The Accounting Podcast

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David Leary: [00:00:00] As a small business owner, I've had my share of accounting, tax, bank feed and app issues. Some could say I'm a mess. Kind of like some of your clients. But as I reflect on the last three years of my business, the one app that I've had not any problems with is on pay. It's been set it and forget it. Payroll. Stay tuned to hear more from our sponsor on pay later in the episode. The of that gets a high school kid interested. What you need is accountants that are 2 to 3 years in the job and be like, look at this Lamborghini I bought and they're sitting on the hood and they're streaming it on Tik tok and that will get account the high school kids. Like, I want to be an accountant, I want a Lamborghini like it has like, like you can't tell them about a four year old that plays hockey. Like I'm that guy. I'm that guy. Like, that's not going to get somebody to become an athlete. That's coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio. This is the Cloud Accounting Podcast.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:01] Welcome to the Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: [00:01:05] I'm David Leary.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:06] And we are live on Friday. What's top of mind for you, David?

David Leary: [00:01:11] I sent out a tweet this morning. I had a chance to look at the EPA town hall, the January 19th one. And they had a slide in there and it said the eight point plan to address root causes of the pipeline issues quickly. And I tweeted out the image of that slide. I just said, like, here it is, the eight point plan to fix the account and pipeline issues quickly and within 3 hours. And it's like 12 and a half thousand views and it's getting retweeted and it's huge discussion. And I've never had a tweet where you can watch the numbers go up, you know, and it's going so fast.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:41] Yeah, that's.

David Leary: [00:01:41] Right. So that's top of mind, I guess. Right. And then we can talk about the the article and talk about pipeline things.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:48] So this discussion here on Twitter was prompted by a Marketplace story, Why there's a national shortage of accountants on one of my favorite radio shows on NPR Marketplace.

David Leary: [00:02:01] Can we say Marketplace is mainstream media? It's not accounting. It's not insider baseball. It's not The Cloud Accounting Podcast. This is like Main Street, like my parents might listen to. Yeah, this news.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:12] I mean, this is like the 5:00 I don't know when it comes out, actually, but I always used to when I had a commute, I would listen to it on the way home from the from the office. Right. It's the economic business news on NPR of the day. And in my mind, it's the one of the best programs they have hosted by Kai Ryssdal. And they do a great they do a great job. The story is, as tax season approaches, accounting firms are short on staff, and it is the basically the same story that we heard or that we saw in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, where The Wall Street Journal said there's this massive shortage of accountants. Their focus was more on like corporate. This one is more on accounting firms doing taxes. And obviously this is top of mind for the marketplace people, because nobody can find somebody to do their taxes. If you're trying to find a CPA, it's impossible. Right?

David Leary: [00:03:01] And it's a recurring theme of our own show, the last 6 to 8, ten weeks. It's just we can't get away from it because it keeps popping up. And we talk about this news stories. So if something keeps getting in the news, we keep talking about it.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:13] So I figured it would be fun to listen to this because it's only a two minute story. Oh, perfect. And it features Adrienne Gonzalez, the editor of Going Concern, which is a blog that we have been reading and talking about on the show for years. And it's so awesome to see her or to hear her featured. So let's take a listen to this.

Kai Ryssdal: [00:03:31] This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Ryssdal. If you've been putting off starting your taxes because maybe you're looking for a new accountant, might we suggest you start making some calls, accounting firms are a little shorthanded right now. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 300,000 accountants and auditors have quit their jobs in the past two years. And not just tax accountants either. Firms are also short on the kinds of accountants who do financial planning, and auditing of the books, and all of the other stuff that accountants do. And yeah, part of that's the pandemic. But accounting has got a pipeline problem, and maybe a branding problem, too. Marketplace's Savannah Maher has more.

Savannah Maher: [00:04:11] So far this tax season, PricewaterhouseCoopers has enough accountants to keep up. But Rod Adams, head of talent acquisition, says finding them was harder than ever.

Rod Adams: [00:04:20] It's a concern. It's absolutely a concern.

Savannah Maher: [00:04:23] Even for a massive company with lots of recruitment resources. Smaller accounting firms like Mandi Irwin's in Chico, California, are having to turn away business. Last year we did have to let go of about 200 clients because we haven't been able to find the staff, and the shortage of all kinds of accountants isn't likely to get resolved soon. Ben Lansford, an accounting professor at Rice University, says graduating students who might have pursued accounting a decade ago are going into investment banking, data, analysis and consulting.

Ben Lansford: [00:04:56] Those jobs pay more and also don't require the fifth year of college education.

Savannah Maher: [00:05:02] That's needed to get a CPA license. Plus, those other professions are seen as more prestigious and more fun. It's kind of a PR problem. Adrienne Gonzalez edits the accounting blog Going Concern.

Adrienne Gonzalez: [00:05:15] There is that huge stereotype about how boring accounting is. If the industry wants to compete, she says, it needs to raise salaries and work on its reputation. Nobody thinks about the accountants. They think about the accountants on April 15th when taxes are due. But there's this whole network that is the engine of the economy.

Savannah Maher: [00:05:35] An engine that, without the spark of a new generation of accountants, could start to break down. I'm Savannah Maher for Marketplace.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:43] So there you have it.

David Leary: [00:05:46] Yes. The next version of this story is going to be one of these reporters is going to get fired by their firm. And that's going to be the real important part. Just like I did. Right. That's going to really open up the experience. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:58] So this reignited the discussion among you and me and on Twitter about what do we do? How do we actually solve this crisis? There were some ideas in that story that we just heard make accounting more interesting. The salaries are too low compared to other business type degrees you can get. Data analytics is a great example of one. You can go get a data analytics degree or certificate and you can get hired into an accounting firm and you don't have to go get your CPA. The fifth year is mentioned in there. I believe the fifth year is a humongous disadvantage that the CPA path has right now because who wants to go get an extra year of education and pay for that and then, you know, make less money than somebody who got a four year degree? It just doesn't compute. And so I reached out to the AICPA and I asked them once again if somebody would come on the program and I don't know if our listeners realize this, but I have asked for months I have been working with their PR people, I've been reaching out, I've been saying, hey, can we get somebody on the program to talk about the talent pipeline problem? And the.

David Leary: [00:07:08] Response? You've been begging them for years. Let's just be likely like you've been begging people from the AICPA to come on the podcast because and it's not so much like trying to be fair and balanced. It's more of just there's a conversation happening here and we want them to be part of it.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:23] Yeah, and our listeners have we've actually had some feedback from our listeners that says, Hey, you guys are not balanced enough. You need to have other sides. You can't just rag on the CPA. And I hear that. And so I want to be more balanced, but they won't come on the program. We offered to have somebody, anybody from the AICPA come on today and they did not offer anyone. They didn't provide anyone. They said they're all too busy. And so what we did get from the CPA is a clip. They pointed us to one of the CPA town halls and said, watch this. This is our plan. Let me play that bit and I should offer some context first. So, David, there's this eight part plan in the tweet that you you tweeted out the screenshot, right? Sue Coffey, who leads public accounting at the AICPA, highlighted part one of the plan, which is I think the one that they're most bullish on, which is to switch the fifth year from being in class to being in a firm. So let me.

