The Accounting Podcast

[00:00:00] Thank you to our sponsor, OnPay.

David Leary: Many times, when choosing a payroll service, you have to choose between a new startup with a great app or an established company whose tech may feel behind the times. With OnPay, you get the best of both worlds, a great app from an established company that's been providing payroll services for over 30 years in all 50 states. Stay tuned to hear more from our sponsor, OnPay, later in the episode.

[00:00:18] Episode Preview

David Leary: They bought virtual real estate. They are the first accounting firm, big accounting firm, to do this. And—.

Blake Oliver: Wait. So, who is selling – who is selling real estate in the metaverse?

David Leary: So, apparently, there's a – there's a metaverse called SAND. It's a decentralized blockchain-based gaming world within the metaverse where users can buy, sell, and customize virtual plots of land, which they own in-game non-fungible tokens. It has all the buzzwords.

Blake Oliver: Okay. This is a—.

David Leary: PwC in Hong Kong decided, like, this was valuable to go there, and they bought land there.

Blake Oliver: Hey, everyone. Welcome to our last episode of 2021. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: And I'm David Leary. Blake, did you have good holidays? How was your Christmas? I know you already got your Mac, your MacBook Pro, where it was kind of a early Christmas gift then.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Uh, it went great. It's been wonderful seeing the family. My brother's staying with us. I had a great time And, uh, today is Thursday. It's December 30th. So, just getting through the weekend and then back to it.

[00:01:26] A Look at What's News

Blake Oliver: Well, as I discussed last episode, Earmark is going great. The launch is good. We've got hundreds of users already on the app without much promotion at all. So, I'm excited. I hope it's working well for everyone. If you haven't checked it out yet, go to earmarkcpe.com, sign up, download the app for Apple or Android devices, and you can get CPE credit for listening to this episode and many more Cloud Accounting Podcast episodes, Earmark accounting podcast episodes. And I'm working on getting other accounting and tax podcasts on there, as well.

David Leary: That's great. I have – I have to give, uh, QuickBooks Online some kudos this week.

Blake Oliver: For?

[00:02:05] Shout Out to QuickBooks

David Leary: For saving me. So, remember, I had BBVA Compass or BBVA got bought by PNC Bank. And it's just—. It's been this mess. There's no bank feeds. Well, worse than that, I go to download paper statements, and there's this link on PNC's website that says, "Download your old BBVA bank statements." And I go there, and you can download April of 2021, May of 2021, July of 2021, August, September. You cannot download the June statements.

Blake Oliver: Just the June statements [CROSSTALK]?

David Leary: They just don't exist on the website. They just don't exist anywhere. It's just—.

Blake Oliver: Well, what is – what is going on?

David Leary: Well, it's a total mess. And – and so, I was like—. Okay. I was telling my intern, and I was like, "You're gonna have to reconcile July, and we're just gonna have to guess to get those transactions that are marked clear and, hopefully, we come out to that ending balance." And it's really—. It's – it's a total guessing game. QuickBooks saved the day. Do you remember when QuickBooks announced they're going to start downloading state- – bank statements automatically?

Blake Oliver: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

David Leary: So, way back in the day when the bank feed was working, before PNC broke it, QuickBooks was quietly just downloading the bank statements.

Blake Oliver: Oh. They [INAUDIBLE]. You have them?

David Leary: I have them. They're all in QuickBooks. QuickBooks pulled down the June 1 to July 1. Obviously, it stopped in October, when PNC messed it all up. But kudos to QuickBooks for saving the day.

Blake Oliver: I'm so happy for you. That's great. What a unexpected Christmas gift for you, David.

David Leary: Yes. I mean—. And it makes sense. Like—. Like—. 'Cause right now, I am going around downloading bank statements, right, and – and the PDFs, and Daniel reconciling things. And there was something that you said about the bank statements just being there when you're ready for them. I know they can't do it with all banks. But, man, it is—. If you haven't tried it with your clients, I'd say, like, make sure it's set up, because the bank statements are just there, ready to go, at the reconcile screen. You know, you're not hunting around opening up shared drives, trying to find them, emailing clients, right? Yes. It was, like, a gift from QuickBooks. They saved me.

Blake Oliver: Well, speaking about QuickBooks, we do have updates to share when we get to app news. We've got Expensify earnings. What else do we have today, David, to talk about? It's the end of the year.

David Leary: Predictions. Like, all that stuff.

Blake Oliver: Predictions. Yes.

David Leary: I have some updates on some previous other stories that we've talked about recently.

Blake Oliver: I've got a fun Elon Musk quote since we love talking about him and his taxes. The IRS is doing a poor job of protecting taxpayer information. They are at risk of hacking, according to a recent report.

David Leary: Oh, yeah. Updates about the restaurant revitalization fund.

Blake Oliver: Oh, we had some PPP fraud here in Phoenix.

David Leary: I think I saw some things like that. Were these your neighbors?

Blake Oliver: Well, nine people in the valley, the Valley of the Sun.

David Leary: And so – so, people can understand, that's, like, pushing four million people now in this huge square mile radius.

Blake Oliver: I believe the Phoenix Metro is now the fifth largest city in America.

David Leary: Okay.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. We're big.

David Leary: So – so, it's not really your neighbor.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: The odds would be very small.

Blake Oliver: Yes. But they are in my neighboring city. Phoenix is now the fifth largest by population.

David Leary: So, continue on. What—? What—? Who was the fraud by?

Blake Oliver: Oh.

David Leary: What were they asking for?

Blake Oliver: Oh, yeah. You wanna—? We'll start with that?

David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: Okay.

David Leary: Let's jump in.

[00:05:12] Fraud in the Valley of the Sun

Blake Oliver: Nine valley people indicted in PPP fraud scheme totaling more than $23 million. According to the indictments from April 2021, the conspirators in the scheme submitted or assisted in submitting PPP loan applications on behalf of 18 businesses seeking loans between $100,000 and $2.2 million for each company. There's a list of the defendants all between the age of 39 and 56. FBI found them, caught them. And like I said, $23 million in funds. They basically just made up the businesses, it seems like. Or maybe they were existing businesses, but they definitely didn't have the number of employees, the amount of payroll that they were seeking [CROSSTALK].

David Leary: It sounded like a lot of this fraud, which is the crazy part, was spin up a new EIN or fake EIN and just go apply.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Or just steal somebody's, right? If you know their EIN and their address, I think you could just do it.

[00:06:09] How a Relief Fund for Restaurants Picked Winners and Losers

David Leary: So, speaking of relief, right? They had the PPP loan fraud. Well, remember the restaurant relief fund?

Blake Oliver: Yes.

David Leary: And it kind of got a slow start. Then, it finally came out. And – and the point of it, you know, they wanted to give priority treatment to underserved women, minorities. They wanted to give them priority in this distribution of money. The problem was there was only $28.6 billion, and the industry really thinks they probably needed a hundred billion total. I didn't hear about this, and we didn't talk about it on the show. Apparently, after this started to roll out, there was a lawsuit from White male business owners. Did you know this?

Blake Oliver: Oh, yeah. I heard about this.

David Leary: And because of that, they got to stay. They had to open it up to everybody, the platform, the program.

Blake Oliver: Right.

David Leary: The New York Times was able to get some SBA data and records, and really looked at it. And what was happening is it's very clear the day that stay happened, the people getting the money changed when they initially—. Because originally, they said businesses for women, military veterans, racial and cultural groups, right? After, uh, court challenges, they put a hall to that. And then, they were supposed to only distribute it in order which the applications are received. But that's not what happened. One person, he—. Um, James Hutton, he submitted one minute after it opened on May 3rd, seeking $2.4 million. And at the end of June, he was denied. But somebody else who applied on May 24th, which is the last day the program accepted applications, that person was approved. So, it's very clear they did not go in order that the applicants were received. And so, this is kind of still being investigated by the New York Times, but it turns out that this, uh,, whole program kind of might have been a failure.

Blake Oliver: We have future lawsuits waiting to happen here, right?

David Leary: Yes.

[00:07:51] West Virginia state employees get paid after Kronos ransomware attack

David Leary: I have some good news for the, uh, employees of West Virginia.

Blake Oliver: Is this related to that hack? The ransomware attack on Kronos, the – timekeeping app?

David Leary: And payroll app. So, 60,000 West Virginia state employees will actually finally get paid on December 31st.

Blake Oliver: Oh, they haven't been getting paid since this happened?

David Leary: They have not gotten paid.

Blake Oliver: Oh, my gosh. So, they had to go through Christmas holidays with – with no pay in West Virginia?

David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: You said 60,000?

David Leary: Yes.

Blake Oliver: Oh, my gosh.

David Leary: And – and the state auditors – auditor, JB Mis – McCuskey says every employee needs a double-check their pay stub and gave instructions on how to go in and choose pay stubs. And you have—. Because, I think, they can't trust the system. They said, and I'll quote, "Right now, it's unclear when the employees will have access to Kronos again. We believe that at least one more payroll will be affected with Kronos. The information from them is coming at a trickle. I would prefer it to be coming like a firehose, but we believe it will be at least one more payroll. But my guess, it will be two."

Blake Oliver: So, do we have any updates about, like, the attack? I haven't seen any news about Kronos recently.

