouths, they lose the client. And now all these reports are down. And so, yeah, that's the question is what's going to happen going forward? So there was a story here in accounting today accountant that vetted finances reserves halts all crypto work. Masers hasn't really talked much about this, but they did make a statement to Bloomberg News. Let's see what they said.
David Leary: [00:23:35] But. But masers. So they basically they're parting ways with Binance, Binance, Crypto.com, and Kucoin. Kucoin. Yeah. So even the big, big ones in.
Blake Oliver: [00:23:48] And they've pulled down the reports from their own website so basically we can't rely on them anymore is essentially what they're saying.
David Leary: [00:23:54] Kind of what they did with Trump right? They pulled the reports away and said, sorry, these are bad in a way. Right? They're just like, we can't depend on the numbers. Yeah, well, the numbers, that's.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:01] That's the one, too. That's the one two punch for Masers is not only did they have to withdraw their compilations that they did for Trump, now they're withdrawing the attestation reports that they're doing for Crypto.com and Binance. What? I mean, like, that's not a good look, is it? So yeah, Mazer actually has refused to give a statement. The French firm suspended work for cryptocurrency firms because of indications that markets haven't been reassured by the proof of reserves reports that it published so far, according to an email from the firm seen by Bloomberg News. As reported in accounting today, the firm was also concerned about intense media scrutiny, the email said.
David Leary: [00:24:43] So it sounds like the firms are looking at which I understand they felt that for themselves first. Yeah. Over business.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:50] Over. Yeah. Over the public.
David Leary: [00:24:52] Short term gains or short term money.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:54] Which is unethical and they should be raked over the coals for it. But, you know, it's it's okay to do that, I guess.
David Leary: [00:25:05] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Zoho. I'm sure you've heard of Zoho before. We've probably even mentioned Zoho CRM or Zoho Books on this podcast in the past, but you really know about Zoho. Did you know that Zoho has been around for 26 years? Did you know that Zoho has 85 million users? Did you know that Zoho has over 50 applications? Did you know that Zoho offers one subscription to 50 applications? Did you know that Zoho apps are integrated with other Zoho apps? Did you know that almost all Zoho apps have Zapier connections? Did you know that some Zoho apps can connect directly to QuickBooks Online, Xero and Sage Accounting? Did you know that Zoho offers an entire suite of solutions to run your firm, including a CRM expense tracking bookkeeping, a full office suite, a support ticket system, and workflow automation? Did you know that Zoho offers a suite of solutions for your clients bookkeeping, including bookkeeping, inventory invoicing, subscription management and a checkout app? Did you know that Zoho has an accountant program? Did you know that Zoho advisors get free access to eight Zoho applications and a dedicated account manager? If you want to learn more about becoming a Zoho advisor, head over to Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo slash Zoho. That is Cloudaccountingpodcast.com Promo for SLAs. Zoho. Zoho. A one stop solution for all business needs. So it's just the other way this starts timing into us is through the whole apps. Have you ever heard of Evolve Bank and Trust?
Blake Oliver: [00:26:36] Yeah.
David Leary: [00:26:37] So if all bank can trust, they power a relay and they power Emilio. They power lots and lots of different companies, including lots and lots of crypto companies. And so they've been having their own issues of PR battles themselves. And so they have a whole website set up where they all they're doing with this one page is constantly putting updates about information regarding EFT and another company called Blockfi that apparently is also had some issues. Another crypto company. And so just to reaffirm their statement so or read their statement to reaffirm our previous statements that we have published publicly evolve does not lend against crypto. We do not offer crypto custodial services and we do not trade crypto or hold any form of cryptocurrency on our balance sheet. Further, evolve does not, nor currently at any point in the past, invest in or transact crypto. So that's their statement? Mm hmm. Evolve essentially is an old historical bank that jumped into the tech world amid some APIs, and they let other people start building on their banking stack.
Blake Oliver: [00:27:44] Right?
David Leary: [00:27:45] And they did it in the typical tech fashion, get as many people as possible as fast as possible. And so they've taken on lots and lots of customers. But a lot of these companies have had issues. And the way they were involved with FTX was they were some people could get a debit card, right, and get a bank account at EFT. Not all the customers, but some could do this. And so they were that was powered by Evolve and then evolved to pull the plug on that. They had to pull the plug on a couple of different bank accounts. There's actually another company that evolved Partners with that actually issues a credit card, and they were letting people get credit based on their Bitcoin holdings, and that company is probably going to be in trouble. Because basically people just aren't paying the credit card bill. Yeah, they're just not paying it. And so that's a domino. Now, the other piece of this that I thought was interesting is that I found a huge, huge post that talks about all the other companies that are involved in. And really, if you have relays, for example, right, because Relay is partnered with Evolv, the money we have on a really big account is FDIC insured. Right. But what's happening is all these companies that partner with Evolve are playing that card. Even FTC's themselves kind of played up that they had FDIC, FDIC insured in a tweet from July of 2022. That's that's hence been deleted.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:09] Yeah, they're lying about it. It's just total crap. It's not true at all.
