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Raising prices is a priority; NASBA extends time to complete CPA exam; Canopy now writes emails with AI; PwC to invest $1 billion in AI; staff not allowed to go to conferences
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Chapters
- (00:05) - Preview: Accounting is in a bad place
- (02:58) - We launched the Federal Tax Updates Podcast with Padgett and welcome to our guests
- (07:27) - Amanda, why was this tax season harder than last?
- (09:13) - Tell us more about the Padgett REtreat
- (10:41) - What are some ways to think about raising your prices?
- (13:44) - The accounting shortage is affecting cities getting credit scores
- (22:36) - NASBA extends the time to take the CPA exam to 30 months
- (24:48) - AI and its future in accounting
- (27:09) - Canopy integrates ChatGPT into their suite
- (29:09) - PWC to invest $1 billion over the next 3 years in AI
- (33:10) - How long do you think until smaller and midsize firms will be using AI
- (35:14) - Lili Bank promises one-button accounting
- (46:17) - Listener mail about staff not being given chances to go to conferences
- (49:02) - Are accounting students set up only for the benefit of the Big 4 firms?
- (53:16) - Wrap up and thanks for listening
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Show Notes
ChatGPT Fails When It Comes to Accounting, Finds Major Study
ChatGPT Fails When It Comes to Accounting, Finds Major Study
https://www.latestly.com/technology/chatgpt-fails-when-it-comes-to-accounting-finds-major-study-5078092.html
KPMG Joins MindBridge in Global Launch of AI-Assisted Audit Tech
https://news.bloombergtax.com/financial-accounting/kpmg-joins-mindbridge-in-global-launch-of-ai-assisted-audit-tech
KPMG Joins MindBridge in Global Launch of AI-Assisted Audit Tech
https://news.bloombergtax.com/financial-accounting/kpmg-joins-mindbridge-in-global-launch-of-ai-assisted-audit-tech
What Microsoft’s Dynamics GP Announcement Means for the User Community
ChatGPT is still no match for humans when it comes to accounting
Lili Claims Super App Status With New Accounting Platform
Leading Financial Platform, Lili, Launches 'Lili Smart' to Integrate ...
KPMG signs AI deal to improve audit transparency
NASBA extends time to complete the CPA exam to 30 months
Accounting Bachelors Degree Requirements: What You Need to Know
ChatGPT: How AI will change law, finance, accounting and property ...
Canopy Launches ChatGPT AI in Accounting Practice Management Software
Accountant shortage hurts city credit scores
Technology News | ⚡Study Finds ChatGPT No Match for Human When It Comes to Accounting
PwC Stakes $1 Billion on AI Investments in Tax, Consulting Work
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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!
Amanda Aguillard: [00:00:05] But if we were at the point where someone can't be out of the office for 2 or 3 days, then that's that's bad. We are at.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:11] That point, bad. Yeah.
Jeff Phillips: [00:00:13] I don't think reducing the number of hours to get for the CPA is going to solve our talent problem after reading emails like Noah's.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:22] Fair enough. Fair enough.
David Leary: [00:00:27] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording studio, this is the Cloud Accounting Podcast.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:35] Welcome to the Cloud Accounting podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.
David Leary: [00:00:38] And I'm David Leary.
Blake Oliver: [00:00:39] And we are live recording live at the Padgett REtreat conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Read. So, David, we got in late last night. Where were we?
David Leary: [00:00:54] We were in Austin yesterday at Bitwave's conference called Edos, which was Enterprise Digital Asset Summit. And, you know, we've been crypto skeptics on our show. It's documented for a little while here. And what was great about that conference, it was just accountants and bookkeepers and CFOs and controllers that are solving crypto issues when it comes to the bookkeeping, because ultimately, you know, Nike, for example, is producing maybe nfts to authenticate if shoes are real or not, collectibles, things like that. Well, that falls on a controller's lap and they get to solve these problems. So it was great to be around accountants, and now we get to be around accountants and bookkeepers and tax preparers again today.
Blake Oliver: [00:01:33] What was really amazing about that conference was, for me, that being my first crypto conference, realizing how so much of what they're dealing with is the same stuff we're dealing with with small businesses. It's all data getting data into the accounting system from some sort of other system. So, you know, we're dealing with bank feeds not working and trying to import all those transactions and reconcile them. They're dealing with that on an order of magnitude greater challenge level of getting 100 different wallet addresses and getting all those transactions in at huge volume into accounting systems. So just be glad you're not you're not dealing with that.
David Leary: [00:02:11] Well, what the problem you had yesterday was the decimals.
Blake Oliver: [00:02:14] 90 decimal points on transactions. Yeah, up to 90. It's like, why not just shift it all over? But anyway, use some commas. But yeah, and what was interesting to me, David, about that was there was actually a presentation by Mackenzie Patel, who's a young crypto accountant in the Bay Area, and she actually showed the debits and the credits of these transactions and they're really very simple. Even if you're accruing staking income kind of thing or deferring that, it's all really simple. It's just super high volume. So yeah, check out bit Wave if you, if you have crypto clients because they seem to be solving it and check out their conference.
David Leary: [00:02:53] Yeah. And we've partnered with them. We create a podcast with them called Crypto with Accountants, but then we also create another podcast with Padgett called Federal Tax Updates. How many of you listen to that show?
Blake Oliver: [00:03:07] Oh my gosh, I was listening to it on my drive here this morning. I was listening to Roger and Annie talk about tax season debrief and everything that you all have been going through. Show of hands. How for how many of you was tax season easier than last year? Please raise your hand. Like two hands. Two hands up in like a hundred people. And how many for how many of you was it harder than last year? Wow. Wow. That's interesting, because I feel like I've heard that it's it's gotten easier. At least that's what the surveys are saying are saying. But, you know, maybe with the type of work that Padgett is doing, maybe that's not true. And actually, maybe that's a good time to introduce our guest, David.
David Leary: [00:03:50] Yes. So we have two guests here. We have the CEO of Padgett Business Advisors, Jeff Phillips, and we have the COO of Padgett Business Services, Amanda Aguillard, both our friends friends outside of the podcast. And it's a very honored to have both of you here.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:05] Jeff, how are you doing? Thank you so much for being here. Padgett extends a warm welcome and it's good to see you guys. Thanks for having us. This is fun. Amanda, Great to see you, too.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:04:14] I love seeing you all. Any time I can come up and give you guys a warm hug, I'm happy to do it and miss you all.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:19] You too, are like part of the original the OG crowd of cloud accountants. So we're honored to have you on the show.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:04:26] I think Blake just called us old.
Jeff Phillips: [00:04:27] I felt very old when I heard him say that. But you're right.