David Leary: I haven't either. It's been pretty quiet. It's just—. It's not good timing. Between the holidays and the end of the year, like, how hard is it for somebody, a big – a state payroll, to move 60,000 employees to a new payroll for January 1st?

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: But at least – at least they're getting paid. It didn't really say, like, how they're getting paid.

Blake Oliver: I think people are doing it by hand. So, one of our listeners, uh, Nicole, her boyfriend works for an agency that has been impacted by this. And they're—. She said they're doing all the payroll by hand now.

David Leary: Wow.

Blake Oliver: Can you imagine being a payroll clerk and having to do it all by hand until this gets sorted out?

David Leary: Considering you probably haven't done payroll by hand in maybe your entire career at this point. Payroll's been one of the first computerized things at – at scale.

Blake Oliver: Somebody, uh, you know, close to retirement is like, "It's my moment to shine." Breaks out the old books on how to do this, dust them off, pulls out the spreadsheet.

David Leary: How to look up the …

Blake Oliver: How to look up—.

David Leary: … withholding tables and all that.

Blake Oliver: [CROSSTALK].

Blake Oliver: All right. Kids gather around. Let's learn how to calculate this manually.

David Leary: Wow.

[00:09:56] More Fallout from the Kronos Ransomware Attack

Blake Oliver: This article in Silicon Angle says that the ransomware attack still hasn't been sorted out. So, the systems are still down. Here's another one: SecuritySystemsNews.com talking about how the ransomware attack is impacting major Maine employers. MaineHealth and Hannaford, two of Maine's largest employers, were affected by this. So, this article was just from a few days ago. So, it's still an issue. MaineHealth has 22,000 employees in 11 counties in Maine and Carroll County, north, uh, New Hampshire, and they use it to track hours. So, I guess a lot of companies use it for timekeeping.

David Leary: I think they always had a physical box on the wall.

Blake Oliver: Right.

David Leary: Like, you have to punch-clock, and then that electronically yaps with a server and …

Blake Oliver: Right.

David Leary: … gets to a payroll system.

Blake Oliver: So, if you were just using it for timekeeping, you kind of work around that, right? Get people just to record time on paper time sheets if you have to. It'll be—. It would suck to process that, but you could do it. Oh, man. What a disaster.

[00:10:55] Thank you to our sponsor, Tallyfor.

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[00:12:10] News to Roll Your Eyes By

Blake Oliver: Well, do we have any good news this week? The new year is coming. We always do a predictions episode.

David Leary: I still have a couple more small things that are not. I wouldn't say they're good or bad, but they're a little eye-rolling.

Blake Oliver: Okay.

David Leary: The first one kind of is a little bit of follow-up. You know, we've talked a little about students not being prepared. This next generation.

Blake Oliver: Oh, accounting students not getting ready …

[00:12:35] A CPA's Take on Connecting with the Younger Generation

David Leary: Accounting students, right?

Blake Oliver: … for the world of work. Yeah.

David Leary: This was in Journal of Accountancy. It was an opinion piece, but it didn't have a title. And maybe the title could be like, "How to Connect with Your Younger Staff." I don't know. But it's something like this. She's an educator, Nancy Bagranoff, CPA DBA, and she's talking just some tips on how to connect with your younger generation, employees. You know, things like, "Hey. It's – it's about listening to them." As the business world becomes increasingly tech-focused, you as faculty must get those same skills. You just can't expect the students to do it on their own, and you need to prepare those students. And the third one that really hit with me is—. And she goes on to say, "One thing I love being in an accounting department is that I think we have a close relationship with practice than in either discipline. Students need to understand all the professional opportunities available to them." And this kind of hit home with me with my two interns, because we went and visited, um, [INAUDIBLE]. I went to the firm just to talk to them a little bit about CAS stuff and apps and things like that. And I had them just shadow me and come along. And they are going to graduate this year. They didn't know kind of like CAS divisions existed in accounting firms and that they're kind of the – the fastest growing, most opportunistic role you could probably get in an accounting firm.

Blake Oliver: And they didn't know about it?

David Leary: They're pumped out to only know about tax and audit.

Blake Oliver: Well, that's because these departments are funded by donations from large accounting firms. And what do those firms need? They need tax and audit. And that's what these professors teach. The whole CPA curriculum, and the exam, for decades and decades and decades, has existed to produce junior accountants at large accounting firms. And that is all falling apart now. It's all getting disrupted.

David Leary: I like to feel like we're doing our little part in that.

Blake Oliver: We're trying.

David Leary: A teeny bit.

Blake Oliver: We are really trying. Nothing illustrates the disconnect better than going – going on to r/accounting, on Reddit, and reading what these students are figuring out and what it's like being in the Big Four. I mean, campus recruiters can't hide just how bad it can be anymore, because you can just go and read the real experiences of anonymous accountants at large firms, talking about what it's like.

[00:14:55] When Prison Work is Preferable to Accounting

David Leary: And here's how bad it is. So, I found another article. This was in the BBC. So, this is out of the UK. Here's the title of the article: "Why I Quit an Accountancy Career to be a Prison Officer."

Blake Oliver: Really?

David Leary: Really. This is a real article.

Blake Oliver: Okay.

David Leary: This actually ties into when we were talking about keeping people at your firm or what they're looking for. Her name's Caprice. At 18 years old, she embarked on a five-year degree apprenticeships in accountancy with a top firm. After four years, passing her professional exams, getting her university – her degree from University of Birming – uh, Birmingham, she just didn't believe that accountancy was going to keep getting out of bed. The thing is here, now it's her quote, "in prison, every day, I feel like I'm genuinely helping someone." And what this tells me is she worked in the accounting industry for four years, five years, and she never had that feeling she was helping anybody. People want that feeling with their firm. We talked about that value prop of Intuit's QuickBooks Live or TurboTax Live.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Yeah.

David Leary: They do it to help people. And if you're not giving that to your firm employees, they're going to leave to become prison guards. And that's an [INAUDIBLE]. Like, she wound up going into a graduate program and a master's degree in rehabilitation. Like—. So, it's not like she's not helping people. I'm not knocking this. I'm just—. It's more of a knock on the accounting industry that, like, this is how drastic of a change somebody would make in their career, because of accountancy

Blake Oliver: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head there with the feeling of having purpose and meaning. Now, this is in the UK, you said?

David Leary: This is in the UK.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. I feel like maybe prisons in the UK are doing a better job of rehabilitating people than here. I just suspect that being a – a prison guard here is not quite as rewarding as it might be there.

David Leary: Well, mind you, she said she—. There's an assault, like, her – her first week there. Somebody had a – a – a makeshift weapon made out of tin cans.

Blake Oliver: Okay. All right.

David Leary: And, apparently, there's a thousand prisoner office job positions available right now. So, just like the accounting industry can't hire, neither can the prison industry. Like, everybody's struggling for – for bodies.

Blake Oliver: So, maybe the headline should have been: "Accountant decides working in prison is better than working in an accounting firm."

David Leary: Well, I don't think—.

Blake Oliver: Prison—. Prison—.

David Leary: I think you and I, would wrote the head that way, 'cause that's our audience. I don't know who the audience of this article was in the BBC. And maybe that's our episode title.

Blake Oliver: May—. Yeah. Maybe.

David Leary: "Working at a prison is better than working at your accounting firm."

[00:17:14] Does the Audit Profession Just Need Better PR?

Blake Oliver: Here's a related story, also from the United Kingdom. "Audit profession unattractive to new recruits, says PwC boss." This was in the Financial Times. Kevin Ellis is the head of PwC over in the UK. And, basically, he blames external negativity for the challenge that PwC is having attracting new recruits right now. It's amazing. He says "retaining qualified auditors 'becomes much harder if there's a current of external negativity…. Audit still has a 'halo' for entry-level recruits as it's seen as a trusted business training . . . However, its attractiveness . . . is damaged if the external narrative from politicians and regulators focuses on the negatives rather than its critical importance to the economy, supporting investment decisions and capital market confidence.

"At a time when investors want to assess businesses on climate and other ESG issues, the audit profession can't afford to lose capacity. We need more auditors, not fewer."

And then, he adds, "when criticizing auditors, it was important to distinguish between cases 'where, with hindsight, auditors had turned out to be wrong' and those where there had been 'bad behavior' by accounting firms."

David Leary: So – so, is he saying, like, the profession audit just needs better PR?

Blake Oliver: Yeah. He's basically saying, "It's not our problem. It's – it's all this bad coverage that we've been getting in the press that's making it hard for us to attract new auditors." And they have been getting terrible coverage in the press. Some of the biggest failures of companies in public markets in the last year or two have been in the UK. Karelian, Patisserie Valerie, retailer BHS. The auditors in the UK all failed to find massive problems that led to their collapsed.

And so, public is asking, "Well, what – what are you there for if you're not going to protect us from this kind of stuff?" And they've been fined record amounts for audit failures.

David Leary: I mean, this is leading to, like, the – the breakup in the UK. They want to break them up. Yeah. It's led to a lot.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Exactly. It just shows you how the people running these big firms are just totally out of touch or unwilling to accept responsibility for the crappy work they do. I mean, the system is set up in a way that auditors really don't have a lot of responsibility in the end for any of this stuff. They protect themselves, and they're not really protecting the markets.