David Leary: [00:29:13] It's not true at all. And then some other ones that are all having problems right now, there's the Dodge card. And then there's this company called XLF, which they position themselves as the bank of the metaverse, and it describes their product is capable of holding USD crypto game loot with funds. Fdic insured up $250,000. So it's kind of on their website, but they're basically they're taking advantage of the branding in a way, right? Like, hey, look, the average person doesn't know that. All the other stuff, the crypto, the game, the deals, none of that's going to be FDIC insured. It's just the actual true money deposit used into the US bank account that is so evolved. So even though they're not, they might not be financially exposed to crypto, they're just in a lot of companies that are in messes. And where this comes back to us is these are apps we all use. So they're you know, they've been throwing out the word crypto contagion, right? And like when crypto collapse causes them, another crypto collapse causes another one. But like, is this going to cause collapses in the apps we use in the accounting industry? Some of these some of these smart apps, because even there's another bank called Mercury, and if you've heard of that banks, It's a startup. A lot all, a lot of the startups use mercury. It's built on evolve, bake and dressed. Apparently, the VCs are telling their startups to pull their money out of there and move to a different bank. Mm hmm. So there's there's a ripple effect here. Let's just say there is some exposure here, and Evolve goes away tomorrow. What happens to certain apps that are built on that? Apps that we use, apps our clients use?
Blake Oliver: [00:30:51] Yeah, It's a huge risk. One more thing before we move on, because we were talking about tether back at the beginning of the year. That was kind of how we got onto this whole cryptos scam theme. And we might we might be proven right by that. David Or be proven right about that. Wall Street Journal had a story about how Tether has been increasingly lending its own coins, adding risks to the stablecoin that is an important cog in the crypto system. So the way tether is supposed to work is that it's a stablecoin, meaning that if you give tether $1, they will give you one tether coin and then you can always redeem that tether for the dollar. Very simple. The question is, is that true? Does tether actually have all the dollars and could they redeem all the tether for dollars? Because if they can't, that's a scam. And it puts the whole crypto ecosystem at risk because so much of the liquidity in crypto is because of tether, people aren't using dollars to buy and sell. They're using tether because it's hard to use dollars because of regulation. But tether you can just use as much as you want. So it's sort of a lifeblood, if you will.
David Leary: [00:32:07] Really think about.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:08] It. Yeah. And so in this article, which talks about how tether has been lending, making loans in tether, they had a quote from an accountant because tether's loans are denominated in tether. Their market value fluctuates with the price of tether and thus so does the market value of the company's reserves. Quote If tether falls and they have loans that can be repaid and tether, then by definition it's not backed up by a dollar unquote, said William Vanderburg, an accounting professor at College of Charleston and South Carolina who has written about tether and followed it closely. So that's it. I mean, it's right there in print. Tether is not backed 1 to 1 because they are making loans denominated in tether. It's there. It's right. It's right there. They're lying. Right. It's it's obvious. And, of course, Tether is one of those companies that hasn't done a full audit. They've only ever done a proof of reserves. And who knows if that is still, you know, valid or if the accounting firm has pulled that out. I think they started working with BDO Italia. We'll see if BDO pulls that report or not. All right. That's it for me. For Crypto Land. Where do you want to go, David?
David Leary: [00:33:19] Do you want to jump into app news? Because I have one that can an app store that transitions us there.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:26] Do it. Let me let me play the music.
David Leary: [00:33:36] So I think we mentioned maybe two episodes ago, you know, as this mess of crypto keeps happening, the real winners in this are going to be companies that can figure out how to account for it properly, assist with audits, help controllers and CFOs properly book really crypto to the balance sheet. Debits and credits. Right. Take take crypto transactions and put it into debits and credits.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:59] You mean not one of these made up Excel balance sheet like.