Blake Oliver: [00:04:31] It's a young way of saying it. Right. So that's what my son would say. Actually, no, I think even that might be. I'm just sus in the eyes of my son who's eight years old, sus, sus, everything sus. But where were we? We were talking about why tax season was harder this year. What's going on? Jeff, let me start with you. Tell me a little bit about Padgett. Tell us about Padgett and what are we? A lot of people don't know about it, but it's actually an enormous accounting firm.
Jeff Phillips: [00:04:59] Padgett is a network of 170 community, small business focused accounting firms. Some of my friends when I got here had not heard of Padgett, but Padgett has been in business for over 55 years. It's based in Athens, Georgia. But what makes it unique is that these offices are independently owned. They are owned by local entrepreneurs who are building firms. And it's kind of at the center of this network is a corporate office that provides a lot of services to those offices. And and what makes it, I think, really enticing for the owners is they are not going through the entrepreneurial journey alone. There is a playbook. We provide a technology stack and research and discounts on on the technology which we're constantly updating. We have a marketing team, we have a national tax support team, and it's all designed to give them an edge. But also and because I know we're going to talk about this, such a big focus for our company is improving the work life balance of people who own tax accounting firms. And so we're always trying to find ways to provide that value because that's such an important part of it.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:13] So I think I heard you say 170 something offices. Is that right? So when I was at a top 25 firm, we had, I think, 100 partners. So, like Padgett is a big deal. I mean, that's a.
Jeff Phillips: [00:06:25] Lot. That's just in the United States. We have 100 offices in Canada. So if you if you. Oh, wow. The the ranking services don't look at us as one firm, but we'd be in the top 75 largest firms in the United States if you looked at us. But we're really. Well, they should.
Blake Oliver: [00:06:42] I mean, I don't know what's the criteria for that. Like all these big firms that you see, they're really just individual offices all sharing the same logo, right? I mean, like in a lot of ways the way they're run. Right. But I think what's interesting is, like with Padgett, it's you all are serving Main Street businesses, right? It's not just go mid market and only serve these bigger, bigger, bigger businesses like you all are on the front lines.
Jeff Phillips: [00:07:07] You've been an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur. There's a great satisfaction that comes from knowing that we are helping people that create jobs and communities have their financial, their financial aspects of their business together. There's a lot of stress that comes with that. We like to think that we alleviate that and make their lives a lot easier and help them run their business.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:27] So, Amanda, could I ask you, when everyone raised their hand saying this year was harder than last year, why is that?
Amanda Aguillard: [00:07:35] I think if you ask a group on we're sitting at the end of April any year, it's always going to feel harder. I think that what we do a bad job of is remembering when it comes to July, August and September, how bad it was. It's like having a baby. I've had two babies, right? And I would have a bunch more now because it was no big deal. It's no big deal.
Blake Oliver: [00:07:58] Isn't there like a chemical in your brain that causes amnesia?
Amanda Aguillard: [00:08:01] It's almost the same thing. I mean, I think it's almost the same thing where we get by the time we get to the end of the summer. Like it really wasn't that big of a deal. It was a big deal. And we need to make changes in our practices to build efficiencies, to build some margin, to build capacity, and most importantly, to protect our mental health around our profession.
Blake Oliver: [00:08:22] Staffing is a constant problem in the profession. Are you all experiencing the talent shortage? Yeah, yeah, I'm getting a yes from the crowd there. One of our stories that we're going to talk about today is how municipalities cannot get their books done and they are losing their bond ratings. I mean, that we're talking about schools not being able to be built, police stations, fire stations not being able to be built because of the accountant shortage. So it's real. It's it's going to start hitting its here for sure.
David Leary: [00:08:53] Before we jump into the news though we are at this is the Padgett retreat and I noticed you guys played with the word treat as it's like so something good.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:03] Capital r e then.
David Leary: [00:09:04] Treat and then the word treat.
Blake Oliver: [00:09:05] And we're at the J.W. Marriott in Scottsdale, which is pretty nice. I got to say. You guys put on a nice conference. This is great.
David Leary: [00:09:13] So, so, so, so either one of you can answer this, but like, what is this event? Who is it for? Who's here? You know.
Jeff Phillips: [00:09:19] This event is for our firm owners to get together after busy season, which is as we've just.
David Leary: [00:09:28] Three days ago.
Jeff Phillips: [00:09:29] Brutal. And it just ended. And we do two things. One, it is a time for rest and to catch up on sleep and to be in a beautiful place and be inspired and feel good and and also get together and have a lot of fun. We've had an awards banquet. We've had we've had a couple fun dinners. We played some golf and we do a little bit of content that's usually around something that's sort of big picture because we think that now is the time to fix any bugs in the system before we forget about some of the pains of the busy filing season. So let's let's deal with that. And so one of the theme of our week this week was was a topic near and dear probably to all accounting firm owners, which is pricing. And so we've had James Ashford, who's the founder of Go Proposal. We had Shannon Vincent, who is a founder of the Renew Group, come in and help us think outside the box about the pricing in our firms, how we price, what services we sell and how we kind of manage our relationships with our clients.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:32] So everyone's going to raise their prices. Is that, is that happening? Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Phillips: [00:10:39] So it was that simple.
Blake Oliver: [00:10:41] I heard a panel before we came on here today and you all were talking about different ways to do it because it can be really uncomfortable and I'm with you there, like having that conversation actually in the meeting with the client, trying to explain to them why you got to double their price. Like, that's not fun. So I'm eager to hear. Amanda, what's the what's the strategy that James taught you all on how to raise prices? Like, what's the what's the. For those listening in who didn't get to be here, what would you tell them?
Amanda Aguillard: [00:11:07] Well, it starts with understanding your value, right? It's understanding your value and knowing we are not just selling transactions. We are not selling the time that it takes for us to do the thing we are delivering. It's it's around what is that worth to the client? And we constantly undervalue what we have, probably because we are beyond capacity and we're rushing through things. So we feel like we know we could do a better job for our clients, but we can't. We don't have time to. So it's like just sitting with it for a minute and saying, okay, here are the things I really am giving a value to these clients. And there is a monetary number, a monetary equivalent to that, and that's what I need to be asking for. That is what it is worth for me to do this because I'm giving up a lot of other things. I'm giving up time with my family. I'm giving up opportunities to pursue other lines of my business. I am I have invested in my education. I have invested in my training. I I've done this for a long time. So there is an equivalent exchange. And if you, my client, are not okay with paying that, we're okay. We can still be friends. We just aren't going to do business together because that's that's the number that it takes for me to live the practice life that I want to live. So it's really around, around mindset. And the truth is, and we've heard this consistently throughout the week, is most of the clients know they should be paying you more anyway, so you just have to ask for it.