David Leary: [00:08:29] Before you get into all the eight points or kind of go through these set of even bigger context. So this is part of the CPAs Townhall series and it's actually decent. Like I usually tune in and I'll listen after the fact. They distribute as a podcast after the fact, but it's usually decent. But this slide was given 10 minutes. She went from, I think, the 41 minute mark to the 51 minute mark. And so this slide which I see and you can read all eight things if you want off this bleak but I'm see wow, this could be a three hour town hall just on this slide and the pipeline problem. Right. And immediately say we didn't have time to talk about this. We'll just talk about 0.1. So you want to read all eight at a high level and then jump into the more details of the point?

Blake Oliver: [00:09:12] Well, I mean, I don't know if I want to spend a ton of time on it because we only have so much time on this program. And the other seven really, like don't stand out to me as doing anything. They're more like PR like like, for example, explaining how the 30 hours works is one of the points like coming up with a communication plan or like some very vague stuff on there. David What are some of the other points on the plan?

David Leary: [00:09:34] I mean, I mean, at some level, like first it was like, hey, this is not just our industry, right? It's things that are happening to everybody out there. So it's a declining birth rate. Immigration policy is fewer students are going to the university system. Right. And then the whole rising cost of the education. Yeah, well, that's and then.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:52] They always make sure when they talk about this, to cite all the stuff that's out of their control.

David Leary: [00:09:56] Yes. Yes. That it was framed that way out of our control, right in their time out, the perception of type of work hours compensation, they're acknowledging that that that is a thing. And that younger generation has like more options and choices of a career in general. Right. And so it's it's interesting. They kind of talk about their focus, how they want to. Do things that are quick impact, positive awareness, flexibility, fill the gaps. Right And there. Their goal is to reduce risk. And it wasn't really clear we can get into that. I don't know if we're going to play a clip.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:27] I'm going to play a clip.

David Leary: [00:10:28] So we're on. They talk about the risk. Yeah. Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:30] So I want to play a clip, Sue Coffee talking about point one, which is the one she decided to highlight on this town hall at minute 41. And this is what ACB sent us. So this is the official response from the AICPA to our questions because they wouldn't provide somebody for our program. So here we go.

Sue Coffey, AICPA: [00:10:48] The way it would work is that students would graduate from college with a bachelor's degree and they'd immediately join a firm as a first year associate, not as an intern. And what they do for the course of a year for which they would receive 330 credit hours of education granted by a university is they would work flexible hours in accordance with the firm's policy, but the firm would give them time to take online courses and study, and there would be competencies, assessment, competency assessments we're currently curating. I would I would call it a menu of courses that firms have told us they're interested in. So of course, some of them are technical, but candidly most of them are around leadership, verbal communication, written communication, business development, business development, data analytics. So those skills that firms have told us when students graduate and they come to work at the firm, they don't necessarily have a lot of. And so that's how we want to solve kind of that skills gap issue. So our plan is to pilot this program in the fall of 2023, and of course we'll learn from it and we'll modify the program and have a more broader release in 2024.

Carl: [00:12:10] I think one of the things that it really does, as you mentioned, the courses that could be part of that program, it really allows the firm owner or managers to work with that young staff person, really get the skill sets that they all are saying they don't get when they're in college. Right. That they aren't getting when they're first coming out of school. Those soft skills, the leadership skills. And those are the things that I think are exciting about the profession to begin with, so I think it's a great place.

Savannah Maher: [00:12:37] Yeah, that's right, Carl. And and there were really three principles.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:42] So the plan point number one, the number one of the eight part plan is instead of students going to a masters in their fifth year and doing classwork room work, they would join a firm, they would be employed by the firm. I suppose they would they would actually be employed. I'm not sure how that.

David Leary: [00:13:01] Kind of works. Not yeah, it's not paid internship. It's like a real job, right. But you probably have to be expected to actually work.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:07] And then they're going to take a master's program, a one year master's, while they're employed. So how does this like and how does a university get paid? Like, is the student still paying the university? Because I'm just I'm just stepping back and looking at this from the perspective of I'm an accounting student or a prospective accounting student. How does this improve the financial impact? For me? Because even if I'm employed by the firm, the firm is not going to pay me to take classes at the university. So I'm paying to take the classes while I'm working at the firm. So no, like that doesn't help with the workload. And that's one of the big complaints, like one of the reasons that people don't go into accounting. The number one is, well, it's pretty simple. It's long hours and low pay and then the cost of the fifth year education. So I don't see how this solves it.

David Leary: [00:14:01] Yeah, the part I got hung up on is they fell out, says they aren't getting these skills out of college. And to me I hear that. I'm like, Well, then what's the point of making them go to even more classes if they're not getting the skills they need? So fixing this 30 hour extra 30 hours and having like just get better classes and the the undergraduate programs.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:22] Yeah.

David Leary: [00:14:23] I mean.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:23] You could you can teach everything that somebody needs to know to be a CPA in four years very easily. You don't need the fifth year. The fifth year was added to increase the prestige of the profession compared to like lawyers and doctors. And I mean, that's just an ego thing. I've never met any actual like real CPAs who care about the perception of accounting as a profession versus lawyers. Like, I think we're happy to have it be less burdensome. I mean, I wonder if this is something that only the people in the associations actually care about, that there's this prestige with the fifth year because we know it adds no value. We there's zero evidence that an additional year of education makes anybody a better CPA. We didn't play this part, but they always talk about in these town halls how their biggest concern is maintaining. The ability for CPS to practice across state lines. And this is part of the problem of having 50 different, 50 plus different jurisdictions that administer the CPA or licensed CPAs is that they've all agreed on these standards of 140 hours now and blah, blah, blah. And so if if any one state changes to go back to 120, then now those CPAs can't practice in the other 150 hour states. So the AICPA is reason for not doing anything to change. That is mainly it's too difficult.

David Leary: [00:15:43] Well, yeah, they don't want to have a bunch of patchwork states and multiple licenses and and they're trying to protect licensure ultimately at the highest level. But what they're missing and I think they're they're missing the real risk. Like the risk. Isn't that happening? That's going to happen no matter what. Because states like Arizona who don't give a shit are going to be like, we don't we are growing, our economy's growing. We new, more accountants. You know what? If you come to Arizona, you have to go to school for hundred 20 hours and they're going to steal talent just like they steal jobs and they steal companies from California. States like Arizona will aggressively change this. And now the risk you try to prevent is going to happen anyways. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:21] Yeah, that's a good point.