David Leary: [00:34:02] You just came up with these? Yeah. So and there is just beyond coins right? You have the have the nfts you have there's a lot of crypto technologies happening right. Assets in the metaverse etc. So Bitwage is one of these companies. They just raised $15 million series A to expand their crypto accounting software. Essentially what they're going to do with most of this funding, they're going to develop their bit wave institutional, which is their new product targeting enterprise customers with complex accounting needs such as custodians and exchanges. So they're really creating product targeting these companies. Hopefully one of them stays around to become a customer, maybe, but that's who they're targeting these these customers. But it was interesting, I didn't know this, but the founders, which is kind of an interesting thing. This is from one of the other one of the investors. This is a general partner of blockchain capital, predicts that there'd be 100 times more enterprises in crypto five years from now, and all of them are going to need a product like Bitwage that you can't the accounting is going to have to be done properly. There's no way around it. And then just time out, the two founders. So the founders you have Patrick White and Amy Kalanick, he basically says that they're the only two people in the world that sit in this middle of this bubble, which is understanding of taxes and accounting, understanding enterprise software and understanding crypto. There's not many people that can do all three. And it's very clear it happens when somebody only understands crypto and they don't understand accounting like we get in FTC's situation, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:35:34] That's right. Well, that's that's awesome. So maybe somebody like maybe Bit wave will get the balance sheets sorted out and do they integrate with QuickBooks? You know could we have a multi billion dollar exchange summarizing its crypto into a QuickBooks balance sheet Because I think actually that's a point I want to go back to, David, if that's okay for just a moment. You can use QuickBooks. To run a multi million dollar company or even a multi billion dollar company. If you can summarize transactions, you can put them into any accounting software and you can create a balance sheet.
David Leary: [00:36:14] I agree.
Blake Oliver: [00:36:15] And so that's why third party add ons are awesome. And that's why QuickBooks Advanced is growing, because you can summarize data, put it into QuickBooks, it doesn't matter. You can be doing $200 million a year in revenue and you can be in QuickBooks if you've got it set up, right? So anyway, it's.
David Leary: [00:36:29] Been a very long time since you couldn't type a transaction more than $9 million into QuickBooks. You know, that was 30 years ago. Now you can put big old transactions in there.
Blake Oliver: [00:36:39] Intuit Speaking of Intuit, announces enhancements to tax products they are continuing to add to their Intuit Tax Advisor product, which we have talked about previously on the show. This is the product that helps you do tax advisory services and looked very interesting. I think we even played a clip of it at one point. So what is new now? If you're using tax Advisor, you can select tax loss harvesting and cost segregation studies as strategies and intuit Tax Advisor. You can edit multiple fields in an activity together before recalculation occurs. That's for like W-2s. K one. Et cetera. You can gain more visibility into which tax fields are impacted by a strategy and more detail about the calculations. There's an enhanced error handling when users enter a strategy value that is not supported in order to easily identify and correct errors plus strategies with with errors will be excluded from client reports. To avoid any confusion, they've improved their client report from reordering pages to editing strategy content, and they also plan to add the ability to select qualified business income deduction optimization as a strategy. And the ability to select converting self employed businesses to an S corporation as a strategy and a new self help widget. Blah, blah blah. That feature. There's a lot of bullet points here in this in this release.
David Leary: [00:38:07] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Kanopy. Did you know that Kanopy has a partnership with the IRS? This means that you can now use Kanopy to pull your client transcripts. The integration is approved by the IRS and can be configured to automatically pull transcripts. You can easily monitor if and when something changes. Now, here's the best part. Once you have your client's transcripts, you can use canopies notices feature to help you resolve your client's notices. Kanopy has a library of 350 plus prebuilt federal and state notice templates that provide an overview of the notice type, as well as walk you through the recommended steps to resolution and Canopy can even create an auto fill your iris response letters. Canopy also integrates with QuickBooks Online Xero FreshBooks Crm's form builder, spreadsheets, calendars, Email, and Zapier. They even have a mobile app. Centralized file management Fillable, PDFs, a client portal, task management, and the list goes on and on to get a demo of Canopy and to receive a $40 Amazon gift card. Head over to Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo slash canopy That is Cloudaccountingpodcast.com Promo for Canopy y. Pluto. You're familiar with Pluto?
Blake Oliver: [00:39:17] Pluto. The dog. My son was just watching Mickey's Christmas special. So, yes, Pluto. That Pluto. Pluto was the instigator of all of the drama in the episode.
David Leary: [00:39:28] No, this is Pluto. As in the accounts payable accounts receivable app for this is. Yeah, it's PLO. Otto.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:36] They just secured a question, David. Is Pluto a planet?