Blake Oliver: [00:12:34] So it's really believing in yourself first and then asking for it. Because if you don't believe that you're worth it, then you're not going to.
Speaker5: [00:12:44] Right?
Amanda Aguillard: [00:12:44] Because I think we're all so busy and we have this just guilt and shame around what I should be doing this I'm over again, over capacity. I don't have staff, so I wish I would have done a better job on this. I wish I would have had more time to review this deeper or come up with a solution for this tax liability or I wish I could have I could help my client maximize cash flow because I know I'm capable of doing that, or I wish I would have had a chance to bring my kid to practice. It's all these wishes and things. And so that's like the constant narrative in our heads. But the reality of what we deliver to our clients is very valuable. So it's like wrapped in this, in this cloud of, of guilt and wishes, but that needs to be stripped away, strip, strip all that away and do what you know you are worth, you know, capable of doing and ask for what it's worth.
Jeff Phillips: [00:13:38] Don't apologize for it.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:13:40] Stop apologizing. Stop.
Blake Oliver: [00:13:42] Apologizing. I love it. Well, should we get to the news? The news? All right. So I teased my top story. It's the accountant. Shortage is so real that dozens of cities have no credit score because they didn't file financial paperwork in time.
David Leary: [00:13:56] So the numbers are real. So 64 local governments, S&P removed their rating completely. And then in last March.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:04] So S&P is the one of the bond rating firms. Right. Rates These municipalities said these bonds are good to buy a A plus kind of stuff.
David Leary: [00:14:14] And then another company might have been S&P as well. In March, they did a 148 other ones. So every month there's of 200.
Blake Oliver: [00:14:24] Municipalities now don't have a bond rating. So here's an example. The municipality of Marion had planned to finance a new $10 million firehouse with a bond deal later this year. But that project and others are on pause because the city north of Columbus, Ohio, doesn't have a credit rating. Another example, Dellwood, Missouri, a city north of Saint Louis with a population of 5000 and a full time municipal staff of 11, lost its rating from S&P. City Administrator Terry Wilson said the cause was a backlog of work due to staffing issues at the city's external accounting firm. Wow. Yeah, that's not good for your reputation in the city of Delaware with only 5000 people, I imagine, right? Word gets around. But I mean, this is shocking to me. I mean, it's not shocking because we know this has been coming for a long time, but now we're really starting to see the impact of the accountant shortage. And I'm hoping that this actually is what starts to drive the profession to maybe make some changes. Yeah, we talk on our show about reducing the education requirement to become a CPA, maybe allowing people another path instead of the 30 extra hours. I'm really curious to know, do you all support 150 hours to get your CPA or is it or are you okay with 120 plus experience? Let's say we swapped the extra 30 hours for a year of experience, went back to that. Who is in favor of keeping it the way it is? 150 And don't be shy. It's fine. I get people all the time say I like the 150. Sure. Okay. It's high barrier to entry. Who's in favor of swapping that 30 hours for another year of experience? It's. It's. It's like the whole room. It's unanimous room?
Jeff Phillips: [00:16:05] Yeah. It's the whole room of accounting. Owner, accounting firm owners. Why do you think that is?
Blake Oliver: [00:16:09] I mean, maybe you're having trouble hiring. Yeah, it's incredible. You know, we've seen stats on the show. Something close to 20% of accountants quit. I'm rounding up during the during the last few years, us accountants and auditors, people just got burned out, I guess. You know.
Jeff Phillips: [00:16:30] We've been talking about this for a while, haven't we? Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:34] I just wonder how bad is it going to get before something is done.
Jeff Phillips: [00:16:37] What's interesting to me is it used to be the problems coming, the problems coming, the problems coming. And now we're now it's, oh, there's no accountants to actually do the bond ratings for cities. And that's just one example of of this problem rearing its ugly head.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:53] This is just they couldn't get their financial statements out the door. Right.
Jeff Phillips: [00:16:56] Right. They can't. Wow.
Blake Oliver: [00:16:57] So actually that's a business opportunity there. Yeah. Spin up a practice. I don't know if that's appropriate for what you all are doing, but you know, any of our listeners. Yeah, yeah. If you're listening, I mean, there's an opportunity here. Do accounting, financial statements for municipalities and target that to all these ones You can't get their their their current firm. Go ahead, Amanda. Well, what I.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:17:19] Was going to say, you guys and I have friends who have who have firms who hire nontraditional workers. Right. A lot of them, you know, we are looking to folks in the hospitality industry who have customer service backgrounds or I mean, I'd rather have someone that knows how to talk to people and that I can train to do bookkeeping or accounting than vice versa. And to your point, there's there's it's such a shortened there's such a shortage in the market, it's really hard to find people that are credentialed. But a lot of our friends are hiring sort of outside the norms of accounting, degreed folks.
David Leary: [00:17:59] Baking our timeouts on the plane last night and Blake said like, what's going to happen is ultimately these credit rating rating agencies, they make money issuing issuing the ratings and the reports, and they're going to probably start accepting non CPA reports. And that just opens the door for like dominoes are starting to fall.
Blake Oliver: [00:18:19] So that would be like the worst case scenario, right, is that the market doesn't supply enough auditors to audit and to do these financial statements. So what if the market says, well, we'll just get non CPAs to do audits? Who's somebody got to do it? So it has to happen, right? The cities have to issue bonds. Somebody is going to have to audit them. I mean, that could be the ultimate. Catalyst for change, Maybe. Do you think.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:18:44] That this is going to. It really is. I mean, I feel like we've said this over and over again. Like something has to change. Something has to change. Do you think this is the thing?
Blake Oliver: [00:18:51] Yeah. If if it starts to attack the what do we call it, the franchise of the CPA license, which is audit. If it starts to attack that, I think the leadership might realize something bad is about to happen. Right. I don't know.
Jeff Phillips: [00:19:06] This. For me, what I'm reading into this is, is the is the issue of just the middle market CPA firms. These are the ones that are having the biggest. I feel like they're bearing the brunt of the talent issue, by the way.
Blake Oliver: [00:19:19] It's interesting, Jeff, though, so Accounting Today put out their annual top 100 list, which we can argue about whether or not that's accurate. Like I think Padgett should be on there. Let me to make that happen. There's a firm called your part time comptroller that's on there. They've never been allowed on the list before because they don't do audit or tax. They only do financial statement preparation for non-profits. Pretty cool. They're on the list now, 75 on the list. But what I was getting at with that is the revenue at the top, 100 firms jumped like 18% last year. And I'm thinking, how is that possible with a talent shortage so bad that David got fired from his firm, which is in that group top 100? Yeah. And they you you know the CEO of that?