David Leary: [00:16:23] It's going to be Arizona, Florida, Texas. One of those three states will be the first to do this.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:27] Now, we should get together, Arizona and Texas and Florida should get together and fix this, and then it'll drag along California and New York and Washington. Maybe that's a strategy, but the CPA doesn't like getting political right. So somebody else will have to do it.

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Blake Oliver: [00:18:01] We got a comment here in the chat from JEP. 05f when I joined the military 12 years ago. My paycheck was $2,000 when I left ten years later for accounting, my entry level paycheck was $1,750. I made less in real and nominal salary. Michael Alman said, I have a master's in accountancy and the first thing I was told when joining Price was that my education was great for theory but was impractical for doing the work. A lovely introduction. Sigh.

David Leary: [00:18:32] After you just spent all this money in time.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:34] Yeah. And Christopher says lawyers and doctors who make more money, by the way. That's in response to this idea that we need to somehow compete with them for prestige by increasing the education requirement. I've never understood that. I mean, I would actually say the other way is like we want to be the opposite of lawyers and doctors. If people wanted to be lawyers, they would have gone to law school. There's a reason we go into accounting. It's because we want to actually like make a difference, make money, and not put up with all that, you know, legal crap. De Paul says undervaluing accounting slash finance is having a big negative impact on clients and industry. I have seen past clients incur losses at 300% the cost of the finance department. It gets worse over time. And Jennifer Johnson says none of these details have been shared to universities, as far as I know, or at least not to the university I work at. I believe there is a pilot at a school in New Jersey. So many questions from the academic side. So how is this going to quickly happen? Right. If they haven't even shared details with other universities, they're doing it with one school in New Jersey and they plan to roll that out like in the fall. I mean, this plan could take ten years to materialize. And then my question that the CPA is, well, how much is this actually going to make a dent in the accounting talent deficit? Because we saw that stat from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that over the past two years, 17% of the US accounting and auditing workforce just quit and left the profession. So, I mean, is this going to actually make a dent in that? And then there's also just the declining trend in general like I have. I don't see how this makes makes any dent in the numbers. It's sort of like, you know, a drop in the bucket.

David Leary: [00:20:12] So let me tell a little story of what I'm doing on Monday. I think I mentioned before, my wife is a counselor at high school and they have Career day on Monday. And she asked me, Hey, can you come speak at Career Day? And then I was like, Well, what do you want me to speak about? Like being a podcaster, accounting? Like, what do you. Well, you're not really an accountant, so maybe you're not qualified to speak for that. So fine. So they put these classes up on Monday or Tuesday. My session is called How to be a Podcaster, a content creator of all the all the all the professions that are speaking at Career Day. I had the most signups the fastest, and my session filled up. 45 people immediately signed up the accounting 115 people.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:49] Yeah, that's.

David Leary: [00:20:49] The reality we live in now. I don't know what to do. That's the reality we're in right now.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:54] Well, you're going to do a bait and switch, David, because you're going to tell them. I actually, I'm an accounting podcaster, So now let me tell you all about.

David Leary: [00:21:01] The.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:02] Accounting of being an accountant. You can do podcasting on the side as your side hustle.

David Leary: [00:21:07] Hey, but that's, I think, the reality of where we're at. Like, I mean, that's what three, four, 4 to 1 ratio.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:13] So comment here from username country Matt in the chat. Hey Blake and David I'm about to graduate with my undergrad and I plan on working while obtaining my 150. Would you recommend community college or a one year MBA? I appreciate any suggestions. Oh, that's a great question and I would love for our listeners who have ideas for Matt to also put those in the chat. I'll go ahead and toss out an idea just based on my own experience. Matt I did not do the master's. I am a career changer. I got a bachelor's of music the most practical degree you could possibly get, right? Well, it's actually more practical than like than some degree, I suppose. But I changed careers and I decided to get into accounting bookkeeping to become a CPA. I looked at doing a master's at Cal State Northridge when I was living in LA, but at the time it would have been pretty expensive, relatively expensive, and it would have been hard to work and the class schedules were not flexible. I couldn't do them at night necessarily like it was a hassle. And so I decided not to do the master's and I said, I'm just going to go look at the requirements of the CPA and get all of my requirements done that I didn't get in my undergrad at Santa monica College, which is an excellent community college. It has online classes or I'll do it at UCLA extension. So I did pretty much all my classes at Santa monica College, UCLA Extension, or Pierce College, which is another community college in the in the system. And that ended up costing me like $10,000 over the course of years. And I did it at my own pace. And I sat for the CPA exam, got my license eventually. And I think that gives you flexibility. That's one option I suggest.

David Leary: [00:23:00] That he reaches out to Susan coffee at the CPA and say that he wants to be part of this pilot in the fall of 2023. So you'll get hired at a firm and then be able to take these leadership and communication and dev analytics classes and get your 30 hours knocked out that way, Like go, go, go see if this pilot really exists. That's actually would be better. You could be like an on the beat reporter for The Cloud Accounting Podcast. You could go down this this pilot and take it.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:26] You can report on it. Let us know how it goes. Where do we go from here, David?

David Leary: [00:23:31] It just feels like I think in general, just closing on this, it just feels very tops down. I tweeted about it. It's got 15,000 views. It's got 3000 more were sitting here. Right. It just keeps going, right? There's a conversation happening and obviously people are in the comments and there's conversations happening and the IPA is just one direction. It doesn't feel like there's a big conversation. And and actually somebody, though, did ask a question in the townhall. I thought I typed it in here. Let's see.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:56] Well, David finds that I just want to say again, if anyone from ICP is listening, we would love to have you on the program and get your perspective. I really want answers to these questions, like what research has been done to actually validate that this is going to make the CPA pathway more appealing to students. Is there any evidence that this is going to work? Because the problem is extremely dire and I don't think anybody has quantified the impact. So we actually need to, as accountants, look at the numbers. And to me, this is all very amorphous. There's there's the plan is not a plan unless there's a forecast. You know, AICPA is all about pivoting to advisory services when it comes to public accounting, and that involves creating forecasts and budgets and projections and financial models. Well, let's model this out. How do we solve this problem? I mean, it's getting worse every year. I think we need drastic changes, not just small little ones, like the changes to the CPA exam, which as far as I know. I mean, David, we were just talking with those professors from Utah Valley University. Yeah. The other week they came to your house and sat with us and asked us what do we think should be in their new curriculum? They're creating a new class. And it was such a great conversation. We talked about creating an applied accounting course where students would actually learn how to do work in the real world in simulations while they are in school. And I forgot where I was going with that. Where are they.