David Leary: [00:39:40] This is not science, our man. You're counting this as an accounting pass. No, no. The accountants care. Our listeners don't care.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:46] Sorry, I. Please continue.
David Leary: [00:39:51] So they have secured 27 million CAD. So 20 million USD and their series B, And what's interesting about this raise to two interesting quotes kind of came out of this from the founder. One of them is the observation that the number one reason why companies stop using their product is because they go out of business. Oh, and usually Pluto is the last application they turn off. So it is a business is having problems. They're going to still try to pay their bills. Right. Or they're trying to get the receivables in so they stay on the product. So that was kind of interesting that their churn is usually because a customer goes out of business. And then the other piece of this is how they feel that in Canada, Bill.com Emilio are kind of ignoring the Canadian market, right? The a lot of the US bill payers are not in Canada and so they think there's really a they're well positioned to to grow and just really take over Canada and that's kind of their play on this.
Blake Oliver: [00:40:50] Did you see that, Wayne Chang? Is leaving digits.
David Leary: [00:40:55] I did see there was a very well in the digits way that overproduced he had an overproduced LinkedIn letter.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:02] Instead of instead of just making a LinkedIn post, he posted a picture of a letter on a what looks like graph paper, blue graph paper.
David Leary: [00:41:11] It was branded. It was it met the branding.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:13] Yeah. The branded.
David Leary: [00:41:14] Digits brand.
Blake Oliver: [00:41:14] Yeah. Yeah. It says to the team rocket ship emoji. Amazing. What an incredible journey we've been on together in the last five years. Working with you all has been an absolute privilege and I am truly proud of the amazing things we have accomplished as a 0 to 1 startup founder. My mission is to create magical category defining products that push the boundaries of what is possible. And together we have done that and more from the industry's first real time search with digit search to magical drag and drop financial reports with digit reports to the iconic digits platform itself, we have truly made a mark on our industry and disrupted the status quo, and the company is now positioned better than ever. It has 4.5 years in runway. It has great investors. It has a world class team. It has a multi year head start in its core technology, and it has award winning category defining tools that customers are clamoring for. Now it is time for me to move on to my next 0 to 1 adventure. So there you have it. Four years and he has gone from 0 to 1. Made an incredible category defining product that has revolutionized the accounting profession. I think we can all agree. I mean, everybody uses digits now, right, David?
David Leary: [00:42:29] Well, I mean, it's so far from done, if it makes any sense. And that's why I guess him leaving is kind of surprising. I don't know. We've been in this industry long enough where there's founders that are just in it forever and there's people that see the accounting industry as a stepping stone, an opportunity to make some cash and move on.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:50] Yeah.
David Leary: [00:42:51] So.
Blake Oliver: [00:42:53] Xero has established a technology base in India. I saw this back in November. It's through a strategic partnership with Infosys, a global digital services and consulting company. So they're going to have a zero manage center of technical talent at the Infosys campus in India. India is the only country in the world that is not projected to have a shortage of professionals in the next few decades. The only one that's going to continue to create growth in that regard and by professionals, white collar workers, right.
David Leary: [00:43:25] Because they're still making babies. Yes. Even in China, China is going to have this like weird population shift in itself.
Blake Oliver: [00:43:31] Yeah, no. The one child policy in China is probably the most disastrous thing to ever happen to China. And nobody even realizes yet the population is going to have their they're going to have half as many people in China in in like not too long. It's going to.
David Leary: [00:43:47] Be a huge aging population.
Blake Oliver: [00:43:49] Yeah. I mean, they're going to turn into Japan very quickly. Japan's getting really old. Yeah. India is the only country that's like of of size that is continuing to produce lots of kids. And so.
David Leary: [00:44:01] Human capital.
Blake Oliver: [00:44:02] Human, which is the most important kind of capital these days.
David Leary: [00:44:06] That's how we that's how you make more accountants. People need to have more babies. The CPA needs to be way earlier in the funnel. Now, that's the top. That's the funnel.
Blake Oliver: [00:44:14] I think maybe at a engage they could give out. I was going to say like ACP branded condoms, but they could poke holes in them, you know.
John J. Ray III: [00:44:24] Like.
David Leary: [00:44:25] Defect defective contraceptives or soften the the funnel talk. So, you know, I've talked about before, like a lot of I may have tweeted about it like the one I feel like for 2022, one of the most overused lines on most websites is faster clothes, close the books faster.
Blake Oliver: [00:44:45] Like that's thanks to Flow. Kast That was that was that was me. And in the CMO there.