To connect these two stories we've been talking about, right, maybe the reason that they're having trouble attracting auditors is because the pay is crappy and the work sucks, and people are finally saying, "I'm not going to do it anymore. It's not worth it." And the pandemic is one of those things that sort of reset people's expectations about what work should be like. "Give us reasonable hours. Give us good pay."

David Leary: This was somebody at PNC in the UK?

Blake Oliver: PwC. This is the head of PwC in the UK

David Leary: I have great news for him.

Blake Oliver: What's that?

[00:20:16] Finding Real Estate Gold in the metaverse

David Leary: He needs to talk to PwC in Hong Kong, because PwC in Hong Kong purchased virtual land in the metaverse called the Sandbox.

Blake Oliver: What? Metaverse?

David Leary: In the metaverse.

Blake Oliver: Oh, okay.

David Leary: And they bought virtual real estate. They are the first accounting firm, big accounting firm, to do this. And—.

Blake Oliver: Wait. So, who is selling – who is selling real estate in the metaverse?

David Leary: So, apparently, there's a – there's a metaverse called SAND. It's a decentralized, blockchain-based gaming world within the metaverse, where users can buy, sell, and customize virtual plots of land, which they own in-game non-fungible tokens. It has all the buzzwords.

Blake Oliver: Okay. This is a—.

David Leary: PwC in Hong Kong decided, like, this was valuable to go there, and they bought land there. Now, I think the play is, from this press release, they talk about they can "play a valuable role in growing the metaverse by creating an environment where blue-chip investors and brand-name companies can feel comfortable familiarizing themselves with Web3 technology, according to the media release."

So, this is really a marketing play by PwC to be able to go to, I don't know, GE and be like, "GE, hey. We'll show you how to buy land in this metaverse." You want to go audit? Like, go live in your metaverse and, audit, I guess. I don't know.

Blake Oliver: Well—. But this is the consulting side. This is where they're making lots of money and having fun, in the metaverse.

David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: And that's the other thing, is why would anyone want to go into audit these days when the pay is crappy, the hours suck, the external PR is terrible? You don't feel like you're difference in the world because gap financials are used less and less in making decisions about investment, because our accounting standards haven't kept up with intangible assets, right? It's really not an attractive career, and you have the alternative of either going into consulting or going into CAS, which are both much more rewarding. Heck, even tax is way more rewarding than audit, if you ask me.

[00:22:09] "What the Actual F? I Didn't Sign Up for This!"

David Leary: So, it sounds like this – this person's probably very well-paid. You'd say, right? And it sounds a little whiny. Well, I have an article about somebody who's very well-paid that's whining a little bit. So, are you familiar with DoorDash, the delivery service?

Blake Oliver: Yes. I use it all the time. I'm a member.

David Leary: Okay. And are you familiar with—. When I say the word "eat your own dog food" as something—. Now, you've worked in the app space. What that means when somebody says that?

Blake Oliver: Yeah. It means that you, as a company, use your own software. So, you kind of know what it's like—.

David Leary: Yeah. I use Melio to run my business.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. I use Relay to do the accounting for our show.

David Leary: [INAUDIBLE]. When I [INAUDIBLE] a few my paycheck. I have the engineers do tech support. Like, it's important, right, to talk to customers. Well, DoorDash a policy where, once a month, if you're a DoorDash employee, you have to go physically deliver food.

Blake Oliver: That is great.

David Leary: And—.

Blake Oliver: You have to experience it.

David Leary: You have to experience it, which is going to eventually make you a better employee. In my experience, all the best product managers I've ever worked with are the ones that were willing to, like, take tech support calls.

Blake Oliver: Mmhmm.

David Leary: The ones that refused were always dumb product managers, and they make dumb mistakes, right? Because they got to know the customer and – and feel that pain the customers have. Well, you know those social sites like Glassdoor, where people go to bitch about their companies?

Blake Oliver: Mmhmm.

David Leary: There's a DoorDash employee that his annual compensation was $400,000, complained that he had to go do this. It says, "DoorDash is making engineers deliver." He said, "It will be tracked in performance reviews. What the actual F? I didn't sign up for this. There was nothing in the offer letter or job description about this." So, he'd rather be a mediocre engineer instead of understanding his customers he's going to write codes for.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Well, then he's – he's not the right fit for that kind of company.

David Leary: 'Cause avoidance of customer—. So, I know app developers listen to us. Some of you app developers are out there. Do not avoid your customers. Like, it's the worst thing you can do.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Or, actually, as a firm, right? Don't – don't avoid your customers.

Blake Oliver: The same thing for accounting firms is that figure out a way, so that everyone your firm interacts with the customer or the client, whatever you – term you like to use, at least once a month. Don't insulate people from that, because as soon as you stop, then you don't know what the customer wants. You don't know the customer's desire. And that's the most important thing in building a business, is keeping that customer happy.

David Leary: That's it. I think I have app news, and then I got prediction stuff we can jump into.

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[00:25:34] The Deep Mystery of Elon Musk's Taxes

Blake Oliver: I just want to share this Elon Musk thing real quick. So, it's just a funny quote from Elon Musk. Um, 'cause he's in the news all the time about his taxes.

David Leary: Is he whining about his taxes? Since we're on people whining.

Blake Oliver: No.

David Leary: Okay. Get—. Transition away from the whining.

Blake Oliver: See, he – he took the other tack, and he's bragging about his taxes. Because if Elizabeth Warren comes after you, the best strategy to defeat her is to sell a bunch of stock and pay the most taxes in the history of the country. Yes. It's – it's so great.

I found this via Caleb Newquist, via his excellent newsletter, On the Margins. Elon Musk was on an interview with the Babylon Bee, which is a conservative satire site. I've never read it.

David Leary: Conservative satire.

Blake Oliver: I think it's like The Onion, but for conservatives, is how I've heard it described. Anyway, Elon Musk was on an interview. And, uh, this is a CNBC article extracting some quotes. So, he said that his wealth of more than $245 billion is fully transparent and isn't stashed in any offshore accounts or special tax vehicles to lower his obligations.

"I don't have any offshore accounts, no tax shelters. H&R Block could easily do my taxes. I don't need—."

David Leary: Stop. That's his real quote?

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: [CROSSTALK] commercial. That's—.

Blake Oliver: "H&R Block could easily do my taxes. I don't need H&R Block. I could do it. It would take a few hours. My taxes are very basic."

So, David, like, this is genius, right? If I were a marketing manager at TurboTax, I would be calling up Musk and trying to get a video him, like, doing his taxes on TurboTax or something. Wouldn't that be genius?

David Leary: And – and here's the scary thing: If he tries to do his own taxes and blows it, we will now have—and this is [INAUDIBLE] my predictions—the person from the outside who is now in our industry. He will be spinning up a company to do taxes.

Blake Oliver: It is possible. I have a hard time imagining that, if you have that much money, it could be simple. But I guess it could be simple if it's just large numbers but it's simple investments, right? And – and he said that, like, his entire worth is in Tesla. Almost all of it is Tesla and SpaceX. And so, when he sells the stock, he pays capital gains tax, right? And that's actually very simple to calculate, I think. Maybe the – the number of zeros might break these programs, but if they didn't, then I guess it is possible.

David Leary: [INAUDIBLE] crypto. Like, he's—. There's no way it's simple.

Blake Oliver: Oh if he has crypto, yeah. Seriously, right? Uh, anyway, it's just funny. So, H&R Block could do Elon Musk's taxes. That's a challenge.

David Leary: You're right. Like, TurboTax, somebody should jump all over this.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Just him hammering it out. And he could do taxes while his car drives him automatically. That's a commercial.

Blake Oliver: Actually, Tesla should do a partnership where you can do your taxes while your Tesla drives you around, right? 'Cause they have the stop with the video games. Did you hear about that? Apparently, Tesla software included video games that you could play on the Tesla screen while your car is driving itself. And the Transportation Safety Administration said, after apparently a long time of this being around, uh, like, that's not okay. You can't let people play video games when they're supposed to be watching the – the road.

David Leary: Well, that was one of the – the concept videos for QuickBooks, was this future state—. I forgot what they called the chat thing, but in the commercial, they made, like, a fake future vision of QuickBooks Online, and you would be talking to your QuickBooks Live Pro advisor through the television screen in your car. And that—.

Blake Oliver: I don't know.

David Leary: They could totally do this, right? It'd be Elon Musk driving, TurboTax Live. Claudell would jump – pop up on the screen and do the work with him on his taxes. Like, you know, this is—. Intuit, if you'd like us to come be your marketing consultant on this, we could, uh, handle this for you.

[00:29:19] Can You Trust the IRS with Your Data?

Blake Oliver: So, here's something else before we get predictions. Um, I mentioned that the IRS is having issues with protecting data. And there was a report that came out in December, a weeks ago, from the inspector general for tax administration, the auditor of the IRS. It's scathing.

Basically, the IRS—. Well, here's the quote: "Until the IRS takes steps to improve its security program deficiencies and fully implement all security program components and compliance with FISMA requirements, taxpayer data could be vulnerable to inappropriate and undetected use, modification or disclosure."