David Leary: [00:25:21] Going with practical small business class, right? Yeah, Yeah. Just practical experience in school, getting that experience.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:27] Hey, we have a response for Matt here from Jennifer Johnson, a professor at University of Texas. An MBA is great. After you have had some work experience, it is valued in consulting roles and CEO roles. Be sure to check your state requirements to sure they follow. Be sure they allow community college hours, and that's important. I didn't realize this, but some states are so elitist that they do not allow community college hours for the CPA. Texas is one of them. Once you have an undergraduate degree, you can't go back words and get community college credits to sit for the CPA exam. I just don't understand that. What is community college lesser than university? I took classes at Santa monica College that were better than the ones at UCLA. You know, I just feel like that's just totally out of touch.

David Leary: [00:26:14] That's the that's the game we're in.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:16] Christopher says. It's one more piece of advice for Matt. Christopher says it might be helpful to connect with hiring managers at firms you're looking to work for, whether through other connections or cold calls. Yeah, that's actually a really good point, right? Figure out what you're going to do based on what they are looking for that that actually makes the most sense if you want to get a job right, that's the objective. Jennifer say responding to the community college thing, you can get community college hours in Texas. They just have certain schools to take them from. Okay. So the school has to be approved in order for you to get credit.

David Leary: [00:26:48] So thank you. Specifically during the town hall, why do we need 150 hours? And it was answered with education, examination experience. We think 150 hours is important, but never really say why.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:00] It's because we are a profession and professions have rigorous education requirements. That's always sort of the answer, and it's a non-answer.

David Leary: [00:27:08] And then the only other thing comment is on Twitter, somebody pointed out that it's kind of funny that all the people that got to become CPAs in the 120 hour days are the sticklers to people doing 150 hours now. I thought that was an interesting observation.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:23] Yeah, right. Like, yeah, that changed in I forget when that changed, but most CPAs who are licensed right now didn't have to get the 150. So like that's my question is, so if the hundred does 150 hours make you a better CPA because then we should let the people who got the hundred and 50 hours decide whether or not that's necessary for everybody going forward.

David Leary: [00:27:51] This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Relay. Between Blake and myself, we now have three, four, or maybe five business entities, 20 or so checking accounts and dozens and dozens of virtual cards. It would be impossible to manage all of this. We weren't using relays or small business. Bank really is truly a part of the tech stack we use to run our businesses. Relay allows Blake and I to each have our own logins. We can grant access to our team and even our accountant without sharing passwords or two factor authentication codes. Relay allows us to grow and scale our banking needs without ever going into a physical branch. I recently add an account to receive inbound merchant services with just a few clicks and add to create a payroll checking account. Again, just a few clicks and I instantly had access to my ACH info vote to give to my payroll provider with relays virtual cards. We can issue debit cards to our team around the world for needed business expenses. I can instantly spin up a new Visa debit card and set both daily and monthly spending limits. And when a team member doesn't need their card, I can freeze it until they need to use it again. Learn more about using relay in your firm and with your clients. Head over to Cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo slash relay that is cloudaccountingpodcast.com promo. Forward slash relay. Why? You move on.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:04] Let's talk about tech.

David Leary: [00:29:05] There's other stuff.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:07] But you know, I'm done with this.

David Leary: [00:29:08] I'm open in the news.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:09] News, news. Basically, my feeling is unless the CPA is going to engage on this issue and talk to us and have a conversation, I'm kind of done with them. You know, like what's going to happen to the CPA, basically, unless we do something drastic, which seems like there's zero chance of that right now with the attitude there is we're going to continue this long slide where CPA has become a smaller and smaller percentage of hires at CPA firms. And the CPA, which is currently this very broad license, will become more niche and it will basically be an auditing thing. And more and more tax firms won't be CPA firms, more and more consulting firms won't be doing the CPA stuff. It just doesn't make sense. And so it'll just gradually slide into becoming less of a must have and more of a nice to have.

David Leary: [00:29:55] If it makes you feel any better, it's not just us that we can't get real comments from So Accounting. Today I had an article that was called Passing or Failing Pass Rates for CPA Exam fell in 2022 and basically this is according to the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. These latest report, 191,000 candidates took the CPA exam in 2022, which is a 25% drop since 2018. But then the very last sentence in the whole entire article was the CPA had no immediate comment. That's where we're at, folks. That's where we're at.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:26] David, you pointed me to this article in The Wall Street Journal. How can we make accounting cool for our listeners on the live stream? You get to see this awesome graphic of a CPA with tattoos and a mohawk and an earring wearing his thick black glasses and punching numbers into a ten key calculator.

David Leary: [00:30:50] So tell us, how do you make the accounting cool?

Blake Oliver: [00:30:52] Well, so Joe Queenan, he says, one, American firms must raise salaries to make the accounting profession more appealing and to the accounting profession must take steps to make itself seem more glamorous and appealing. Testimonials from flashy, exciting practitioners of the trade would help, but like, I don't think number two is going to help unless number one happens. He says that such people do exist, though he says, quote, My best friend is a retired auditor who plays lead guitar in a psychedelic rock band that has flourished since 1966. He is not boring. Another accounting friend took up ice hockey in his forties and played the thrilling and physically challenging sport well into his fifties. My wife, a chartered accountant from England, long ago, fled lugubrious, predictable Birmingham and took a job writing continuing educational video scripts for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in New.

David Leary: [00:31:38] York that gets a high school kid interested. What you need is accountants that are 2 to 3 years in the job and be like, Look at this Lamborghini I bought. And they're sitting on the hood and they're streaming it on Tik Tok and that will get account the high school kids like, I want to be an accountant, I want a Lamborghini like it has like, like you can't tell them about a four year old that plays hockey. Like I'm that guy. I'm that guy. Like, that's not going to get somebody to become like that. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:03] That's why it's tone deaf. It's out of.

David Leary: [00:32:04] Touch. So, so. So, Blake, let's let's just throw this out there. If it was you and you were making your eight point slide on how to save this, what would I do? You don't have to answer it right now, but, like, is it is it the business model? Is it lack of diversity in equity? Is it the the pay? Like, I think there's eight or nine things that have to be addressed. But like, I'm not saying you have to make it, but it would be great to see Blake's eight point plan.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:27] Well, I have an idea. I have one idea. I don't know if this is the one that will stick, but I think it would help. So we know that the biggest problem is the experience in big firms. Accounting students look on Reddit, they look on Twitter, they look on TikTok, and they see what it's like to work at the big four, at the big firms as a staff auditor or staff tax accountant. And it sucks. And so what the CPA can do is actually hold big firms accountable for creating a better experience for their staff, not working them 60 to 80 hours, giving them time to study for the exams. That would be one way the the AICPA could help. And I was talking with Chase Berkey of Dark Horse CPAs for my earmark podcast we just recorded this week. And he said, Why doesn't the CPA create a certification for firms for work life balance, for creating that good, positive experience? And then firms would apply for this and they'd have to get audited and the ACP would check on like, are you overworking the staff? They'd survey the staff and find out like, are you getting time to study? Like all those quality of life things? And firms could have this badge and they could use it as a recruiting tool. And I think it.