David Leary: [00:44:50] That was I.
Blake Oliver: [00:44:51] Can't take credit for that catchphrase. But yes, that was well, guess what?
David Leary: [00:44:54] Now, now there's a company just called Fast Close.
Blake Oliver: [00:44:57] That was just called Fast Close. That's smart.
David Leary: [00:44:58] It's called Straight Schools. They just bypassed everybody straight to.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:01] It, is it not for.
David Leary: [00:45:03] Fast?
Blake Oliver: [00:45:03] It's not for sales, though.
David Leary: [00:45:04] It's for it's fast closed UK and it's by software that they say is a system with the ease of use of Excel. Smartness adds on to ERP and they're doing some automation stuff with there's an ERP called Next World dot net a lot. This is based out of Europe in the UK. But anyways, I just noticed I fast clothes. They've just bypassed everybody.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:27] That's amazing. U.s. banks, including Chase, are creating a plan to refund victims of scams on the Zelle Payment Network. I've been hearing about this for a long time. Like all these frauds that are happening and if you get scammed out of money using Zelle like the banks are like no help. They they're like, Sorry, your money's gone. And apparently the PR has been bad enough where now they're going to start working on this. That's all I got. That was reported in Wall Street Journal.
David Leary: [00:45:53] I know. That's good. Good for the banks.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:55] I mean, you know, way to listen to your customers, right? Build connections in Microsoft teams with games for work. A new Microsoft teams app. So now, David, if you haven't had.
David Leary: [00:46:03] Enough for work. Yeah. This is this is what we're getting to now.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:07] Well, this sort of wasn't there like an episode of The Office where everybody gets into playing like Call of Duty or something like that? I can't remember. But like, they're all playing it like after work. I mean, games playing games at work can definitely lead to team building and in remote work in particular, like maybe playing games will help you build a stronger team. So I think this is actually pretty cool. Yeah. So this is a new a new app from Microsoft that's built into teams. According to a study by Brigham Young University, teams who played short video games together were 20% more productive than those who participated in more traditional team building activities. Oh yeah, and I would definitely rather play a video game with my coworkers and do a trust fall like any day. David Any day.
David Leary: [00:46:51] Why not just work on the work together? Like you make the most sense.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:56] Let's see what kind of games you can play. So you can play casual games such as Microsoft icebreakers. I don't know what that is. Word, a mint, minesweeper and solitaire. I thought Solitaire was a solitary game.
David Leary: [00:47:08] Like solitaire and Minesweeper.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:12] Man, it's amazing. It's just. It's kind of amazing that Minesweeper is still going. You know, that was, like, the first app I ever used was Minesweeper on a Windows, you know?
David Leary: [00:47:22] And they don't have to change it. It keeps going and going and going.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:25] Oh, so Microsoft icebreakers. Here's here's what it is. Encourage new teams to communicate and learn about each other with ease. It's a variation on this or that pineapple or pepperoni on your pizza. It's so simple and intuitive. You can't help but answer the question. It can also spur lively and at times passionate conversation to foster connections, to build team morale. Actually, that pineapple and pepperoni question like you're going to start some fights, you know, with that one.
David Leary: [00:47:49] And see this is built into Microsoft Office, right? You probably get it for free.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:52] Yeah.
David Leary: [00:47:53] Firms are going to be all over this, I think.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:55] Yeah, I think it's.
David Leary: [00:47:56] Going to be all over.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:57] This. I might be joking around, but I think this is awesome. I think like, use this if you've got it. Like this is cool. There's actually another feature of Microsoft teams that is new. Microsoft teams now has communities, so you can set up a microsoft team like for your, I don't know.
John J. Ray III: [00:48:13] Pickleball Club.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:15] And I saw this and I was thinking, actually, David, we've been talking about creating a community for our listeners for a long time. Maybe this is the the thing we've been waiting for because we kind of talked about doing it in Slack. We thought about doing it in Facebook.
David Leary: [00:48:28] Or.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:28] But it's like Facebook really, you know, we thought about doing it in, I don't know, getting our own proprietary social platform, but then I've gotten invites for those and you got to sign up for something and download another app and nobody wants to download another app. So maybe if we just do it in Microsoft teams, we can get people to actually do it. Because I know that you know what, like 80, 90% of firms, it's probably more than that or on Microsoft stack versus anything.