And FISMA is the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, which was passed in 2002. So, I guess the IRS has, for almost 20 years, not yet complied with the standards. It includes stuff like improperly sanitized laptops and smartphones, insecure physical door locks, inactive accounts with administrative access that nobody's disabled, inaccurate inventory in the department's crime lab.

Here's another quote: "Configuration management compliance for Windows and Linux servers is not effective. Vulnerabilities open past remediation time frames are not effectively documented and tracked.". So, basically, in summary, it's a shit show at the IRS when it comes to this kind of stuff.

And so, I figured, like, this is one those things that should get parties onboard with funding the IRS better. Because Republicans are pissed off about all these leaks of taxpayer data that are coming out of the IRS. You know, the – the rich folks whose tax returns are getting leaked. Well, the only reason that's possible right now is because there's lacks controls. So, if you tighten the security, you're not going to get employees leaking this data. That's – that's a good reason. And, of course, the Democrats want to fund the IRS, anyway.

David Leary: Yeah. The rich get behind this.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Exactly.

David Leary: Because they – they didn't want their – their information that, you said, leaked. Maybe they should tie it to the $80 billion in funding. Because, just like startups. So, like, if a startup is going through a raise. Some app is going through a raise. They're going to get $20 million. The investors, a lot of time, depending on which round it is, the company grows to a point where it has to get a security audit. And that's where they come in and like, "Hey. Don't have any on Post-It notes on your monitor" and all of that kind of stuff.

Blake Oliver: Well—. And is the problem, is there – there is consensus on funding the IRS. It actually seems like the problem is that some lawmakers don't want to give the IRS money to increase audits. So, they want to say, "You can't increase audits if we give you money." But Democrats aren't willing to go along with that. So, that's why we're in this sort of stalemate after this. I mean, they did get $80 billion, right, in the infrastructure bill. I'm pretty sure they got the $80 billion. But they need more in my opinion. Way more. They've been so underfunded for so long.

David Leary: Can I go through a process where I can get, like, a badge? Like, we could get audited by the AICPA and meet some security compliance and get, like, a – a badge, right, for our website that says, like, AICPA SOC 2.0 compliant or something?

Blake Oliver: Yeah. That's, like, SOC—. The SOC stuff. SOC 2. SOC.

David Leary: But there's, like, kind of a AICPA level. Like, it's beyond.

Blake Oliver: So, it's an accounting firm, a CPA firm, would audit you and give you SOC compliance under AICPA standards.

David Leary: And so, if I had an app, I could have that on my website.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Or the podcast could have it. Who knows? Whatever, right?

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Why is the AICPA not working with the IRS to have them use the same badge and qualify for the badge? Technically speaking, right, I think the way these – these audit things work, the vendors you're working with have to meet the compliance things, too.

Blake Oliver: Right. You have to do some sort of due diligence on your vendors. Yeah.

David Leary: Right. So, if the IRS is a vendor you're interacting with and sending data to, and they don't meet this, how can they be issuing this to any company, any accounting firm that works with the IRS?

Blake Oliver: You're beyond my pay grade with these questions.

David Leary: I'm sorry. I just can't connect the IRS and the AICPA and their interactions and the demands and who does what and the lobbying.

Blake Oliver: It's because funding for the IRS is politicized. The AICPA tries not to be political, because its membership is so split. Rather than do anything, they do nothing. That's my opinion.

David Leary: The one thing the government, they should have strong opinions on is the IRS.

Blake Oliver: I know. Right. But, again, because of this political stalemate, the lobbying is stuck, too. That's why AICPA will say IRS is underfunded, but they won't say by how much. They – they have to play this game to try and keep everybody happy.

David Leary: Well, one day, the AICPA's books will be leaked to the IRS, and then maybe somebody [INAUDIBLE].

Blake Oliver: Well, they're – they're public. Those are public.

David Leary: Do you want to hammer two teeny quick app news then jump into projections?

[00:33:56] QuickBooks – The December Updates

Blake Oliver: Okay. Let's see what we got. Can I do the QuickBooks Online updates?

David Leary: Perfect.

Blake Oliver: QuickBooks Cash has been renamed to QuickBooks Checking, probably because it was confusing to call it checking account cash.

David Leary: 'Cause you – you know what they did in my account?

Blake Oliver: What?

David Leary: [INAUDIBLE] I opened it last—. It's almost a full year now, right? I called it "Checking-QuickBooks Cash."

Blake Oliver: So, QuickBooks cash is now QuickBooks checking, which a business bank account that you have inside of QuickBooks Online. They have also updated it to support Apple Pay and Google Pay. So, now, you can the virtual card on your phone connected to your QuickBooks checking account and pay with your phone using those tap readers. That's pretty nifty there.

There is a new invoice financing product from QuickBooks Capital. It's called "Get Paid Upfront" and offers smarter options for your business, cutting down the wait time to get paid on qualifying invoices and freeing up your cashflow. That, of course, is the marketing speak from the blog post.

So, let's see how this works. You pay 3% per financed qualifying invoice, and it gives you access to credit of up to $30,000. Financed invoices are interest fee free for 30 days, with no additional fees on ACH or card transactions when the customer's clients pay the invoices to QuickBooks payments in the first 30 days. So, basically, they give the cash up front. And then, when your customer pays, that settles it. Of course, if your customer doesn't pay, I think, that's where the fees come in, right? Or no. You're—. Well, you're paying the 3%. So, basically you're paying 3%. You're doing that upfront. You get the money. And then, when the customer pays, that settles the bill.

David Leary: Yeah. It's – it's – it's some level of factoring in the same way, you know, these third-party apps have added on, like Fundbox, et cetera, that have been around. The difference is, because Intuit also offers the merchant service, they kind of get in on both ends of this game.

Blake Oliver: They're not charging you twice. So, when the customer …

David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: … does pay through QuickBooks Payments, then there's no merchant fee. I don't understand why—.

David Leary: Well, one drives the other, right? Like, okay, if I want to use this service 'cause I need this service, I could use a third-party app or I could be like, "Oh, I guess to take your badges, I'll sign up for Intuit merchant service, too." And—.

[00:36:10] QB Desktop and Webgility Integration

Blake Oliver: QuickBooks Desktop—. Sorry. Do you want to say something?

David Leary: Oh, yeah. Go in desktop. Yeah. I'm paying attention. Locked in. I heard that word.

Blake Oliver: QuickBooks Desktop e-commerce integration powered by Webgility. The Webgility integration with QuickBooks Desktop unifies your e-commerce channels, so your clients can manage their online sales and inventory in one place. Webgility integrates QuickBooks Desktop with your Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento stores, eBay, Amazon Walmart, all that. And then, all the transaction types, such as invoices sales receipts, sales orders, and estimates, you can post it to QuickBooks. So, that's a good news desktop folks, right, David?

David Leary: I guess.

Blake Oliver: Enabling – enabling desktop.

David Leary: To stick around.

Blake Oliver: To stick around forever.

[00:36:54] Paying Vendor Bills Online with QuickBooks Desktop

Blake Oliver: Here's a new QuickBooks Desktop feature. Another one, David. Pay vendor bills online. Hey.

David Leary: Hey.

Blake Oliver: That sounds familiar. Where did that come from?

David Leary: That might be powered by Melio.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Melio has been the bill payment in QuickBooks Online, and, now, it is integrated with desktop as well. So, I think the desktop listeners of our podcast, all 10 of you, will be very happy to hear that.

David Leary: That you can pay bills online.

Blake Oliver: I'm just kidding, listeners. Don't send me hate mail. I understand why you use desktop. We actually talked about that in a recent episode. And, actually, last episode, we had a listener write in. And I get it.

David Leary: Apparently, Intuit ProConnect™ had some changes for the tax year of 2022.

[00:37:35] Time for a QuickBooks Time Update

Blake Oliver: Right before that, let me get one QuickBooks Online update. QuickBooks Time has an update. Okay. So, this is formerly TSheets. QuickBooks Time now allows you to onboard new employees with a unique six-digit or QR code that can be used in place of invitations. So, you can just post a QR code in your break room, and then employees can scan it and get set up for tracking time. That's pretty neat. And that's it. That's all I got QBO.

David Leary: Okay.

[00:38:02] What's new in Intuit® ProConnect™ Tax 2022

Blake Oliver: You said you have ProConnect™ news?

David Leary: ProConnect™ news. There's some updates for ProConnect™. One of the things they've added is the ability to lock returns.

Blake Oliver: You couldn't lock them before?

David Leary: You couldn't lock them. And they'll auto lock anything that's been e-filed. So, once it's e-filed, they'll auto-lock, which makes sense …

David Leary: Mmhmm.

Blake Oliver: … because you can't be changing that once it's been e-filed. Um, but they also, uh, keep a copy of the e-file version, so you can access it. So, that's been added.

Blake Oliver: Makes sense.

David Leary: Data import. They've set it up, so, like, you can drag and drop. I don't know how it was done before, but it looks like, you know—. You're familiar with dragging and dropping with apps like AutoEntry and ReceiptBank and Hubdoc.

Blake Oliver: I'm doing it right now in Notion.

David Leary: Okay. Notion. Exactly. Right. So, there's drag and drop. So, you can drag in W-2s and 1089s. 1098s. You just drag and drop them. They can now import those in automatically.