David Leary: [00:20:04] I knew the CEO and I still got fired from the firm.
Jeff Phillips: [00:20:06] Sorry, David.
Blake Oliver: [00:20:07] I mean, I feel like you could have pulled some strings there, David, like.
David Leary: [00:20:10] But I understand, you know, I was talking to the tax preparer and she said she did 85 hours, you know, every week for the whole last tax season and she can't do it anymore. And I forget how many hours for the whole year she worked. But I'm like, I get it. Like, I understand where they're coming from. Like, you just can't work people to death.
Blake Oliver: [00:20:28] So my theory is that this revenue went up, but it's all M&A activity. It's all these firms that are merging in to the bigger firms because they've got no one to buy the firm. There's no young staff to take over. So what do they do?
Jeff Phillips: [00:20:42] They merge in they buy other firms, right?
Blake Oliver: [00:20:44] That's my theory, too. They buy other firms. Yeah. So so you've got the the top 100 the top firms are getting bigger because of this M&A. But the same problem that's hitting the small firms that you all are feeling is coming for them, too. It's just five, ten years away. Right. They've just pushed the they've kicked the can down the road with all this merger activity. Yeah, but are they going to hold on to the staff to serve the clients?
Amanda Aguillard: [00:21:09] I don't know. Not at 85 hours a week.
Jeff Phillips: [00:21:12] Well, you know everyone. The narrative is that we're in a recession or we're our economy is struggling. But if you looked at the job data for Q Q4 of last year, 3.5% unemployment, which is very, very low. At the at March, they released it again, 3.5% unemployment. Accounting and auditing is half that at 1.8% unchanged. That's like that's.
Blake Oliver: [00:21:36] Like might as well be zero.
Jeff Phillips: [00:21:38] Everyone's employed who wants a job has a job. And so, you know, you know, you know, I came from the job board industry and then started a staffing firm. You have to pry people loose to staff your firm. But what are the things that I think is kind of interesting? There's the same amount of supply no matter how you cut it. So where are these people? You know, how do we fill our jobs? These big firms on big top 100 firms that tend to live on the coasts are calling CPAs in the middle of America, in Omaha, Nebraska, who work at a local firm, a smaller mid market firm offering a 25% pay bump. Work, work in your pajamas at your kitchen table for us. And they're making them offers in about three days. So it is just this cattle call process. The large firms are removing the talent from the middle firms and then working remotely on the coast, giving them a big payback.
Blake Oliver: [00:22:32] I wonder if that's going to work long term. If that strategy.
Jeff Phillips: [00:22:34] I don't think will work.
David Leary: [00:22:36] Naspa's got plans I saw on the news they're going to extend good news everyone to take the CPA exam to a whole 30 months.
Blake Oliver: [00:22:43] That's actually I think that's great. I'm glad they did it. So what was it? It used to be 18 months. Yep. I got I only got 18 months to pass my CPA exams though. I don't know if this is quite fair. Now, all these young whippersnappers are going to be able to get 30 months to take your.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:22:59] Did you take your exam on a computer? I did. And don't talk to me.
Blake Oliver: [00:23:05] But hey, I was at the Prometric Center where we weren't allowed to bring water into the testing room. Yeah. Now they get water when they take their exams, believe it or not.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:23:14] But you only have to take. You only took one section at a time.
Blake Oliver: [00:23:16] One section at a time. Yeah, I know. Yeah.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:23:18] Yeah. You guys. I mean, it's.
Blake Oliver: [00:23:21] But anyway, we're glad that know. David, I'm going to speak for you. I think we're glad that they have expanded the window.
David Leary: [00:23:28] Every little bit helps, right? Yeah. It's funny, though, because a lot of times we'll hear this from the AICPA and Nasba. We've talked about this on the show. They say they survey college students. Oh, the 150 hours is not a barrier of entry. It doesn't matter. But then I saw it was funny. I saw an article from Pepperdine University newsroom, and it's an article targeting students to become accountants. Right. And it's a little marketing and it's a great article. But Pepperdine.
Blake Oliver: [00:23:51] Pepperdine like near LA. Yeah.
David Leary: [00:23:52] Yes. And they the article talks about becoming a CPA and it just talks about how you just need some experience. Nowhere in this article does it mention the 150 hours, which tells me no. Undergraduates know that they have to do that extra year of college If they get into accounting. It's not anywhere. Just arguably disclosed.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:12] You got to get them committed and then spring it on them. Right.
Jeff Phillips: [00:24:15] Tell them their senior year of college. College.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:16] Yeah. Oh, by the way, did you sign up for our Mac. It's only going to cost you 20% more. Yeah.
Jeff Phillips: [00:24:22] Do you think that's going to put to move the needle this, this change.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:27] On the testing window. I think it'll help but I think, you know, my gut tells me if they cut the if every state passed an alternative to 150 and went back to 120 with two years of work experience, I think we could easily increase the supply of 10 to 20%, which, you know, that's material. But ultimately. I don't think we can solve this problem with people. And that's why our next story is about AI Chatgpt. Okay. Survey.
David Leary: [00:24:54] Survey first.
Blake Oliver: [00:24:55] Who here? Who here in this room has used Chatgpt themselves? All right. I think we got like, half the room. That's. That's pretty impressive.
David Leary: [00:25:04] Can we do a follow up question? How many of you use Chatgpt to actually assist you in doing work at your firm and not just play with Chatgpt? Okay.
Blake Oliver: [00:25:11] So slightly smaller percentage, maybe like 20% there or something. So I think chatgpt for writing emails, for composing, creating content is just fantastic. Amanda Jeff, have you you all tried it, Played with it. Yeah, I think it's Chatgpt Openai.com Right. You can sign up for free and you can play with their model version three, which is not bad. If you pay 20 bucks a month, you can play with the GPT four model, which is the one that everybody is freaking out about because it's so good. That's the one that passed the bar exam. That's the one that can pass. Ap Bio Okay. They didn't put it through the CPA exam yet. As far as I know.
David Leary: [00:25:55] No, they not put it through the CPA exam, but they've put it through some CPA or accounting courses. And apparently students are getting about 78, 79% of these courses. And Chatgpt Big Four only got 49%. So there's a lot of articles this week. We talked about that actually last week, that study that was done, but it really hit the mainstream news media this week. And it's just like it fails when it comes to accounting.
Blake Oliver: [00:26:20] That was the story in accounting today was that chatgpt like failed.
David Leary: [00:26:23] And it was picked up on all the major media.