David Leary: [00:33:42] Would be really interesting because that's something you think about this eight point plan to do something quickly. You could spin that up in eight months.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:49] Yeah, Yeah. And guess what? It's a money maker.

David Leary: [00:33:52] It's it's almost like how the schools have those A-plus ratings in schools are A-plus B plus C plus firms could have those those ratings.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:59] And to be an AICPA member, it's a soft compliance.

David Leary: [00:34:01] Right. You have to get.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:03] Exactly. It's a badge, right? It's a it's a it's it's. And to be an AICPA member firm, you would have to adhere to these standards and that would gradually improve the reputation of the profession when it comes to these students.

David Leary: [00:34:15] That's genius. Yeah, and you're right. And then the has a vested interest because this is something they can charge for.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:20] Yeah, they can charge for it.

David Leary: [00:34:23] The money machine keeps going.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:24] And everybody wins. So, like, that's what they should do. But there's a reason that they probably won't, which is that the AICPA is funded primarily by big firms that don't want to do these things. Where do the member dues come from? It's big firms who pay the fees on behalf of their CPAs. So if I work at Deloitte as a CPA, I don't pay my own AICPA membership. The firm pays it for me. So who does the firm? Who does the CPA listen to? The managing partner at Deloitte, not the CPA is working there and definitely not the accountants who are future CPAs, because where does the money come from? Right? You got to follow the money. So until the managing partners of these firms decide that this is something that they need to do, it's not going to happen because of that. That's my theory.

David Leary: [00:35:09] And it makes you wonder, like the size of the CPA, if every individual had to write that check themselves, their membership fee. Mm hmm. How big would the ACP actually be?

Blake Oliver: [00:35:18] Yeah. How many fees are paid by individuals versus by the firm?

David Leary: [00:35:23] Because if you if you're just like, I don't care if I'm in the CPA or not, but firms paying for it like whatever, right?

Blake Oliver: [00:35:30] Yeah.

David Leary: [00:35:31] Versus members that pay because they want to be members, I wonder what the.

Blake Oliver: [00:35:34] And I think this is the problem with like the ACP has lost sight of its mission which is to serve the accounting profession broadly, not just the managing partners of large firms, which is what it seems like they're doing because they aren't addressing the core issues, which is, you know, salaries. Right? The firms don't want to raise salaries or the big firms don't anyway. Nobody wants to raise salaries. But if you all did it together, then nobody's at a disadvantage.

David Leary: [00:35:59] Do you want to do you want to stay on the We're Doomed pipeline? There is an information about the IRS.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:04] Sarah, let's talk about tax season right now.

David Leary: [00:36:06] It's tax time, but it's not even tax season. So this is a report from the Government Accounting Office. And apparently the IRS has they've basically suspended their initiatives to replace some of their six year old computer systems. So what happened is the according to the officials that are sitting in this report, they had to shift resources to higher priorities. And so they just suspended these.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:27] What did they suspend?

David Leary: [00:36:27] Now, the actual replacement of the 60 year old individual master tax file?

Blake Oliver: [00:36:32] Oh, no. This is like the thing that they need to do. This is like the one thing that they really, really need to do.

David Leary: [00:36:38] They've been working on it for a decade and there's like, sorry, we've got to have you come over here and answer phone calls. Who knows? But they shifted them to somewhere else. Nobody lost their jobs. But that's so now they don't know when it's going to get worked on. So trying to get it done by 2030.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:53] These are those systems that are like running on COBOL or something like that. I mean, we're talking like mainframe style computing systems for the.

David Leary: [00:37:02] Yeah. And then they have some other numbers that are a little scary. So 33% of the applications they used, 23% of the software instances in use and 8% of the hardware assets are considered to be legacy systems and they range from age 25 to 64 years. Wow.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:20] I mean, what happens when the people who know how these systems work retire? I mean, the iris could crash.

David Leary: [00:37:26] I've been.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:28] Basically.

David Leary: [00:37:28] It's just the southwest thing, right. And then the FAA like. This is scary.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:35] Yeah, I.

David Leary: [00:37:35] Think.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:36] Well, So I have an idea for how to modernize the IRS and actually, like, overcome some of these issues. I was really inspired by the story of FreshBooks and how they re platformed and anyone in tech should know this story. So FreshBooks has been around for decades. And at a certain point in every software company's lifecycle, it accumulates so much technical debt that you almost have to start over from scratch and build again. And a lot of times they do it from inside, and it just takes forever and it almost never happens. Right. And you see that with a lot of companies where, like they've been around for 20 years, it still looks 20 years old and there's a reason for that. And FreshBooks took an interesting approach where they took the best people at FreshBooks and they created a new company with a totally different name that was secretly building FreshBooks 2.0. Call it something else. Put it out in the market, and then when it got good enough, they rebranded it as FreshBooks and ported everybody over to the new FreshBooks. So it's starting a new company, recreating the functionality and adding the new functionality that you need and then moving people over. What if the IRS did that with the $80 billion is actually create iris 2.0. And allow taxpayers to opt into it for a beta set of years. And then once it gets good enough, this is the paperless iris, by the way. Right? You can't file paper with this, Iris. And then once it gets good enough, enough people will opt into it. You can shut down the old one.

David Leary: [00:39:01] And they don't have options, even like big tech and tech companies. And I have those other stories like this were used to divide and conquer to to migrate your company. But tech also has that ability just to acquire a company that already solved the problem. There's no mini iris startup or the iris can just buy them and then roll that over. They're going to have to build it from scratch, right? Because the migration just seems crazy. And I think we've talked on the show like Canada's payroll system. The, you know, state of California is they've been on a 15 year run trying to replace their whole entire accounting system. And these failures just keep happening. And and the crazy thing is, you know, who's usually advising all these transitions? It's one of the big four turn off helping them on this transition, which is just even more crazy.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:43] And they're billing hourly so they've got no reason to make it actually ever end, right?