Blake Oliver: Nice.

David Leary: And then, there's smart navigation they're starting to play with, where it'll figure out which form you're probably going to need next based on workflow patterns.

Blake Oliver: Mmhmm.

David Leary: So, if you're doing work in form blah, it's going to bring up form blah plus next, 'cause you need that one next.

Blake Oliver: I hope the IRS does release a form blah plus someday.

David Leary: "Blah plus." I didn't want to say a letter because there are forms of letters. And I didn't – I didn't want to—.

Blake Oliver: It might be a real one. Yeah.

David Leary: It can be a real one. Yeah. And then, the ability to assign and manage work, and then see status of, um, you know—. If other, um, other people on your team have been added to a return. You can see that, who else has opened the return, so you can avoid making mistakes. You don't have two people working on a return at the same time. Those types of things. So, it's some collaboration stuff. And that makes sense, right? If you're going to have collaborators, you better have the ability to lock returns.

[00:39:32] Thank you to our sponsor, CAP

David Leary: This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by YourApp. YourApp solves all the biggest pain points of accountants and bookkeepers. YourApp can sync to all the major accounting software packages. YourApp includes a client dashboard. YourApp has amazing support. YourApp has special pricings for accountants and bookkeepers.

YourApp doesn't actually exist. But if it did, all the listeners of The Cloud Accounting Podcast would know about YourApp and will be racing to the YourApp website to try it out. If you want YourApp to be just like YourApp and advertise YourApp on the 2022 episodes of The Cloud Accounting Podcast, head over to cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/yourapp. That is cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/Y-O-U-R-A-P-P. 2022 Sponsorship is now open.

[00:40:26] IRIS Software Group Acquires AccountantsWorld

David Leary: Are you familiar with IRIS Software Group?

Blake Oliver: Just in name. I haven't used any of their products.

David Leary: Yeah. I feel like I'd never heard of them until, I don't know, the last 12 months. So, they're a UK company.

Blake Oliver: Uh-huh.

David Leary: So, the IRIS Software Group is a global provider of mission-critical software and one of the UK's largest privately-held software companies. And they have been making a push in the US market. And I didn't know this already. 50 to top 100 CPA firms currently work with IRIS Software. Um, they're using some portion of the products they offer, they – they own.

Following up on other recent acquisitions, so they purchased Doc.It, a company called Conarc. Plus, they have their existing, um, practice management software. They have a practice engine. I think they have a payroll product. They're, like, the third biggest payroll provider in the UK. They've just now purchased AccountantsWorld. Are you familiar with AccountantsWorld?

Blake Oliver: Yeah. I've known about them for a long time.

David Leary: AccountantsWorld has been, you know—. They have a cloud accounting product. They have a cloud payroll product. Other tools: document management, client portals, practice management. So, they really have a kind of a similar stack of things that IRIS has in the UK here in the States. And this was – just came out this morning. This news.

[00:41:34] LiveFlow raises $3.5M in seed funding

Blake Oliver: LiveFlow has raised $#3.5 million in seed funding. This was on Accounting Today. What they are building is a management hub to automate financial reporting. Tools to enable finance teams to synchronize data from accounting services, banks, and payment platforms into customized reports. They're going to use the funding to automate workflow, consolidate company accounts, and help finance teams collaborate. The funding round was led by Moonfire Ventures, backed by Y Combinator, Seedcamp, WndrCo, and executives from Google, Square, Lyft, and Klarna.

David Leary: It's like a middleman between, like, a Google Sheet and your accounting software.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. The headline here on website says—. It says, "Save countless hours on financial. LiveFlow connects QuickBooks to your Google Sheet and automatically updates financials. Spend less time manually moving data and more time driving your business forward." So, basically, this idea of, like, connecting all these systems to a spreadsheet. Because we love spreadsheets for reporting.

David Leary: Well, that's the home. That's where accountants want to live.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: When I talk about products and design for app developers, right, the closer you get your app to smell and taste like a spreadsheet, probably, the better off you're going to be. Accountants want tables.

Blake Oliver: Right.

David Leary: Tables and – and key – keyboard navigation.

Blake Oliver: And don't try to build your own. If a spreadsheet will work, just integrate Excel or Google Sheets or both. And for that portion of what you do, use that. I mean, that's why FloQast succeeded. I think one of the big reasons when I was there was we offered the ability to keep using Excel to add on all the cloud stuff that you needed for collaboration. So, you had your Excel sheets for your reconciliations, but then you had your cloud-based checklist in FloQast. And it's the best of both worlds. That's always gonna win.

David Leary: Yeah. I think this is going to really be interesting as functionality that's in the no-code apps like – or table. Really start getting into Microsoft Excel. That game's going to change on a lot of this stuff. I think – I think more apps are going to just talk to Excel. Like, you almost will have two homes. You'll work in, like, QuickBooks, and then the other home you'll have is Excel. But all the other apps you use are going to be chatting with those two. You might not even open up these other apps anymore.

Blake Oliver: So, these guys do consolidated P&Ls. I know a lot of our listeners are always looking for new apps that can do consolidations with QuickBooks Files. So, if that's, like, a pain point you have and you've been looking for something, check out liveflow.io. Let me know what you think if you do try it

[00:43:58] Expensify reports 72% revenue jump in Q3

Blake Oliver: Expensify released their quarterly report, 'cause they're a public company now. So, we're going to get to see how they're doing. For the quarter ended September 31st, the company reported revenue of $37.4 million. That is up almost 73% from the same period a year earlier. 73% growth. They reported a net loss of $6.3 million. However, that's because, when they went public, they gave their employees a bonus of $26.3 million. That's how, uh, all 140 employees got their extra bonus options that will vest over, what, for five or six years or something?

David Leary: Yeah. It was solid five years, I think.

Blake Oliver: This is the crazy thing about Expensify. If you exclude that bonus, they had EBITDA of $19.8 million. So, they are very, very profitable. And that's always been the thing that has stood out is so many startups, even if they go public, are just burning cash, burning cash, burning cash. And Expensify has really good profits.

David Leary: I think I saw something, like, 75%, 80% of all the IPOs from 2021 are down.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Not Expensify, right? I wonder—.

David Leary: Yeah. I don't think they're on the list of being down.

Blake Oliver: EXPY is their ticker. Let's see how they're doing right now. As of Thursday, December 30th, they are at 4234.

David Leary: They opened at 27 or something?

Blake Oliver: They're down 11% for all time. So, e\Everybody's been hurting. All the fintechs have been hurting.

David Leary: But versus their – their opening?

Blake Oliver: Well, November 12th is the first. When I go to the max on the chart, in Google, it says they started at 4762 on Friday, November 12th.

David Leary: They're down a little bit.

Blake Oliver: They're down.

David Leary: So, that – that must have been—.

Blake Oliver: 11%. But they really shouldn't be. I don't think. So, they have, uh, user counts in here. The average monthly paid members—this must be users—is 667,000. And that's up from 639,000 in Q2. So, they added—I'm trying to do math in my head—28,000 users in one quarter.

David Leary: So, users is not small businesses. These are …

Blake Oliver: No.

David Leary: … all the employees.

Blake Oliver: Expensify charges per user.

David Leary: 'Cause I know they have, like, enterprise-level customers. I think, like, Xero uses them. So, how many employees does Xero have?

Blake Oliver: I don't know.

David Leary: So, that number, it could be—. In theory, it should be a lot bigger if you're taking on enterprises that have 20,000 employees, maybe, or 10,000 employees. I think that would be a bigger number.

Blake Oliver: So, their guidance for Q4 said they're going to try and grow to 691,000. So, they'll try to do another 18,000 paid users in Q4.

David Leary: We'll see. It's going to be tough, because, I think, there's so many apps that are like us now, that are free.

Blake Oliver: A lot of competition.
 
David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Like, how do you convince people pay for us versus the other apps that are free?

Blake Oliver: It's tough for Expensify, too, because their stock price is, like, or their market is, like, I wanted to say when I looked at it, like, 20 times earnings. So, it's very high already. So, unless they can grow dramatically – dramatically—, they got to keep up that you know 70% kind of growth quarter after quarter after quarter in order to justify value.

David Leary: Which gets hard if you're a decade old.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Right? Like, a lot of this hinges on their ability to release these new products that they're really—.

David Leary: Like, payroll and accounting.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Exactly.

David Leary: There's no – there's no competition in those two fields either.

Blake Oliver: And you could say, too, like, you know, Facebook's in the same situation, right? Like, Facebook's entire future is the Metaverse, as Mark Zuckerberg has outlined. And if they can't do it, then they're going to be in big trouble. So, if you're an investor in Facebook, you're kind of betting on that vision. I think it'd be worth talking just a little bit about the metaverse, David.

[00:47:36] Time to Read Some Accounting Tea Leaves

David Leary: I think that's a good transition into 2022 and predictions.

Blake Oliver: So, let me ask you this: Do you think the metaverse is going to change accounting? And we should probably stop for a second and actually say what we think the metaverse means, because I feel like we talk about this term. This term has been tossed around, but, like, nobody actually has a common definition for it. I mean, metaverse is, basically, just virtual reality, right? You put on a headset, and, now, in alternate virtual reality, three-dimensional, and you can walk around and interact with things. And that's what the metaverse is, like, uh, that movie "Ready Player One," if you saw that. That, to me is, what the metaverse is.