Blake Oliver: [00:26:25] Yeah, but the problem is they're giving it problems that have it do math. And it's important to remember that Chatgpt is a language model. So the fact that it can even do math is incredible. It's basically the equivalent to think of it like autocomplete on your phone, right? Where you type a few words and then it suggests the next word. That's essentially what they've built to a huge scale, right to the point where you can give it a prompt and it can then write based on statistics. What should come next from that. But it's not thinking, it's not doing logic. It is just auto completing.
Jeff Phillips: [00:27:04] What are you what are you seeing for accounting firms getting use out of this? What are the use cases?
Blake Oliver: [00:27:09] So we saw some news this week that Canopy, a practice management solution, has integrated it into their suite. And now you can compose emails using AI. And I love this as a use case for firms. And I would say this is probably the bearing your clients.
David Leary: [00:27:24] Yeah, it'll write those letters for you.
Blake Oliver: [00:27:26] So you need to fire a client really uncomfortable or actually raising a price. You need to raise your price. Very uncomfortable. You might spend hours writing that email. Okay, sign up for chatgpt and give it a set of bullet points. Say, you know Chatgpt, please help me write an email to my clients. Here's the situation. You give it the bullet points what you want it to say, and it will compose that email. And I mean, I'm a professional writer at this point in my career, having done, you know, like five years in marketing. It's better than I am at writing. Okay. Wow. And you can tell it what kind of tone to use. You can say, I want to be super professional. I want it to be more casual and it will do that. It improves your existing writing. There's a plug in that I use an app called Jasper, which is layered on top of Openai's technology. That's a Chrome plugin. You can sign up, get the chrome plug in, you can highlight a paragraph of text and you can say, Improve my writing and it will then improve the writing. And I do that constantly. Everything I do now, I run through that. So Grammarly just released this as well, if you like. Grammarly Yeah, that's a good one.
David Leary: [00:28:32] It's going to be an outlook. It's going to be an Excel. It's coming, It's coming everything. So have you budgeted as Padgett budgeted, any investment or money into AI and Chatgpt that you're researching for the firms?
Amanda Aguillard: [00:28:46] No, but I mean, you guys know, I try and keep my fingers on the pulse of what's going on in the accounting tech space. So, so one of my roles at Padgett is to vet technology and technology partners. So I don't I don't know yet where that falls in our processes and how we how we work. But but I'm paying attention to all of you smart people.
David Leary: [00:29:09] Well, I just like PwC is now set the table they're going to invest one season is $1 billion over the next three years in AI chatgpt they're going to train all 65,000 employees to use it like $1 billion for the next three years, just leveling up their AI. So I always wonder when they set for your budget now when they say.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:27] They're going to spend $1 billion, does that just mean that they're giving everyone an hour a week on their timesheet.
David Leary: [00:29:31] Billable hour?
Blake Oliver: [00:29:33] They're not writing. They're not actually like spending the money? It sounds great. That's like like did you all hear the news about AIS failed split. And they said that they spent like $600 billion on this. I'm like, how could they have spent $600 billion? Don't they? Do this kind of consulting internally? Yeah, it's all timesheet data, right? It's all just.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:29:50] Isn't there some guy in a closet somewhere that just has this off the top of his head? Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:29:55] I mean, that's, that's their expertise, right? M&a win.
Jeff Phillips: [00:29:57] Can win. Can I help me respond to all the emails in my inbox and open them, answer them in response? I don't have.
Blake Oliver: [00:30:05] To. I think that's coming later this year. Yeah. So months Microsoft this is this is when you all are going to start using it because we haven't talked about the security concerns, but that's real, right? Like putting client data into Chatgpt is not a good idea right now because they use the data to train the model. So you're basically giving that data to OpenAI to ingest into their Borg like database of all knowledge in the world. You may not want to do that unless you put that in your engagement letter, right?
Amanda Aguillard: [00:30:34] If people freak out about India and the Philippines, they're probably going to freak out about.
Blake Oliver: [00:30:38] Exactly. So. So you probably don't want to be putting like confidential client information into it yet. But Microsoft made a big deal with OpenAI, like a $10 billion investment, and they are integrating OpenAI into all the Microsoft products. So in Outlook, I'm guessing this year, I mean, they'd be crazy if they didn't roll this out as soon as possible. You're going to be able to reply to an email or you're going to be able to click a button that says Compose reply for me. And if they do it right, it will look at all the prior correspondence with that client, with that person, and then put in all the details correctly. That's the problem right now is that OpenAI kind of just makes up stuff if there's gaps, but if it has the data, it will go find it and use it.
David Leary: [00:31:19] And that's like Cpag contacted Microsoft and got a custom version of Chatgpt built. They're actually calling it internally Kim Chat and they rolled that out in the first day. 20% of the firm's workforce in KPMG Australia used it. So people are starting to like the big firms are in there.
Blake Oliver: [00:31:36] So think about all this like little client communication that kind of kills you by a thousand wounds, right? Just asking for something like, Hey, can you send me this or can you give me this piece of information or my. Those mortgage brokers, man, you know, they just they just want everything. If it could just go find that in your share file or in your whatever system you're in, right? And pull that out and attach to the email and send and not send it, but like, cue it up for you to send every morning. That'd be pretty sweet, right? Yeah. I mean, how many hours do we spend on emails just going back and forth with clients.
Jeff Phillips: [00:32:10] And hours and hours? Think about what you could train it to do. The repetitive tasks, the proactive communication to your clients with your monthly update or whatever it is, and you could cue it up to do that.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:22] The one I'm excited about is the tax organizer. I think this could be the end of the tax organizer because you know, you've got to implement it correctly. But can it be or carbon or any of these practice management solutions could go look at last year and say, okay, here's the things we need from last year, let's go ask the client for these and we're going to do it one at a time until they get them. And it could all be automated like a chat, like interface.
Jeff Phillips: [00:32:44] Now you're now you're getting the people in this room excited about a use case.
Blake Oliver: [00:32:48] Now people are like their eyes are opening. So if anyone has a question, we would love to answer that for you. So we're going to pass that mic around. It's coming down the aisle. That's really cool. Yeah, I'm I'm so excited about this. Just like for me personally, project management pushing projects forward, you know, I'll forget to follow up on something and then it just will sit there for a week, but I could really help me. Yes, sir. So do you mind staying, say your name?
Chris DeLong: [00:33:13] Chris DeLong from San Francisco. We know the big firms are putting tons of money into this, and there's a lot of implementation behind it. How long until it's it's mainstream for smaller firms or mid-sized firms to be using this? Because And what kind of implementation are we talking about?
Blake Oliver: [00:33:31] It's really up to the practice management software, these portals to build it. And I'm encouraged by the fact we've seen one already do it. We mentioned Canopy.