David Leary: [00:48:53] Else, it might not be around next week. So we don't know which right now is our number one community area.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:00] Well, actually, so Elon Musk, I think this happened today. We're recording on Sunday, December 18th, and Elon Musk tweeted out a poll asking, Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll. And currently, with 7 hours left, he is losing his own poll. 56% of voters want him to step down. So that's that's looking like he might have you know, if he actually abides, he's going to step down as CEO. By the way, almost 10 million people have voted on this thing. Is that crazy or what? 10 million people voting on a quote on a Twitter poll. It's just what a world we live in. David, did you ever imagine that incredibly important decisions as who is going to be the CEO of the social media platform that influences news coverage in this country is going to be decided based on a Twitter poll?
David Leary: [00:50:00] Well, I'm sure he has already made a decision because it's not a good use of his resources. Like he's really smart. He just doesn't need to be in the day to day of Twitter. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:11] And so he shouldn't be he should be freaking running.
David Leary: [00:50:13] He should hire a real CEO. He should authority. He needs to implement a management team and get out of the weeds.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:18] Spacex and Tesla. First of all, I really want to be able to visit Mars someday, so I really need Elon Musk to get back to focusing on his dream, which is to go to Mars and stay there. And he needs to just stay there, stay Mars, where there's a delay of like several hours before any communications from him will reach Earth.
David Leary: [00:50:38] And that's it for ABCNEWS.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:40] Yeah, I think that's it for App News.
David Leary: [00:50:42] You might do some listener mail maybe.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:44] Yeah. Oh yeah. Listener mail. Kate Johnson sent us a voicemail about education.
Kate Johnson: [00:50:53] Hey, Blake and David, it's Kate, Josephine Johnson here. Thanks so much for your reporting and thought leadership. I don't miss an episode. So I know you'll talk a lot about accounting education from the very first accounting courses all the way through the 150 hours for the CPA. And I found a unique college program that I like to share. This week, I talked with two current students in the Western Governors University accounting program. One is doing the bachelor's and one is doing the Master's. This online university seems like a particularly good fit for career changers and transfer students. It is all online and you can move as fast as you want. The really interesting part is that you don't pay per class, you pay per semester. So for folks who are really self-motivated, these two panelists shared that you can get a lot of hours completed and move very fast, which saves you a lot of money. Undergrad semesters are less than 4000 per semester, and graduate classes are less than 5000 for the whole semester. The courses in the proctored test are available 24 hours a day, 365 a year. So you've got the utmost flexibility there. And the gal going through the master's program said that there's this subculture of students who call themselves the accelerators and they are doing all the coursework for their master's program and just one semester instead of three or four. And that means only paying for one semester of tuition, which is less than five grand.
Kate Johnson: [00:52:12] Now, granted, most of those folks quit their jobs and are studying at every moment, but apparently there are real people that this is work that are working hard and doing this. Even if you go at a slower pace, it sounds like a really affordable and flexible program. One final thing I'll add, though, is that this might not solve the CPA pipeline problem because the gal getting her master's said she entered the program intending to sit for the CPA, but her own bookkeeping and advisory business has grown so much over the last year that she is questioning whether she needs it. She isn't worried about the test, but she's discouraged by the requirement in her state to work for another firm for a year, which doesn't seem like an ideal fit for her family situation or for her financially. So I'm not sure the extent to which the supervised hours requirement is a benefit or hindrance in the modern accounting workforce. If anyone wants to hear those two students give all the details about the Western Governors University accounting programs, you can find it on the bookkeeping side Hustle YouTube channel. I wasn't endorsing the program or sponsored to do the interview or anything like that. I'm just on a mission to ensure bookkeeping professionals are just really, really smart at the debits and credits. So I'm always looking for great and affordable education opportunities. Keep up the great work, guys.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:20] Wow. That is awesome. Thank you so much, Kate, for that intel. Western Governors University, WGU. Edu.
David Leary: [00:53:28] So that's a good hack, right? Yeah. Find a place, that's all. You can eat classes and just knock all your stuff out. And one semester just knock.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:36] It all out. Makes so much sense. And I think based on those prices, four or $5,000 a semester. Yeah. I mean, it would be pretty aggressive to try and do it in one. But even at two, you're spending about what I spent, I think, to do it. And it took me a long time because I did it over, you know, years, really. You could just knock it out with the all you could eat.
David Leary: [00:53:59] So then the other half of her call, if I'm hearing this correctly, you get educated, you you're competent, you create a business, you're out in the market. The market is proving that you're a valuable commodity, but you have to throw that all away because you don't have experience at a CPA firm, so you can't cook.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:17] Well, yeah, because that's one of the requirements, right? Is that you've got to have so many years of signed off experience working under a CPA, working for a CPA, which you've got to wonder, is that really necessary anymore? Is there another way to demonstrate competency or to get experience?