David Leary: And I get it. My son has one of those Oculuses, and I put it on. And you're walking around with the dinosaurs inside of Jurassic Park, and it feels very real. And you can float around the space station and it feels very real, like you were there.

[00:48:26] No More Excuses for Virtual Reality

David Leary: One of the articles I have from predictions—this is a bunch of VCs—and it specifically talks about the metaverse. And there – there's a quote here, and it says, "Virtual reality will be good enough that the hardware is not quite ready no longer will be an excuse." So, like, we're here now. It—. The hardware works.

Blake Oliver: Does it, though? Like, 'cause I haven't used a VR headset in a year or two. Has Oculus gotten good enough where—?

David Leary: It's really good. It's really, really good. Because of that, it's accessible, and the world see the metaverse for what it is. It's mostly lame. You do it—. You're—. now, you're in there. You're like, "This is my lame." And it's funny, 'cause I looked at Google, and they're advertising that, the Oculus that's made by—. Facebook bought them.

Blake Oliver: Facebook makes Oculus. Yeah.

David Leary: And they're advertising it, like—. The female, she's exercising with it. It's like a workout, right?

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: The way they're marketing this is women to use for a workout a, virtual workout thing instead of getting a Peloton or something.

Blake Oliver: Mmhmm.

David Leary: Being somebody who works out, there's no way I'm going to put on …

Blake Oliver: You're going to strap a headset.

David Leary: … a big old headset that's hot, and it's completely immersive. [INAUDIBLE]. It's around your ears and everything, right? I don't know. It just seems silly. And hold these two controllers to work out.

Blake Oliver: It's weird.

David Leary: I – I do agree. It's probably going to—. Most people are going to it and be like, "This is lame."

Blake Oliver: So, my friend Dan Gertrudes from GrowthLab wrote an article for Accounting Today called "Five Ways the Metaverse Will Change Accounting." And he asked me to edit this thing. So, I'm familiar with it. So, I thought I'd talk about it on the story or in the show, because I actually was very skeptical when he sent me this. I said, um, "Really?" That's what I said to myself.

David Leary: "Five ways 5G will change accounting."

Blake Oliver: Well, 'cause you know I'm not a fan of Facebook or Zuckerberg. I think anybody who talks to me about this knows. Like, I think they're a horrible, evil company.

[00:50:05] No, Really, Don't Look Up!

David Leary: It'd just, like, totally derail everything. Have you watched, on Netflix, "Don't Look Up?"

Blake Oliver: Not yet.

David Leary: Oh. So, there's a character—. I don't even know who this actor is. He took Steve Jobs. Who's the current CEO of Apple?

Blake Oliver: Tim Cook, right?

David Leary: Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and, um, Mark Zuckerberg, and, like, mushed them into one person. It is the most genius acting move I've ever seen. So, when you watch the movie, like, he steals the whole movie.

Blake Oliver: Okay. Who – who is the actor?

David Leary: I don't know.

Blake Oliver: Oh. Okay.

David Leary: I have no idea who he is, but he just stole the whole movie, because, like, he – he captured all of those people in one character. It's amazing. And Jeff – and, uh, Jeff Bezos. He capt- – he captured them all in one character.

Blake Oliver: The tech mogul or the tech evil.

David Leary: The evil tech moguls. Exactly.

Blake Oliver: The new bad guy for all of our movies. So, there is one area where I agree with Dan—actually, a couple—on this list of, like, ways metaverse will impact accounting. And I actually think—. I mean, I have to try the Oculus now, 'cause I haven't tried one since it was really grainy and bad. But I think that for – for VR experiences where you're not moving around, it could actually be really helpful, and a great example would be having meetings in virtual reality. There is an element of remote work and being confined in our offices and seeing people on a flat screen that just doesn't work by itself. And if you could fix that, if you could make a more physical experience and be able to meet with people in VR and have that be a good experience and better, then, like, that could be a big game changer.

And as our avatars get better and as these devices get better at tracking our movements and our facial expressions, it can really work,. So, I think that, like, meeting with clients and maybe potential employees in VR could be a thing.

Number two on the list is training and development of new team members. It can be really hard to train people virtually or in a hybrid environment. What if you had virtual reality as a way to do that?

David Leary: To do audit work? Okay. I'm trying to—. Like – like, this is where it gets, like—.

[00:52:00] The Workplace Use Case for VR

Blake Oliver: So, one of the things that Dan showed me is you could conceivably use the headset as your virtual workspace. So, you – you put on the headset, and then you have as many computer screens in your field of vision as you need, and you can interact with the – the screens. Think about this: Potentially, in the future, as this technology improves, instead of sitting down to, like, a monitor on your desk, you just have a keyboard on your desk and you just put on your Oculus headset and then you see your screen in virtual reality.

David Leary: This, I'll buy into. I will buy into this. You would just have this giant spreadsheet. Excel would just be—.

Blake Oliver: It would be infinite.

David Leary: Yeah. It would be, like, a skyscraper. Excel.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. And you had to zoom around it.

David Leary: I'm in on that. I believe you. I could see people just putting that on to have a big, huge Excel spreadsheet screen.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Imagine a spreadsheet that you could, like, hover over, and it's just – it's miles wide or something.

David Leary: It's just a wall, right? You're just looking up, down, left, right. You just—. The whole wall is a spreadsheet. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Okay. I'll give you that one. Check.

Blake Oliver: Those are the two that I really liked. And I think—. I would actually say, like, it – it will not just change accounting. It'll change all sorts of remote work, 'cause we're looking for ways to get that in-person experience. And yeah, the technology is, like, super basic now. But just think about the internet. Think about what we had before the internet. It was, like, bulletin board systems (BBSs) and nobody thought that was going to become Facebook. So, maybe what we have now is going to be something as equally dramatic over the next 10, 20 years.

David Leary: I think, um, you were on a podcast a long time ago and you said, "Hey. When you have your clients come in, why don't you just buy them an iPad for $500, an iPad Mini, and you have your reporting solution on it, and you have them logged in all their apps, and you just give that to them, and that's how they can see the results you're doing for their booking [INAUDIBLE] practice, right?"

Blake Oliver: And interact with your practice management system send you stuff. Yeah.

David Leary: Right. Right And you would – you would impress them. Well, maybe that's—. I – I think these VR headsets are only $300.

Blake Oliver: They can be.

David Leary: Like, you could buy one of these …

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: … for your client, and then video call through it, I guess. I don't know.

Blake Oliver: Maybe. So – so, that's enough on the metaverse. What other trends are being talked about in accounting that you have seen?

[00:54:03] David Talks Trends for '22

David Leary: I think there's the very obvious ones like hybrid work is—. There's – there's [INAUDIBLE]. There's a lot of articles out there that I went through.

Blake Oliver: Hybrid work is here to stay.

David Leary: Hybrid work is here to stay. Automation, robotic process automation. A lot of that stuff just is in almost all of them.

Blake Oliver: Mmhmm.

David Leary: Um, a lot of the, you know, staffing. We're going to have staffing problems, still.

Blake Oliver: Great resignation.

David Leary: Great resignation. Work-life balance. Like, that's going to be really one of the most important things of all. Flexibility, work-life balance. Those are some of the things we talked about with the hiring and – and the – and diversity and inclusion, right? These are going to be things that are big trends and big at – at the firms. But I think these are on everybody's list. They're all very, very similar.

[00:54:43] Standards? What Standards?

Blake Oliver: I also saw ESG. So, that's the environmental sustainability reporting standards. Well, we don't really have a standard yet, and somebody needs to come up with a better universal standard for that. That's a big trend in accounting.

David Leary: Advisory services, blockchain. So much of it's the same. The same, same, same stuff. Um, this was a – a website called gogravity.com, which, I think, Gravity is a SAS-based cloud accounting GL. It might actually add on to Salesforce. I'm not positive. But that, uh, article. "Six accounting predictions for 2022." One of theirs was that the finance role is changing to where …

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: … if you're the CFO, you're now having to take on the role of chief value officer. And I think this might be a correct prediction. And this goes back to when we talked about when we were at – thinking about business or the – the accounting system and the systems is the business now.

Blake Oliver: They are the business now. Yes.

[00:55:42] Everything Old is New Again.

David Leary: The other big one is there's a new buzzword we're going to start hearing called "digital transformation."

Blake Oliver: Well, we've – we've been hearing that forever.

David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: Digital transformation. Digital—. But it's like every single stupid corporate blog post from some software vendor says, "How to Prepare for Digital Transformation."

David Leary: But it's not single event or an end game. It's – it's an endlessly turning wheel or evolving technology. But now, they have data. 68% of CFOs plan to invest in digital over the next 12 months. It's so—. You're right. It's very vague and weird.

Blake Oliver: It's just a buzz word for information technology or for systems.