David Leary: [00:33:40] Intuit's made announcements. By the end of the year, you will have stuff in your firm using it. Well, I don't know if you're on deck.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:47] It might be tough.
David Leary: [00:33:47] Sorry.
Blake Oliver: [00:33:52] Email your rep. Well, so that's the problem in tax, right? And I'm so sorry.
Jeff Phillips: [00:34:01] This is going to be edited, right? Yeah.
Blake Oliver: [00:34:04] Shall I bleep it out? Beep it out. That's the problem is like when you are heavy in tax, you're on these solutions that are just not cloud enabled really. And they're slow because they don't have any competition. You know, they're just it's just fat and lazy. Right. And it pisses me off though.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:34:21] And you don't even do tax anymore.
Blake Oliver: [00:34:22] I don't even do tax, but I'm angry on your behalf.
Jeff Phillips: [00:34:26] All of the options available to small accounting firms are, you know, are not cloud based.
Blake Oliver: [00:34:32] I think if you could pull in all the emails and you could link up to the file storage solution, right? And I could work around those limitations. So hopefully we won't have to wait. For unnamed software company to build it.
David Leary: [00:34:48] Well, Jeff [CROSSTALK]
Blake Oliver: [00:34:51] Look on Jeff's face is priceless. I wish we.
David Leary: [00:34:53] Could. A lot of accounting apps are started by accountants and firm owners. That's right. Padgett could solve this. You could build the next generation of this.
Jeff Phillips: [00:35:02] That's a great point. I'm getting some. Negative body language feedback from the.
Blake Oliver: [00:35:10] Your your IT folks.
David Leary: [00:35:13] Yeah well, we've.
Blake Oliver: [00:35:15] Already jumped into app news really with this canopy stuff, so we keep going. David We could talk more.
David Leary: [00:35:20] I mean, this is Amanda's specialty, right? So the apps. Jeff you want to stay, you want to, you want to bail. You want to stay up here with us. Up to you? Yeah.
David Leary: [00:35:29] I'll. I'll stay up, but I'll just.
Jeff Phillips: [00:35:31] This is not my expertise, okay?
David Leary: [00:35:33] Just hang out. I'd love to hang out. All right. I feel cool.
Blake Oliver: [00:35:36] So we talked about canopy launching Chatgpt. I we're going to actually, I really want to go talk to Canopy and find out just exactly how how much it goes into the email history, because I feel like that's really important, right, for for making it actually work. What else do we got?
David Leary: [00:35:49] David There's all these Neobanks, right? Lily is one of them. That's another claiming they're a super app. And the reason I brought this article is because the press release, the founder goes on to say about how banking and accounting are part of the same process. Yet legacy banks historically have separated these functions, causing small business owners to spend nearly 100 hours a year on taxes and accounting. They call this feature Lily Smart and let small business owners manage their own bookkeeping without needing an accountant.
David Leary: [00:36:17] Hey, we've heard that before.
David Leary: [00:36:19] Over and over again.
Jeff Phillips: [00:36:21] Not naming.
David Leary: [00:36:21] Names. A single button click generates profit and loss statements, cash flow statements, expense reports and sends invoices. One button.
David Leary: [00:36:29] We're at the.
Blake Oliver: [00:36:30] Point of. Well, Amanda, I think about it this way with cloud accounting, zero bank feeds all that. We automate it 80 to 90% of the work in bookkeeping, but we still haven't really done that in tax. We haven't gotten those kind of improvements. We've almost got no improvements really over the last ten years in terms of the amount of time it takes. But that could be coming.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:36:50] Well, I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of tax decisions are made not on this is the way you know, if X, then Y. I mean, you know, you have to understand a person's complete financial picture and that's not anything that chatgpt accesses. Right? So you have to know, are we is this is this client looking to retire in five years? Is this client, you know, have a child that needs help? There are so many other factors that are not in the financial data, and that's where our value is, is understanding all the pieces and making helping our clients make the best decision. So I'm not sure that it's it's maybe it could probably get us a lot of the way there. Well, I'm wondering, do the whole.
David Leary: [00:37:35] The whole thing, could.
Blake Oliver: [00:37:36] It help create the questionnaire? Well, sure.
David Leary: [00:37:38] Right.
Blake Oliver: [00:37:39] Yes, sure. The short and not just that full list of every question we could possibly ask. And then you have to go through and figure out what questions to ask. Your staff have to do that It could actually, like look at the situation, feed it the prior returns, feed it, the prior source docs, and then have it ask what what might be different? What should I ask about this year? Maybe you could help with that breaking.
David Leary: [00:37:58] I you know, we've been doing this podcast for half a decade now almost, and we finally took a plane flight together. And so we were chatting last night and you brought up this use case, Blake, about how, you know, partners at firms or tax partners that maybe have only focused on one small piece of the tax code and just like memorized it like that could be replaceable, that skill set.
Blake Oliver: [00:38:18] Yeah. Yeah. So think about the guy at EY who just does rev rec and has memorized all 600 pages of 606 or whatever it is. Right? I think that an AI could take facts and circumstances from a particular case and apply the code or the standard to that case and give an answer. That's.
David Leary: [00:38:39] Quite accurate. So instead of going to emailing him, Hey, I have this client over here, I need some help, I need your perspective and your answer. Just bypass them entirely and use chatgpt.
Blake Oliver: [00:38:49] Now that's great because you all aren't in that world of like, I don't even know what you call that. Those super technical expert people, right? You're all serving clients, so the more the more client facing you are, the less you are replaceable. But those people who are just sitting there applying, you know, obscure standards, you know, leaseback arrangements or whatever, or the expert in that, I'm not sure. I mean, there probably aren't enough of them anyway. So they'll get, they'll get a lot of help I suppose, but I think that's where it could be really useful.
Jeff Phillips: [00:39:19] I got excited when you when you're talking about the organizer because when you look at our process, just one of the biggest logjams that we have or bottlenecks is just getting the data from the client you mentioned earlier. So owners of accounting firms of chasing down clients with multiple emails and texts and phone calls and really just waiting for the work to get done and I think there's an opportunity here to eliminate some of that.
Blake Oliver: [00:39:41] Yeah, chasing the clients is tough because I've seen apps that we've seen apps that try to do this, but then they end up annoying the client because. Right, like because you set up the reminder and then they sent you something but not through the app. And so it keeps sending them the reminder for the thing. You know what I'm talking about. Yes.
Jeff Phillips: [00:40:00] Yeah, but I texted it to you.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:40:04] I sent you a picture of my W-2 on your phone.