David Leary: [00:54:35] You mean like if there was just a test, If there is this test you could take to demonstrate your competency?
Blake Oliver: [00:54:41] Yeah.
David Leary: [00:54:41] As an accountant. Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:42] That would be great if we only. We had one of those. David. A test that really measured. Yeah. It's just too bad we don't have one.
David Leary: [00:54:50] That would be the way to do it.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:51] Yeah, it would be great.
David Leary: [00:54:52] Other news.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:54] Well, we got more listener mail, though.
David Leary: [00:54:56] Oh, no. There you go.
Blake Oliver: [00:54:56] Yeah, Well, so Ben Taylor said, Hey, Blake, this just came out. If you didn't see it already, any link to the Crypto.com proof reserves agreed upon procedures for a big crypto exchange masquerading as more than that. Haven't had a chance to dig into it, but I figured this is right up your alley. One hopefully good thing that comes out of this is that many is that people may care about the distinction between different types of audit firm services again. Or maybe that's wishful thinking. Thanks, Ben. And of course, you know, I didn't even look at that until after it had been withdrawn. So that's the one that we were talking about. The proof reserves that Masers did. They got withdrawn. Yeah.
David Leary: [00:55:31] And I think click the link fast enough.
Blake Oliver: [00:55:32] I think what'll happen is like the average this is the problem. The average person can't distinguish between an audit and an agreed upon procedures, you know, engagement. And we, we as a profession should just not be doing that kind of crap. It's BS and @DavidLeary test.
David Leary: [00:55:47] If I can't tell.
Blake Oliver: [00:55:48] Dude, I can't even tell I'm a CPA. David This stuff is I read those reports. I'm like, What did I just read? What does it mean? Oh, you know, it's just total jargon and gobbledygook. And the only people who understand it are the people who wrote it and the people who came up with these ridiculous kinds of engagements. And yeah, it shouldn't exist. It's just. It's just too darn confusing. So thanks, Ben, for sending that our way, although it was made moot. Oh, last one, if you don't mind, David, since we got the listener mail, we want to get through it.
David Leary: [00:56:20] Listener mail.
Blake Oliver: [00:56:20] Keep going. Luke Templin has purchased Fin audio from Jason Stats. He said, Hey, Blake and David, I have huge cloud accounting news to share with you. It is probably the most significant cloud accounting news of 2022. I have purchased great, great way to start an email though if you want to get our attention. I have purchased Fin daily IO from Jason Stats. I raised funds if you have my kids college tuition funds to acquire Fin daily really is built fin daily to provide a daily financial digest on autopilot. Fin Daily is moving from alpha testing to beta testing in January. We would love for some of the listeners of the best accounting and finance podcast on the planet to join our beta. Your listeners can go to Fin Daily Audio to learn and join a waitlist. So go to Fin Daily Audio and tell them that you came from The Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'd love to chat more about Fin Daily Audio, but Jason Stats would be better. He's better spoken and looking. I don't know. Luke In all seriousness, I love listening to your podcast. Hopefully we can have some drinks together in Vegas. Unfortunately, we did not, but thanks Luke. And I'm behind on my meal, as you can tell, so I appreciate that and good luck with that. That's awesome.
David Leary: [00:57:29] So I clicked on it. The concept seems kind of cool to me, so it's like. It's like. Mail message and email. But instead of putting in people's address, you're pulling in data from QuickBooks or other things you've connected in bank balances, etc.. So you in a way, it's like instead of making everybody say, Oh, we need dashboards, dashboards, KPIs, dashboards, making things that maybe your clients don't even want or care about. That's like very hard to do because you're going to write an email and you're going to connect it to put the bank balance in every day in this email and send it to the client. And the clients can be like, Oh my God, this is amazing. That's kind of the vibe I get from the product. That's the product.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:04] Yeah. It's just it's just send data to the client via email or to yourself via email every day and that's great. I don't have to log in to check my bank balance now. Or I don't have to, Candy.
David Leary: [00:58:14] It's just. It's just. It's just what they want, right? Yeah. Really.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:17] I don't have to log in to zero to check my accounts receivable or whatever it is. You can create a digest of unpaid invoices, overdue invoices, customers with a balance. It's all.
David Leary: [00:58:29] Customizable. Use it, and then I don't have to give you updates anymore.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:32] Oh, thank you, David. You just.