David Leary: [00:39:48] Oh, bad. This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by First Republic Bank. Banking should be about more than checking and savings. It should also be about building relationships, the kind where you can share your financial goals and get the services that are right for you. The first Republic everyone gets a personal banker will sit down and learn about you and your goals. You then connected with specialists and solutions you may not have considered. Isn't it time you align yourself with a bank that believes in you and your future success? First Republic is ready to be your financial partner for life. Learn more about First Republic's extraordinary service Visit First Republic. That's First Republic. Remember FDIC. Equal Housing Lender. What else do you got?

Blake Oliver: [00:40:40] Well, you know, do you remember that Republican plan to abolish the IRS? The bill in Congress right now? You know what I'm talking about, David. There was a story in CPA Practice advisor. I mean, this went all over the place. Biden vows to veto GOP Plan to abolish the IRS. So the House Republicans and I'm a Republican, David.

David Leary: [00:41:00] Well, we can trick them, though. I got an idea. What? Tell them we are going to abolish the IRS, but don't tell them you're building RS 2.0.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:06] That's a good trick.

David Leary: [00:41:08] So tell them it's going to cost $80 Billion to dissolve the old IRS. And they have no idea.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:13] So the House Republicans have put forth a bill that would do away with the IRS entirely and the current tax system and replace it with a flat consumer tax. And of course, the president has vowed to veto this. And it just strikes me as like a totally idiotic thing to put forward because it's just completely not ever going to happen. That's one thing like politically pointless to do this. It's sort of like when the Republicans were just putting forward bills to like end Obamacare with no replacement, Right? It's just not going to happen and we all know it. So and then and then the part that's crazy is they want to replace it with this 30% sales tax. But Republicans were saying, oh, it's not actually a 30% sales tax, because if you if you calculate it as tax inclusive, it's actually a 23% sales tax. And any time in something political, you have to get into that level of like tax exclusive or tax inclusive, you're going to confuse everybody and it's going to fail, right? Like because what happens is people look at this and they say 30% sales tax. I don't pay 30% in taxes. No way. And that's like most of America. It's just. It's just. Right. It's. It's just dumb.

David Leary: [00:42:22] The next episode of the Federal Tax Updates podcast, which should drop on Monday morning. They get into these reasons and how every tax decision, either deduction or credit is weighted and the impact on a dollar. And when these things like this come up, it has to go back to a budget. Well, if we do that, that's going to cost this much or not cost as much. And the budgets, I mean, something else has to be touched. And so they did a good job, Roger, and good job of explaining that. So it's it's related to this. You just can't politicians throw out these numbers, cut this, change this, but it can't really happen because there's lots of math happening on the back end. So tune in to that episode Monday morning, the Federal Tax Updates podcast. They're going to they really address that kind of the the mindset of these decisions, why they exist.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:08] Federal tax updates. Awesome show. I'm so happy to be producing that with you. David. Here's a story. Have you heard about this Adani short seller?

David Leary: [00:43:20] What that means?

Blake Oliver: [00:43:20] Adam and I, this firm in India that has been all over the news. So actually I want to put up the going concern version of this story. So basically Hindenburg Research, which is a short seller that got famous because they put out that report on Tesla, they've put out reports on other companies and some have been what?

David Leary: [00:43:42] What, what name.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:45] Hindenburg idea, right? Yeah, it's perfect. Well, so they put out a recent report on January 24th. They dropped a report called Adani Group how the world's third richest man is pulling the largest con in corporate history and basically called Indian conglomerate Adani Group a fraud. Massive fraud. And of course, the stock plummeted is since I think recovered a little bit but like creating a lot of questions. Right. And how does this relate to accounting? Well, obviously, if it's a massive fraud, you wonder, okay, where were the auditors? Right. And there's some facts in this report that are very troubling to me as a CPA and going concern covered this in a story called If you let 23 year olds sign off on audits, you're going to have a bad time. Apparently, the independent auditor for Adani Enterprises and Adani total gas is a tiny firm called Shar Don Haria Shar D.A. seems to have no current website. Historical archives of its website show that it had only four partners and 11 employees. Records show it pays the equivalent of 432 USD in monthly office rent. The only other listed entity found that IT audits has a market capitalization of about 7.8 million USD. So Adani Enterprises.

David Leary: [00:45:01] They have two clients basically.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:02] Yeah, and Adani Enterprises has 156 subsidiaries and there are seven key listed entities collectively have 578 subsidiaries and have engaged in a total of 6025 separate related party transactions in fiscal year 2022 alone. And so there's this firm that has, you know, four partners and 11 employees auditing them. And the audit partners are as young as 24 and 23 years old when when they began producing the audits, they were basically fresh out of school. So if you're asking me now, based on this information, if this is true from Hindenburg, is Adani a fraud? Hell, yeah, this is great. So here's a picture of the office. It's like.

David Leary: [00:45:48] Is it two computers and four people?

Blake Oliver: [00:45:49] It looks like three computers and four people. And they've got they've got the calculators there. I mean, it's just this looks like a small CPA firm. Look at the look at the door to their office. Right. They've got like the sign is just printed out poster board.

David Leary: [00:46:06] So is this implying that this firm was just spun up by this company kind of or.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:12] Well, maybe it's like tether where they just go out and they find a small firm that's willing to take money to sign off on these reports?

David Leary: [00:46:20] Well, it's funny that you just said that because Tether had an article about their latest asset, Nation report.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:26] Oh, yeah. Well, tether. Okay, tell me about it.

David Leary: [00:46:29] They apparently now show 960 excess reserves, right? They and they said that's been completed by public accounting firm BDO.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:38] Italia, right?

David Leary: [00:46:39] Yes. And as soon as I saw this, I was like, Oh, I'm going to the website. I bet you the BDO logos everywhere. So if you click on that page.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:47] All right, let me get this open here.

David Leary: [00:46:50] And so the story is not so much about the report. It's really just like, here we go again, right? This they have a whole transparency page. And on this page, if you go to the reports part.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:59] Okay, reports in reserves, independent accountant report.

David Leary: [00:47:02] And for most people, they're not going to click and read these, They're going to see the logo. Yeah. And it's again it's exploitation of accounting firms.

Blake Oliver: [00:47:10] Well and yeah this used to be a different firm and these are attestation reports so they're just agreed upon procedures agreements and I think like if you go into these reports. They're really they're really difficult to read. It doesn't provide I can't find it in this PDF right now, but if you read these reports, they actually don't provide any assurance. And it's hard to.

David Leary: [00:47:32] Know exactly they're right. Yeah. And that's the like their press release doesn't say it's BDO Italia. They just say it's BDO, Right. Everything gets elevated of how great they are, right?

Blake Oliver: [00:47:44] Yeah. The reporting date is limited to a point in time of 31st December 2022. We did not perform procedures or provide any assurance at any other date or time in this report. So it's literally just one snapshot in time. Tether could be doing and tether is a massive stablecoin that underpins the entire crypto economy. For anyone who is new to it.