Blake Oliver: [00:40:07] It's a collection of 20 JPEGs via iMessage, right? Yes. And you know what actually is? I really do believe that. And this is not just me, you know, doing futurist kind of bullshit stuff. I really think that Chatgpt could take those 20 jpegs and make the PDF for you. Like, it's that smart. It could do that for sure, right? So hallelujah. Right? I mean, we're in on that. Yeah. So I think, I think the smart solutions will be these portals or maybe it'll be like an add on that you pay for or something. We'll build like a chat interface for your clients. I mean, will.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:40:40] It will it devalue some of the apps that are out there where that is their value prop?
Blake Oliver: [00:40:44] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, unless they integrate it, right. That's interesting. It's super.
David Leary: [00:40:49] Powerful.
David Leary: [00:40:50] But you're going to shave time, right? Like if it can shave. Ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes on each client because it's going to do your organizer chasing. And if you can use it, one good use case we've thought about is everybody creates these wikis in these central knowledge repositories and you're you spend 20 minutes like clicking through folder structures to find the one document you need. You can just ask that and it just summarizes what's on your wiki or on your internal network and that just that stuff saves you time. And if you save ten minutes here, 20 minutes here at the end of the week, you can go to your kid's basketball game.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:41:21] Let me ask you this dream. So you know, you guys came into the the industry cloud accounting industry around the same time as me call it, ten, 12 years ago. No, no.
David Leary: [00:41:31] I go way back. I go desktop, QuickBooks, Desktop. Quickbooks. Yeah.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:41:35] So a question for you guys. You know, when we started in the cloud accounting industry, call it the early teens, we thought integrations were going to solve all the problems, right? Like integrating. You could integrate apps into your GL and then you just set it up and it's going to work forever and ever and ever. But the reality is that they have to be maintained. They have to be constantly tweaked. Do you think we're going to have that? Is that going to happen with Chatgpt or is it so good it will just maintain itself?
Blake Oliver: [00:42:02] I think it could maintain Zapier integrations. Why not? I mean, it can already do simple coding. So I think there's potential for that. I mean, just remember, we're only on version four of this GPT thing and version one was last year, pretty much. So it's kind of it's really exciting to think what's going to happen in the next few years with this technology, especially now that Google has woken up to it. They're working on it in China as well. I mean, all over the world, all the tech money is going into AI at this moment. It's it's been described as an iPhone moment. And remember how much smartphones changed the way we work. And think about that in terms of I mean, this is like an Internet moment.
David Leary: [00:42:46] Honestly, it feels different. If I step back and look at something like being milestones of technology and promises, like I just talked about the promises of these technologies and. What, three years ago, four years ago was like blockchain. We don't need accountants. Blockchain is going to solve everything. And now these accountants were going to all these conferences learning about crypto and blockchain, and it really didn't go anywhere. It was pointless waste of education. And then even not even like 12 months ago, it was all metaverse. You're all going to be not going to retreats. You just put on the goggles and sit in your living room. All metaverse. I bought it anywhere. I bought this. This. This feels different. It really does. There's there's something different about this.
David Leary: [00:43:29] It's not just hype.
David Leary: [00:43:30] There's something here. And then, like, even if it's not, it's like 20 bucks a month to pay for it. Yeah. If you save you ten minutes a month, it's worth the money.
David Leary: [00:43:39] And it's and I.
Blake Oliver: [00:43:39] Think that for bringing it back to specifically us accountants having to work with tools that are not really cloud enabled and that don't have all these connections, these APIs, that's what's held us back. I could bridge that gap. I know the guys at Talhoffer have been working on this. They're building plugins that will get in your data from like a QuickBooks file into your tax software. Even though the tax software doesn't have an integration and they do it through a, you know, using a form of AI, right? Like that plugs in the numbers like a person would we call this RPA robotic process automation, whatever you call it, it's just manually doing the clicks. And the better that the AI gets at fuzzy logic, the better it will get at doing all those clicks because that's what we're doing in our brains. When an interface changes slightly and you have to click somewhere else, you know, you recognize that change. In the past, an AI has not and it failed and it broke, but now it's going to be able to say, Oh, when I click, nothing happened, okay, let me go back and try again. It can it can do some of that basic. It's not critical thinking, but it's almost like a problem solving kind of aspect to it.
David Leary: [00:44:48] So it's not.
David Leary: [00:44:50] So black and white. No technology goes away eventually. Microsoft shutting down Microsoft Dynamics. Gp So that's their Great Plains, their desktop.
David Leary: [00:44:59] Version, Great Plains. Anyone here use Great Plains ever? Oh, absolutely did about ten years ago. All right.
David Leary: [00:45:04] And so they're finally pulling the plug on that desktop product. Now, if you're an existing customer, nothing's changing. You're good through, I think they said. 2028. Maybe longer, but they've stopped sales as of April 1st. They are finally shutting that down. Hopefully Intuit will follow up with QuickBooks Desktop and we'll see the rest of the desktop dominoes start to come down.
David Leary: [00:45:27] No, no.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:28] It's never coming down. It's never going right. We're going to have QuickBooks Desktop in 2050. I'm with you. Who here is still a client that's on like 2006 QuickBooks desktop because they don't want to upgrade. Yeah, we got a hand there.
David Leary: [00:45:40] I don't pay.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:41] Any subscription fees. I've got to download all the payroll tables. Do you have.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:45:44] One computer specifically set aside in the office just to run that?
Chris DeLong: [00:45:48] I decided I'm firing them.
David Leary: [00:45:49] When I get back. Oh, he's firing them when he gets back? That's right.
Jeff Phillips: [00:45:52] Our work is done here then.
Blake Oliver: [00:45:54] Well, and you can ask you can ask Chatgpt to write the email and just tell it. The reason is that they won't switch off the QuickBooks desktop 2006.
David Leary: [00:46:02] There you go. So I think we wrapped up app news usually on our show when we record. If you, our listeners know and some of you live, you don't listen. Hopefully you will listen, but we'll do listener mail. So I don't know if we have any listener mail or do we want to open it up to the folks in person? Do in person mail. Okay, so.
Blake Oliver: [00:46:18] I'm going to do one email from a listener and then we'll pass the mic around. So if anyone wants to, does anyone have any questions or comments? Comments are fine too. Please raise your hand. We'll come around with the mic. All right. So here's our listener mail. This is from Noah. Noah said, Hello, I am a new listener to the podcast and just heard the episode where you went to the CPE conference where the comment was made that the average age of attendees at most conferences are older than 40 ish. I work at a public accounting firm and only our senior managers and above go to conferences. They use it for business development and connections. We were told I'm a second year associate, by the way, that associates, seniors and even managers aren't really at the liberty to go to conference for CPE since we have work to do. So I guess one of the reasons, at least from the side of some younger associates, is that we just aren't allowed to go unless we take our own PTO and pay our own expenses. I personally would like to go to meet other people in the industry, but I don't think it's in the cards for a lot of us in the newer stages of careers. Love the podcast, Noah. Thank you, Noah, so much for writing in. I'm curious to know, Jeff, Amanda, you know, bringing staff to conferences, it is tough, right, as an owner because who's going to run the shop when you're gone?