[00:56:16] Who Owns the Data Owns the Power

Blake Oliver: My big takeaway from this year was that quote from Aaron Harris, at Sage. The system, the accounting system, finance system, the operation system, the – the software that – that we used to use to track information about the business is now becoming the business itself. And this is going to fundamentally change accounting, right? Because what is accounting? What is accounting? It is an information system for a specific type of information. And the reason that accountants have been struggling to keep up is that we have failed to understand that the information system has broadened beyond accounting to the whole business. And if we don't learn how to take ownership of the data and manage an information system that is beyond financial data, that is operational, we're going to become irrelevant, because somebody else is going to take ownership of our data.

Who owns the data owns the power and the business. I mean, it's the same thing in competitive business situations. If you have data about customers and your competitor doesn't, you're gonna win, 'cause you're gonna be able to create products that customers want to buy, and they're just going to be guessing. It's kind of the same thing internally in the business. Whoever owns the data, who can produce the best and the insights, is gonna end up owning the accounting system and all that, right?

David Leary: In theory, the accountants and the accounting team should own that.

Blake Oliver: They should.

David Leary: Yeah. But there's an opportunity here, right?

Blake Oliver: Yeah. A huge opportunity. And – and we've seen that. But, unfortunately, a lot of people that we talked to, that are doing that, they aren't coming from the accounting profession. They're coming from the outside. They're coming from finance. They're coming from data analytics, from the IT side.

David Leary: [CROSSTALK].

Blake Oliver: They're not coming from the accounting department. Because accountants aren't taught how to think broadly like that. We're still trained on the nitty-gritty technical stuff and not the big picture stuff. This is the big thing that's gonna affect our profession. One of the big things.

[00:58:13] Killing Happy – No More Virtual Happy Hours?

David Leary: One of the other things I saw: Hybrid work models. People are predicting that will kill all virtual happy – happy hours. So, that probably is going to happen. They're also talking about the whole bro culture.

Blake Oliver: That would be a positive thing, right?

David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: Like—. Yeah.

David Leary: So, instead of you – you're eating at work or playing ping pong at work, you never leave work, you got that bro culture, you're drinking at work, because of people working at home, the flexibility, the emphasis now on families and hobbies and creative endeavors, and they think that, really, in the long run, it's gonna be happier employees and, eventually, be better productivity. I mean, I think the jury is still out on that one. Obviously, the talent shortage.

[00:58:51] The Battle for Web3

David Leary: The more talent shortage we have, the more tech's going to be produced, 'cause that's the only way to – to bridge this gap.

Blake Oliver: Yep. It's gonna accelerate tech.

David Leary: This whole, you know, Web3, which is the—. And we'll probably hear about this all the time, but Web3, Web3, Web3, um, which is still being defined. And there's big—. All the big tech, uh—. What'd you call them? Evil moguls?

Blake Oliver: Um, moguls.

David Leary: They're in big, big public fights on Twitter right now about Web3, who controls it, what is it, what will it become, if you want to watch something on the sideline.

Blake Oliver: Correct me if I'm wrong, but Web3 is basically the idea of web addresses being on a blockchain, so it's not controlled by any single organization, right?

David Leary: Well, it depends on who you subscribe to. And, like, it's a point where, I think, Marc Andreessen, like, blocked Jack Dorsey from Square on Twitter.

Blake Oliver: 'Cause they were arguing about it.

David Leary: I don't know how to define it, because that's just going to get me blocked. It's the new, you know, the newest thing this country. It's "Don't Look Up," right?" Don't look up. Look down, right? It's – it's the newest thing to argue about, is what is Web3, which is kind of funny.

Blake Oliver: Wikipedia says that Web 3.0 is the idea for a new iteration of the worldwide web that incorporates decentralization based on blockchains. To me, that indicates, you know, you can, like, register a web domain, and it's not – it's not overseen by ICANN, which is that not-for-profit that, you know, administers our domain registries and all that stuff. It would be on a blockchain. So, decentralized. Nobody can kick you off. All that stuff.

Dorsey is, uh, a huge advocate for decentralization and, you know, the power of blockchain to eliminate middlemen, and that's what he espouses. And he's saying, like, all these VCs pouring money into it, they're trying to trick you. They're going to, like, try to own it. Like, why else would they be doing this? And that's why they've been fighting because he's basically calling them out on—. "You don't really believe in Web3. You're just trying to own the next great real estate online." Just same with the metaverse, right?

David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: It's a land grab.

David Leary: And I think that's why some of these [INAUDIBLE] include them in there. Like, you know, people make 20 pre-, uh, predictions. They're just—. And they're a strain of shotgun. And, of course, two or three are going to be correct. It's—. I think it's harder to make a smaller number of predictions.

[01:01:01] Rehashing Our Past Predictions

Blake Oliver: Do you have any predictions of things that will actually happen in 2022?

David Leary: Okay. So, I do have our—. Kind of going back to some of our old stuff, I can see where, in 2019, you predicted that firms are going to figure out how to communicate better with clients.

Blake Oliver: Hey. That came true, right?

David Leary: I think so. Right? Because everybody had to use Zoom, and everybody had to change because of the pandemic. So, I think you nailed that one.

Blake Oliver: Well, and the other thing I was very bullish was texting with customers. Clients, right? And we have a lot of apps now in practice management that are saying you should message people. Don't use email. And they're basically text message systems.

David Leary: Yeah. And I think in, like, 2020, I predicted Xero – QuickBooks, Xero, Square, they're going to create a bank.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. You got that.

David Leary: I think, you know, for 2020, something else I predicted is that the lines were going to get blurred. Apps will do bill payment or they'll do receipts and credit cards and banks, expenses, bill pay. Like, everybody's doing every other – body else's work.

Blake Oliver: You skipped past your 2019 prediction, David. You said that B2B payments via credit cards are going to die off.

David Leary: Yes.

Blake Oliver: But—.

David Leary: I think the march has started, but people are still paying through paper checks, still. So—

Blake Oliver: Well, it's funny, 'cause that's one of Melio's, like, biggest products, right, is the ability to pay a bill with a credit card?

David Leary: Yeah. Exactly. From that. But I think people—.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Like, [INAUDIBLE] merchant service, right?

Blake Oliver: Right.

David Leary: You're gonna – you're gonna get your—. The people that owe you money, if they're B2B, they'll pay you through ACH [CROSSTALK].

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: I feel, like, for 2021—. So, you had cashflow forecasting modeling. We'll have more firms go into it, more money without adding more clients. Firms will add cashflow management. How did that turn out?

Blake Oliver: I don't know. I haven't heard, like, a ton about that. I think firms are still figuring it out. I mean, that was when I joined Giraffe, right, and that's what we did. And so, I was very bullish on that. I'm still bullish on that. I think it's service line. I think it's just very challenging for accountants to learn how to do that. Because it's finance. It's not accounting. It's not what we're taught school, and so it's going slower.

David Leary: And, in 2021, I predicted that somebody we didn't expect is going to be in Our Space. Amazon, Netflix. I don't necessarily know if we truly got that. I think we got a lot of hints from it. Walmart's invested. Amazon, Jeff Bezos's invested, right? We're starting to see people from the fringes starting to get into Our Space.

Blake Oliver: They didn't directly get in. It's not like Amazon started doing bookkeeping. But Jeff Bezos personally investing in Pilot. And Pilot is an accounting firm. To me, that's good enough.

David Leary: Yeah. But Amazon did buy, like, some sort of inventory management system for sellers. Like, okay. It's getting great, right?

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Yeah.

David Leary: Like, I don't think we—. I thought it was going to be a little bit more major, but I – I think it's – it's tiptoeing in the waters. But let's jump into our 2022.

[01:03:41] More Visions for 2022

Blake Oliver: Okay. So, my prediction for is based on what happened in 2021, which is we saw EisnerAmper split off the audit side of the practice, and put consulting and tax in a non-CPA firm entity. I think that more and more accounting firms are going to decide not to be CPA. And the definition of what is an accounting firm, having that be linked to being a CPA firm, is gonna break or continue to fracture. Because it just makes so much sense. Like, why put up with a regulation around being a CPA firm when all the money-making opportunity is in accounting services that don't require the license? The growth opportunity, anyway.

David Leary: Yeah. So, I – I have a prediction that ties onto that, maybe. I – I think, you know—. We've obviously seen the – the last year, 18 months or so, insane amount of money going to the apps. But it's [CROSSTALK].

Blake Oliver: Oh, yeah.

David Leary: If you think about years ago, an acquisition or—. It was, like, $70 million. Now, these apps are getting $250 million, $300 million rounds. Like, it's nothing right now, right?

Blake Oliver: Mmhmm.

David Leary: I think a new unicorn is being minted at a—. Like, 1.2 a day right now. It's kind of crazy as far as that goes. But what I think is going to happen is that crazy money we're seeing in the apps, as your prediction comes true, we're going to see firms get this crazy money.

Blake Oliver: Get more private equity because the money has to go somewhere. And private equity is down the list from tech startups and VC money, right? So, it'll flow there eventually. It's – it's going to look for a slightly lower return, and accounting firms can deliver that. I think accounting firms could deliver. I—. We know personally, uh, firms that are growing 50% annually. That's hard to keep up, but you could definitely do less than that. You could do, like, 20% easily if you are modern and you're not stuck in the past. And there's plenty of, I think, PE investors that are happy to take that kind of growth.