David Leary: [00:48:06] We're talking like $66 billion in tokens.

Blake Oliver: [00:48:09] One of the.

David Leary: [00:48:09] Biggest this is massive. Like like two. To look at it for one day and create a position seems a little crazy.

Blake Oliver: [00:48:16] Yeah, it is crazy.

David Leary: [00:48:17] Obviously, it's complicated.

Blake Oliver: [00:48:18] The problem with these attestation reports is that they might have verified the assets, but they don't verify the liabilities if you don't know what the liabilities are. It doesn't matter what the assets are. What matters is the net position of this exchange or of this of this stablecoin. And we know they're making loans.

David Leary: [00:48:36] Or, you know, just the example is here again, right? It's crypto. Companies like this are exploiting the big firms or their exploding firms because it's the the logo of your firm is super valuable. Mm hmm. Not the work you've done for the firm or for the company. They just went through your logo.

Blake Oliver: [00:48:51] We got some listener mail. David. I want to make sure we get to it before.

David Leary: [00:48:55] We jump in.

Blake Oliver: [00:48:55] Okay. So we got a voicemail from Nikole Mackenzie.

Nikole Mackenzie: [00:48:58] Very bright. And over to Nikole Mackenzie, owner of the month in town. And I gave a little help on the accounting podcast. I'm calling them because I have a special announcement. I want to announce that Accounting High is having their first ever accounting bracket challenge ... pink mark non dial bracket, except you got the part of both for your accounting and we'll call it partner. They'll cook the accounting podcast at a more active a website where you like to read the accounting blog. You could do that and you can think of that name for your lives that are in town and you can nominate. So go to Bracket DOT Accounting, Time.com. We got up five nominations, though. The nominations will be anything, and then we'll put the top four and that will start the brackets. So, yes, and they'll also be proud the present, including possibly a one, depending on how many people get the nominations and you get points for a nomination. So anywhere and I'll vote for The Cloud Accounting Podcast as well. So head on over there. And I hope.

Blake Oliver: [00:50:29] So. Head over to Bracket.AccountingHigh.com and vote to nominate The Cloud Accounting Podcast.

David Leary: [00:50:38] And did we get to go to Hawaii if if we win with.

Blake Oliver: [00:50:41] Well, it's possible. It's possibly a trip to Hawaii. So I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

David Leary: [00:50:46] Are we allowed to vote ourselves? Like, how does this work?

Blake Oliver: [00:50:49] I nominate.

David Leary: [00:50:50] A person.

Blake Oliver: [00:50:50] Why not? Yeah, man. Like I believe in the podcast. Matt said in the chat. Chat versus cap in the finals. Oh, that would be tough for us, but I would be happy to go up against Chad.

David Leary: [00:51:01] Pete It's easy. We just asked them who host The Cloud Accounting Podcast and GPT will fail and it's like we win.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:09] Yeah. And you know, if you like nontraditional accounting podcasts, go check out accounting. Hi. Hosted by Scott Scarano and Nicole Mackenzie. I laughed out loud at the recent episode. It's it's a lot of fun. David, what do you got?

David Leary: [00:51:24] Do you see you had multiple voicemails?

Blake Oliver: [00:51:26] Well, I have some emails. I do. I have emails. Let's see. I have comments.

David Leary: [00:51:32] Maybe while you're getting those those stacked up there, I'm going to paste one more link so you can show a photo here. Okay. Of a LinkedIn post.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:40] Photo of a LinkedIn post.

David Leary: [00:51:43] Okay. Okay. Hopefully the link looks really crazy.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:47] Oh, this is a good one. I'm so glad you brought this to the show.

David Leary: [00:51:49] So. So a listener sent me this and I'm going to go to my direct messages and get his name. Oh, David Johnson. So David Johnson is a senior consultant at Exponential Consulting. So he sent this this link to this tweet or my sort of tweet LinkedIn post. And as soon as I saw it, I said, Oh, this is going on the show. And then I reshared it because I do think it kind of won the Internet this week. And essentially, for those of you who can't see this right now, maybe it'll be the cover art, this company, Delaware Valley Paving. He'd been on QuickBooks for years and years and years and they've migrated to NetSuite. But what they did is they had a whole funeral and they built a headstone. It said QuickBooks RIP 2005 to 2023. So, you know, they grew, which is great, right? And they took a picture. So many businesses graduated out of QuickBooks, but they have a whole funeral. It's it's gotten tons of views and tons of comments. It's great they.

Blake Oliver: [00:52:43] Actually stood outside. This is like a dozen people standing outside grieving over a headstone for QuickBooks. And oh, man, that is really funny. How many views did it get?

David Leary: [00:52:57] I can't see. I think I'm at 24,000.

Blake Oliver: [00:52:59] That's just on your reshare. I mean.

David Leary: [00:53:01] That's just on my my, my me saying it was the Internet this week. It's some of the comments were all over the board but some people were like, yeah, you know, wait till they find out how much they're really paying for next week, although it goes. But you know, you're going to eventually grow to a point that's great, right? I mean, they're a great QuickBooks customer for what's that, almost 20 years. And they've grown to the point where it's time to move on, which is great. I mean, in a way, like, quick, QuickBooks should celebrate these stories, right? If somebody pays QuickBooks to be on them for 20 years, then grows big enough to get off of QuickBooks, that's a success, you know?

Blake Oliver: [00:53:36] We had a comment on our YouTube video from an old episode. The episode is Why Accountants Don't Become CPAs. Ws, 88, said, I was one of those people who wanted a CPA, but I didn't have time to study. I was a tax accountant and the busy season slash fiscal year filers took so much of my time. What broke me was tcja that increased my workload. 5xi felt like seven months out of the year were ten plus hours billable. I worked in public accounting for four years and just burned out. I switched my career into it and now I am a software engineer. The hours are much better and the pay, I would say is on par or even better doesn't surprise me.

David Leary: [00:54:14] Yeah, it's it it's the same theme we keep hearing. Keep hearing from people in the field, if you want to call it that. Right. People are out there living this life as accountants and bookkeepers. It's the same story. Yep. Let's see. Any other big interesting news that I see this week?

Blake Oliver: [00:54:31] I got more listener feedback here.

David Leary: [00:54:32] I just keep.