Amanda Aguillard: [00:47:31] But if we are at the point where someone can't be out of the office for 2 or 3 days, then that's that's bad.
Jeff Phillips: [00:47:37] I don't think reducing the number of hours to get for the CPA is going to solve our talent problem after reading emails like Noah's.
David Leary: [00:47:46] Fair enough. Fair enough.
Jeff Phillips: [00:47:47] Because, I mean, let's just let's just be better employers. Let's just be.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:47:52] An accounting conference. The poor guy just wants to go in.
David Leary: [00:47:55] He wants to.
Blake Oliver: [00:47:55] Go to QuickBooks Connect. You know, he wants to. He wants to do that. Can we start a.
Jeff Phillips: [00:47:58] Gofundme so Noah can go to.
David Leary: [00:48:00] Freshbooks Connect?
Blake Oliver: [00:48:01] Yeah, I actually think that's a great idea.
David Leary: [00:48:03] And for 50.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:03] Bucks, it's really not that expensive either. I mean, they really subsidize those ticket prices. And you know what? You don't have to stay at the aria. You stay at any of the hotels on the Strip anywhere. David and I share a room. You know, it's cheap.
David Leary: [00:48:14] You can you don't even have to make it happen.
Jeff Phillips: [00:48:16] The the nutrient, by the way, among the among the the conference elite.
David Leary: [00:48:22] Conference elite is to not even buy a ticket to the.
Jeff Phillips: [00:48:26] Conference just to buy a ticket to Las Vegas.
David Leary: [00:48:28] And friends at bars. That's actually.
Blake Oliver: [00:48:30] My recommendation. David and I have told our listeners, if you can't afford to come to AICPA, engage, just come to Vegas during the event and come to our party. Yeah, we actually are going to. Are we doing it? Is it really happening?
David Leary: [00:48:43] You're I don't want to commit just yet, but.
David Leary: [00:48:46] Yes.
David Leary: [00:48:46] We want to have a million downloads party. We had a million downloads of The Cloud Accounting Podcast probably last week in May, which is the week before ESPN engaged and it would be great to have a million downloads party. Yeah so we just got to awesome. But but parties cost money.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:01] All right. Cost money. I've got more listener mail, but I'd love to hear from our audience.
Jerry Kriesel: [00:49:05] Jerry Kriesel from Centennial, Colorado. I was going back to Jeff's comment about solving the 150 hour issue, but does it and I get this idea from tax speaker. He's from Evansville or somewhere near Evansville, and but I've done CPE through him and he thinks the problem is that the accounting schools, they're set up for the benefit of the big four. Anything that he thinks that's the bigger issue that that so few of these people are going to work in Big Four If they do, they're not going to be there very long and that they need to be taught more practical applications, how they're going to work in industry, how they're going to work as their own owner or for a smaller firm. So I like your ideas on that.
Blake Oliver: [00:49:49] Well, first of all, I couldn't agree more. I mean, I, I personally, I'm a career changer. And I didn't go through my accounting education all that long ago. And I was shocked at how theoretical it all was. And I was really lucky that I was working as a freelance bookkeeper at the same time so I could take the debits and credits I was learning and the accounts and actually put the journal entries into the accounting software.
Jeff Phillips: [00:50:11] We learned real accounting.
Blake Oliver: [00:50:13] And I can see the impact in my I was using my Xero demo account, the one you get when you sign up and I would make the journal entry and I'd see, Oh, here's what happened on the statement of cash flows and the balance sheet. And I can't believe that schools don't teach that way. And it would be such a simple thing.
Jeff Phillips: [00:50:31] It's it is. He's right, Jerry. You're right. It's it's it is constructed to the benefit of the big four and the professors are are pushing the big four and that narrative and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:50:46] And I'll add I think you know the big four are the are the firms that have the resources to take a baby accountant with a college degree and train them how to do actual accounting work. It's very hard for somebody like me and probably you guys to to say, okay, well, I'd love to develop I would love to have a young, interested accounting degreed student come in, but I don't have time. The time, the capacity to sit next to them and teach them how to balance a checkbook, how to use Xero, how to use our other apps, how to think things critically, how to communicate with clients. So it's a it's a problem for the small to mid firms to to invest in the big four have they have a machine for that.
Blake Oliver: [00:51:28] Now there is some good news there are some professors out there, a handful that we know who are adding in more practical learning into their curriculum. Jennifer Johnson at the University of Texas No, Jennifer. There's also a couple of professors from Utah Valley University that actually came to speak with us to get input on what they should put into their practical courses that they're working on. So I think the some of the universities serving, you know, mid sized firms, smaller firms are starting to see this gap and hopefully they can plug it. Hopefully they're listening right now.
David Leary: [00:52:02] I do think we had listener feedback. From a listener where she teaches at community colleges and she wasn't allowed to use QuickBooks in the class and she had to use whatever the software that was in the back of the book and that was it. They could not teach people QuickBooks. And then we had listener voicemail last week on our show, and all of you should go listen to last week's show because there's about a five minute long voicemail. But go.
David Leary: [00:52:25] Download all.
David Leary: [00:52:25] 350.
David Leary: [00:52:26] Episodes while you're.
David Leary: [00:52:27] At it. But essentially, it was a listener and she was on a college tour with her son and they showed the accounting 101 lecture hall. It's got 500 seats. And it's a shame because Accounting 101 is like, it's the gantlet to scare everybody away from accountants. Accounting.
Blake Oliver: [00:52:46] Accounting, unfortunately, is often used as a filter in the business schools. Yeah, right. The way that like, bio is used for pre-med students and stuff like that. And I just think that's like they should make economics that like make the dismal science, the dismal class, don't make accounting do that. That any more, any more feedback or.
David Leary: [00:53:05] Questions from.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:06] Our Padgett audience. Here we are standing in between you and the golf course.
David Leary: [00:53:11] And the pool. Well.
Amanda Aguillard: [00:53:13] I know I can just wax poetic for a while if you'd like.
David Leary: [00:53:17] All right.
Blake Oliver: [00:53:19] I'll wrap up then. Good. Well, thank you all so much for joining us today for our live recording here at the Padgett retreat. Thank you so much, Jeff. Thank you, Amanda. This has been an honor and a privilege. Hope to see you all next year.
David Leary: [00:53:33] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You. Cool.