David Leary: And, obviously, they want it, 'cause they're already in – they've already invested in accounting firm apps or these accounting firms with engineers.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: So, the money's there. So, that's going to incur—. Like, there's no doubt you hit your prediction, 'cause the money's going to drive that. People are going to be like, "How do I get some of that money?"

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Or "I'm going to re- – reorganize my accounting firm."

Blake Oliver: Now, you're not going to get of money if you're only 10 people. That's the thing. So, if you want to think ahead, you gotta grow your firm to the point where it's self-sustaining. So, that, to me, is going to be, like, two dozen people. If you can get to that point where you've got two dozen people in your firm and you've got really good systems and processes and good marketing, you could probably go out and get private equity investment starting there.

David Leary: I have a couple other smaller ones, I think. Um, I think all the niche apps you use are going to have built-in bank accounts, built-in payroll, built-in AP.

Blake Oliver: Well, that—. Yeah. That is because these companies are building those API for payroll, API for everything kind of services, right?

David Leary: And proof of this, I think, I mean, it's – it's arguably halfway here. But I think we talked about this during the year of Toast. Toast has their own payroll, and half of every customer that comes on Toast, every new restaurant, half of them just use their payroll. It's like every niche app is going to do that, 'cause they're just leaving money on the table.

Blake Oliver: Toast is the point of sale that I see with the QR codes on the—.

David Leary: Exactly. It's Toast. Yeah. Point of sale.

Blake Oliver: And so, they have built-in payroll now through check? Is it through check?

David Leary: No. It's their own. I don't know who – who powers it, but they have – they have their own payroll. But the – the thing is, like, people just use it, because of the built-in.

Blake Oliver: They must be using something on the backend. [CROSSTALK].

David Leary: Yeah.

[01:07:06] Some Major Acquisitions Ahead?

David Leary: Possibly. Yeah. I don't know the – the details on that.

I think we're going to see, like, uh, major, major acquisitions like someone buying H&R Block, FreshBooks maybe being purchased by Shopify, or, you know, maybe Chase or Amex, I could see them buying the start of their GL stack, you know, where they – they're buying—. Oh, they have a reporting app, and they've purchased a bill pay app. And maybe they've purchased a GL. I could see chase or Amex, like, so many major, like, that's starting to build a GL stack to compete with the QuickBooks and the Xeros of the world, right?

And then, the other one is, I think, just like with peer-to-peer, if I send you money through Venmo, you get it instantly. I think enough people have experienced peer-to-peer now where B2B payments, that's going to be the next step. And in a way, like, QuickBooks is offering that, what you just said [INAUDIBLE], that invoicing thing.

Blake Oliver: And that's the big opportunity is, um—. We just had a survey that we talked about on a previous episode that said that only 30% of small businesses are set up for instant payments. So, 70% of them are out there, and it's such a good pain point to solve, because they don't want to wait for that customer to pay. Give them the money now. Do super easy invoice factoring. I think it's a brilliant move. And then, QuickBooks gets to collect an extra, you know, 0.8% on the transaction, right, rather than their normal merchant fee. So, they make a great margin.

David Leary: And there's tons and tons of businesses that are still just running on Venmo and things, 'cause it's – it's instant.

Blake Oliver: Mmhmm.

David Leary: And that's the reason they're their. They're like, "Oh, you pay me, and I get the money right now." They'll deal with the being compliant stuff later on.

Blake Oliver: Right. And they're small enough where they don't have, like, lines of credit. So, they have crappy cashflow. This solves that problem for them.

David Leary: Once you get used to something, it's just like people got used to. Because the iPhones and Apple with the iPad coming out, and, like, you got used to that, like, beautiful-looking software.

Blake Oliver: Yep.

David Leary: And, eventually, our apps became beautiful. They stopped looking like a [INAUDIBLE]. And so, it's kind of that same thing. If people get used to doing it on their personal life, and then it rolls into the business world. That's kind of my – my predictions. You – you have any other ones, Blake? The metaverse?

[01:09:04] The Metaversal Truth?

Blake Oliver: That—. I – I said I agree with the metaverse thing longer term. I think more accounting firms are going to decide not to be CPA firms. I think the CPA is going to still struggle to stay relevant. I don't see that reversing anytime soon. CPA firms are going to continue to struggle to recruit talent if they don't become more employee friendly. That's all I can think of right now.

David Leary: Oh, the other one I was going to ask you about. I think you predicted, in 2021, that PPP will just keep going, the forgiveness application will never end.

Blake Oliver: Yeah.

David Leary: Is PPP done?

Blake Oliver: I don't know. I—.

David Leary: Were you wrong in this prediction?

Blake Oliver: I don't know. I mean, the fraud. It will go on forever, because the investigations for fraud will continue for a long, long time. Well, they tried to get back some of that fraud money. I have one more prediction.

David Leary: Okay.

[01:09:49] The Best Prediction of All!

Blake Oliver: More and more accountants are going to get CPE by listening to podcasts, specifically The Cloud Accounting Podcast. But not just ours. Many others. And you can earn CPE for listening to this episode by going to earmarkcpe.com and downloading the app for iOS and for Android. The courses don't always go up immediately when the episode does, but we're doing our best to get those up after. So, go in at least once a week to Earmark on your phone and look for the latest Cloud Accounting Podcast episode, and you can get – an hour – you can get an hour of specialized knowledge CPE credit for your trouble. For free.

David Leary: And it's not fluff, right? You're getting CPE credit, 'cause you actually did real work. 'Cause I actually download the app. I want to do—. I take the quiz for the podcast that I'm a co-host on. And the questions were a little tough.

Blake Oliver: Oh, well, good, you know, 'cause we're not just fluff, and this show covers some complex topics. But the good news is you can go take the quiz again if you fail it. So, don't worry if you don't pass the first time. But yeah. Like, the goal is to actually increase your knowledge. You listen to the show to learn things, right? So, why shouldn't you get credit for it.

David Leary: Yeah.

Blake Oliver: And same for you, David.

David Leary: I'm gonna have to start taking notes.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. You should become a CPA and then you can satisfy your – your requirements by doing Earmark CPE.

David Leary: But if you want to do it just for fun.

Blake Oliver: Do it just for fun, too. And if you're looking to discover, you know, interesting content and maybe you don't need the CPE, you know, that's my goal, too, is, like, it's not just a CPE app, right? I want to help people find great accounting content. So, the app is going to be much more than that eventually. That's just what we're starting with.

[01:11:20] The Year of Clearing Out the Clutter?

David Leary: So, the next time we chat, it'll be 2022. New – new year. New goals. I'm hoping to enter 2022 with no more, like, 2020 baggage and 2021 baggage that just lingers, you know, like broken bank feeds and all of those types of things. I really want to go into '22 without any baggage.

Blake Oliver: Uh-huh.

David Leary: Like, what's – what's your—. When I talk to you next week, where are you going to be at for 2022?

Blake Oliver: In terms of, like, resolutions or [CROSSTALK]?

David Leary: Yeah. I don't know. [CROSSTALK].

Blake Oliver: I need to go through my closet and get rid of all the clothes that I never wear anymore, because I work at home. Like, that's what I need to do. I still have clothes from my days at the firm on Wilshire Boulevard, commuting in [INAUDIBLE] in – in Los Angeles. Like, I'm never going to wear those clothes again. That's my, uh, resolution. Clean out the closet.

[01:12:02] Talk to Us!

David Leary: Perfect. And if people want to get a hold of you just to check in how that's going, what's the best way?

Blake Oliver: You can connect with me online. I am @BlakeTOliver on Twitter. And you can email me. Blake@blakeoliver.com. Any of your thoughts about the stories that we've talked about. We love getting listener feedback. On our last episode, we shared a bunch of those emails, and we want to know what you think. So, let me know. How about you, David?

David Leary: Um, I'm just @DavidLeary. You can tweet at The Cloud Accounting Podcast, cloudacctpod. Tweet out your predictions for 2022. I'd love to see some of them.

Blake Oliver: Wonderful. Well, David, I'm going to go enjoy the last bit of my holiday vacation. I'll see you here next week.

David Leary: See you next year.

Blake Oliver: See you next year.

David Leary: All right.

Blake Oliver: Bye.

David Leary: Bye.

David: Time for the classifieds.

[01:12:55] Oh My Fraud: A True Crime Podcast for Accountants

Blake: Hey, podcast listeners. It's Blake, and I wanted to let you know about a new show I'm working on with CPA/comedian Greg Kyte and blogger/former CPA Caleb Newquist. It's called "Oh My Fraud," and it's a podcast all about financial crimes. That's right. A true crime podcast for accountants by accountants.

Caleb and Greg are going to come together every couple of weeks to unpack their favorite frauds and explore the circumstances, psychology, and the interpersonal dynamics involved. They also fully indulge in victim blaming the defrauded widows, orphans, infirm, and feebleminded, because who can resist?

If you fancy yourself a trusted advisor or prefer your true crime with spreadsheets instead of corpses, listen to this show to learn what to watch out for and to keep your clients, your firm, and even yourself safe. To subscribe, go to ohmyfraud.com or search "Oh My Fraud" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:13:55] How to advertise in these classifieds

David: Want to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Why not let the listeners of The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad? Hit the show notes for the link to get more info.