Blake Oliver: [00:54:33] Going. Let's keep going. Lilian Yellow said. They made it so that we had to take 150 credit hours to sit for the CPA exams when before it was 120, which basically added 40 K and student loan debt. Also, there's an immense amount of offshoring to India going on, which is creating a decrease in learning experience for Americans and a decrease in support. Accounting overall is not as appealing as it once was, and it can be quite lonely when everyone else on your team is in another country. It makes it harder to learn valuable accounting and management skills when your when you can't understand half of what your coworkers are saying and they are only available a couple of hours of your time. And the main reason all this goes on is because the rich want to get richer at the expense of the middle and lower class. David Johnson said, Blake, hope you are doing well. I just wanted to write you a quick note. I was taking my kids 11 and 14 skiing a few weeks ago. The closest ski slope is about 1.5 hours away. I got in the car and Spotify started with the last thing I had been listening to the Cloud Accounting podcast.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:34] My kids are pretty quick to toss on headphones, so let it play and figured I could pick up the CPE on earmark. Later, about an hour into the drive, you or David made a funny comment. My son Cole, the 11 year old pipes up from the back seat that he wouldn't think of podcast about accounting could be as enjoyable as this was, and these guys are actually pretty funny. He spent most of the 3 hours we were in the car that day on the trip up and back listening to the Cloud Accounting podcast. Based on his feedback, I don't think he is going on to be a CPA, but I have a sneaking suspicion he is going to be expanding his use of chat. Gpt in his schoolwork based on the bit you all did about chat GPT and Jasper. I'm very supportive of using technology to eliminate work that can be completed by a bot, so no objection on my part with him expanding his use of tech.

David Leary: [00:56:21] And did he say Cole was 11 years old?

Blake Oliver: [00:56:23] 11 years old.

David Leary: [00:56:24] All right, cool. Hope for listening now. And you other 11 year olds that are out there when you graduate high school, graduate college, and you graduate with your accounting degree and you go to work as a CPA, I heard starting salaries are going to be 250,000 a year. That's what I've heard. So don't think of all this doom and gloom like there's hope for you because there's going to be so little amount of CPAs. Oh yeah, you can name whatever price you want.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:49] It's and that's the thing. I always have to say this for our listeners. I am extremely bullish on being an accountant and I think it's great to get the CPA if you can make it happen from a financial and time standpoint, it's fantastic. It's totally worth it. You know, I'm critical of the way that our profession is responding to the talent shortage by not acting drastically enough to open it up to more people because that's what we really need more people. But, you know, the shortage the shortage actually is great for individuals and you have unlimited opportunity as an individual accountant. It's just like our profession is suffering because if you're a firm owner, you can't recruit anybody, you know.

David Leary: [00:57:33] And clients ultimately suffer at the end. Client suffer some of the end clients, the help they need, small businesses go under. Like this is a major cog in the economic prosperity of the United States. And you brought this up two years ago, like like accounting really could be the collapse of the economy of the country.

Blake Oliver: [00:57:52] David ended with his email by saying, In any event, this is all to say that though you would that I thought you would appreciate that The Cloud Accounting Podcast isn't just for accountants. Awesome. Thank you so much. That makes my day. It really does.

David Leary: [00:58:05] We should end on that note.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:06] Okay, let's do it.

David Leary: [00:58:07] The future's.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:07] Good. David. If people want to track you down online, let you know what they think. Where can they do that?

David Leary: [00:58:13] David? Learn all the socials.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:15] And I am at Blake t Oliver, catch up with me on Twitter and LinkedIn. I love to be there. I'm also on Instagram. You can see a little bit more of my personal life. I like to go hiking and I like to sit outside in Arizona. So trying to get in shape. I want to do a 25 mile hike before it gets too hot.

David Leary: [00:58:35] Well, we have to get in shape. Here's why, Blake. Why we're going to be going to expensive con expensive con bathing suit case. We have to be in the Italian Italian bathing suit shape for expensive time.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:47] Yes, we have been. We have received our official invite to expensive con in Puglia, Italy. And David, who is the featured keynote speaker at expensive feature.

David Leary: [00:58:58] Keynote speaker is George Clooney. George Clooney, Who is he? We're going to make him do a video that says, Hey, kids, accounting is cool, but he might barely be too old. Like, my kids don't even know who he is. Like, I don't know if it's going to help when somebody younger, younger to say this.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:12] Maybe we can get them to do the intro to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. You know, that would be or or if we can't get him, we should at least get David Barrett to do it.

David Leary: [00:59:19] Well, I'll just find out from his PR, which I'm sure he needs, and at least get him in a shirt.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:23] Awesome. Thanks everyone, for joining us. Check us out here every week on YouTube live. Subscribe to YouTube and click on Notify on our live stream. So you get notified when we go live. And it was great chatting with you all. Thank you so much for joining us. Christopher Matt, Michael Jeppe, Trinity, Jennifer. Everyone who commented. Really great to have you here.

David Leary: [00:59:47] Time for the classifieds client Hub. Automatically send your clients a task for each expense or deposit marked as Uncategorized in QuickBooks. Your team will save hours of time. And the best part that it's free. Introducing the Free Client Hub Re Categories Plan Client Hub is bringing the freemium business model to accounting apps. They are so confident that you, your team and your clients will love the free Recategorized plan that will lead you to implement all the features of the award winning client hub into your firm's workflows and communications. Using client hub in your workflow is a guaranteed ROI, especially since it is free to schedule your demo. Go to Client Hubcap. That's Client Hub Dot App. Check out Hector Garcia's new app called Right Tool for QuickBooks Online. Instantly increase your productivity with keyboard shortcuts and more. It will save you seconds. The app is free and offers a pro version with additional batching tools. Check them out at right tool app. That's right. Tool dot app. R. I. G. H. T. T. O. L. Dot app. I'm The Cloud Accounting Podcast. Blake and I discussed the top accounting, bookkeeping and tax news stories each week. But for years we've always felt like there were so many federal tax related updates, changes, and news that we couldn't possibly ever talk about all of them on our podcast. Not to mention we probably lack the knowledge to go into the weeds about tax code and how it affects your clients.

David Leary: [01:01:07] The host, Roger Harris and Andy Schwab together have over 75 years of tax experience helping both individuals and small business owners navigate the complexities of the current tax law. Their expertise has been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Morning business report, Bloomberg Business News and Accounting Today. And even as it led to offering testimony before Congress on small business tax legislation. Listening to this podcast will save you time from scouring, digesting scores of blog sites or IRS news feeds while keeping you up to date on the latest federal tax information needed to run your tax practice and best serve your clients and to save you even more time. Cpa is in EA's Canada CPE and CC credits for Listen to this podcast. And don't worry, they're both fully Nazarene and IRS approved. Be sure to subscribe or follow the Federal Tax Updates podcast in your favorite podcast player today or head to federal tax updates. Dot com That's federal tax updates dot com. Want to get the word out about your newsletter webinar party, Facebook group podcast e-book, job posting or that fancy Excel macro you just created. Why not let the listeners The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by reading a classified ad but the show notes for the link to get more info.