David Leary: [00:58:33] Sent.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:34] Subscribe me to some annoying daily email. I'm sure I will actually find it very useful. So pretty neat. That's all the time we have for this week. David. If people want to get in touch with you, complain about, you know, your opinions, where can they do that?
David Leary: [00:58:52] I'm on all the socials @DavidLeary.
Blake Oliver: [00:58:54] I am at Blake t Oliver, please at me on Twitter until it implodes. You can also email us Cloud Accounting podcast at earmark CPE. You can send us a voicemail there. We love to hear from our listeners and we will very, very, very likely play it on the air because we love getting voicemails that much. You can even promote your own stuff. We don't care. It's like getting a free ad, so just do it. I mean, you normally have to pay for those things and it's a lot of money these days. So send us a voicemail.
David Leary: [00:59:24] And if you have any articles you see about trends of 2023 predictions, I started to bucket those little folder. I'll start do those next week.
Blake Oliver: [00:59:33] Is that what we're doing next week?
David Leary: [00:59:34] David Predictions at the end of the year? It's getting close. I don't know if it's next week or the week after, but I've started to put those articles aside. You know, these things like 50 trends to watch. Oh yeah. So I'll just put them aside and then see what's in them. See what's interesting, Hopefully the trend, the trend I want to see is that crypto just completely goes away so we can move on to 2023. And I think we're going to have to rename this like crypto this week or something like.
Blake Oliver: [00:59:58] Well, the weekly. No, please don't know. Yeah, let's get back to normal stuff. Yeah. With GPT three, I feel like my predictions are all out, like everything is totally possible now. It's very exciting. Time to be alive. Very exciting time to be an accountant. I know I say that at the end of every year, but it's getting better and better.
David Leary: [01:00:15] It's getting better.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:16] It really is like it's getting better. It's. Well, it's going to get a little worse before it gets a lot better. That's what's happening. So just stick with us, guys.
David Leary: [01:00:27] Gusto has proof it's getting better.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:30] Really? You got another story for us.
David Leary: [01:00:32] Dow has they have a real data from real pay stubs. And the average size of bonuses for accounting has increased 9% between 2021 and 20 November of 2022.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:44] Yes. Show us the money.
David Leary: [01:00:45] So. So your bonus is if you're an accountant, your bonus is 10% higher this year.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:49] Well, and.
David Leary: [01:00:50] 2.4%.
Blake Oliver: [01:00:51] Cpa Trendlines just said that CPA firm wages have surged 9% in the latest quarter. That's a lot. So, hey, maybe we're finally going to get paid what we're worth. I think that's something we're celebrating. And with that, David, we better go, because my son told me that at 9 p.m. he's going to burst into this office and disrupt our recording session. So unless you want to see him, you know, we better we better end the show.
David Leary: [01:01:16] End with a Zoom nightmare.
Blake Oliver: [01:01:17] No, I don't want to end with what happened. Actually happened to me on a webinar in the pandemic. All right.
David Leary: [01:01:24] Bye, David. Bye, everybody. Bye. Time for the classifieds. Check out Hector Garcia's new app called Right Tool for QuickBooks Online. Instantly increase your productivity with keyboard shortcuts and more. It will save you seconds. The app is free at the moment in public beta. Check them out at right tool app. That is right. Tool app. R. I. G. T. T. O. O. L dot. app.
Greg Kyte: [01:01:51] I don't care where you live in the United States. If you're a CPA, you have to take ethics, continuing education. And I don't care who you are and where you live, you hate taking ethics, continuing education. That's why me, Greg Kyte and my buddy Adam Broud, we created a podcast called Drunk Ethics where we unfold and expose all of the inner secrets of not just ethics, but how to become more ethical and to promote ethical behavior at your workplace. And we do that while we are getting progressively more faced during the course of each episode. In each episode, we take seven shots every 7 minutes. And so at the beginning we are scholarly and by the end we are drunk, yet still scholarly. If you're interested in this podcast, which I know you are, anyone can listen to the podcast for free. It's out there, you can find it, but if you want CPE credit for it, Naspa certified CPE credit, it is a premium course on earmarks. So if you're already a subscriber to earmark, it's going to be more than that. But listen, it's worth it because for two reasons. First off, you know your company, you know, your firm's going to pay for it and not you. And second of all, it's worth it, damn it!
David Leary: [01:03:14] Want to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created. Why not let the listeners The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by reading a classified ad if the show notes for the link to get more info?