The Accounting Podcast

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Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] Peter Buck faked 88% of its work papers for Evergrande, one of the largest companies in the world. So if the little guys can do it, so can the big boys. And I am saying, I bet you there's more of this out there. This cannot be an isolated incident.

David Leary: [00:00:20] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:26] Hello and welcome back to the Accounting Podcast, the number one podcast for accountants in the world. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: [00:00:32] I'm David Leary.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:34] And today, David, we are talking about three super exciting stories into it is going after NetSuite with its own ERP system. This is not QuickBooks. This is something new and you've got all the details. Then I want to talk about China getting fined, China getting fined, PwC getting fined in China. We've been all over the auditors with our recent episodes, and I think it is validated by this massive fine. Uh, about PwC's audit of Evergrande, which was, gosh, almost as bad as BF Borgers. David. It's like like a fake audit. It's incredible. And then finally, I want to talk about OpenAI's new model. They just released a new model that is smarter than the average human. What does that mean for the future of accounting and tax? When an AI model scores higher on an IQ test than most people? So let's start with the Intuit news. This is big in advance of Intuit Connect. What is going on? What have they released? What is out there?

David Leary: [00:01:41] First off, a big press release obviously, because that's how big corporations do stuff. So they basically have released a new product called Intuit Enterprise Suite. And sentence is a configurable suite of integrated financial products. So based on the press release, you can manage finances through AI powered insights and tools for multi entity mid-market businesses. Use the AI to automate planning tasks including cash flow management, budgeting, profit and loss forecasts and seconds. It's going to have a business performance dashboard and reports that are real time. Obviously, everybody's going to put AI in their press release, right? Who's not going to do a press release and have AI on it? Um, they're going to have industry tailored performance and profitability insights. Um, so a 360 degree view of a project management and financial data all in one place, um, including multi-dimensional reports and reports that are specifically just for the construction industry, which really bridges that gap. So many construction companies are still using QuickBooks desktop because it has this depth of job costing they need. Um, it's going to have MailChimp marketing technology. It's going to stay compliant. So they have their enterprise HR suite right into it as an HR suite for time tracking, insurance, payroll, all of that. Paid faster because they have the pay bills and they have their invoicing. So a. Lot of the features you already know from QuickBooks. And they're going to have specialized service and experts. So you as a business will have an assigned account manager, a customer success manager and a professional service expert. So you're getting kind of a team there.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:18] Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry, David, but you're listing off this, like, list of features, right? But like, I'm trying to understand, like, who is this for? What is this QuickBooks? Is this something else? Like what? What is this.

David Leary: [00:03:29] Exactly? Because that's how the press release. But what is Intuit Enterprise suite? So for starters, let's just talk about the look and the branding. We talked last week or two weeks ago that they can't call it QuickBooks, right. Because QuickBooks equals small business. So they came out. Now they've called it Intuit Enterprise Suite.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:45] But it says powered by QuickBooks.

David Leary: [00:03:47] Yes, it says powered by QuickBooks. So it's no longer green. It's that nice safe corporate blue and white that you know, all the ERPs tend to be that that look, that safe corporate look. Okay. So per the website, this is a little bit more of what it does. So multi entity management including intercompany transactions and consolidated reports.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:08] Okay. So that's something that QuickBooks doesn't do at all right now. It doesn't do it all multi entity okay.

David Leary: [00:04:12] So multi dimensional reporting up to 20 dimensions. That has not been done before right.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:18] Quickbooks just has classes and locations. Yeah.

David Leary: [00:04:20] Arguably the AI insights just feel pretty generic. You know like based on your past this should be a goal. It's just generic. Whatever.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:27] Who cares. Let's talk about like the real stuff.

David Leary: [00:04:28] And then it has fpna. So it's going to have budgets, cash flow revenue req and granular insights and then expanded roles and permissions. So it is truly a an ERP. And based on those features, it really sounds like these are the reasons people leave QuickBooks for Sage Intacct.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:45] Yes, they leave it for multi entity and they leave it for multiple dimensions. Yeah. And those are the two big reasons right. You expand to multiple locations as a restaurant. Now you need to you need to roll all that up, right? You need to consolidate. It's very difficult to do that in QuickBooks.

David Leary: [00:04:58] And they're going truly enterprise, right. No pricing. It's all contract sales, which I argue the contract pricing is a questionable move.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:10] I yeah, that disappoints me.

David Leary: [00:05:12] I I'd think they'd be better off just saying hey for 15 grand you get everything. Yeah. No negotiations none of that game. And then just so people just start rolling it out versus yes, they might be able to upsell people maybe to 25 K, but most are probably going to come in lower than that. So do we.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:29] Have any idea what this is going to be priced at?

David Leary: [00:05:31] We have no idea. We have no idea what it's going to be priced at. I think before when we talked about it, it's probably 12 to 15. I think we talked about that two episodes ago from their um, conference call. Um, but I also argued like, oh, go ahead. Sorry.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:46] Oh, I was just going to say like, so this like our live stream viewer, Light Em Up says sounds like NetSuite And this is exactly what we were speculating about when we came back from Sweet World a week or two ago, and we were talking about Intuit's rebrand of QuickBooks connect they are going to release. We've been hearing rumors that they're going to release a new product aimed at those QuickBooks customers that are ready to switch to NetSuite, because it's such a huge market and it's such a valuable market. And all you need is a few tens of thousands of customers to be like a multi-billion dollar company. Like just that. Just that segment.

David Leary: [00:06:25] Yeah. Next week has 40,000 customers, and I think they probably do $3.8 billion in revenue on 40,000.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:30] Whereas QuickBooks has millions and millions and millions of customers and is doing what do we even do you remember offhand? Yeah.

David Leary: [00:06:37] 4 or 5, six, 10 billion. Right, right. It depends on the ecosystem.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:40] Yeah. But they have to have way more customers. So anyway. Yeah. Okay. So so I just want to recap. So we've got multi entity Multi-dimensions rev rec Payroll and HR is built in. Uh, payments and bill pay is going to be built in. And then MailChimp, MailChimp stuff, you get MailChimp included, even though it.

David Leary: [00:07:02] Doesn't show that on the website at all, which I find is strange. No, I.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:05] See it here.

David Leary: [00:07:06] Just the logo, right?

Blake Oliver: [00:07:07] It says Powered by MailChimp.

David Leary: [00:07:09] Yeah, but you don't actually see any list of MailChimp features. You got to go to the MailChimp website to get all that.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:14] It's right right.

David Leary: [00:07:15] Here. Oh, I have it there. Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:16] Yeah. So but it's basically just.

David Leary: [00:07:17] Oh, you have a different website than I get. They might be a B testing a website.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:22] Well so you go to Intuit. Com slash enterprise. And you know it's funny they don't call it an ERP. But if you look at the header or the title of the tab, it's enterprise resource planning ERP software.

David Leary: [00:07:33] Pause right there. And then if you click the accountants one though what they call it is best ERP for accounting firms is the name of the website. Hmm. I think you have a different website than I get, so they might be a B testing some stuff here.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:45] Interesting. Well, so I'm curious what the accountant pricing will be. They are offering $1,500 for every new signed contract to an accounting firm.

David Leary: [00:07:56] So I'm glad you bring this up for accounting firms, because I could argue Intuit doesn't understand this market based on who they're selling to and who they're selling to. If you really go back to the main page, there's a big button for accountants, okay. They're really trying to market this to accountants. They have a they want accountants, their existing accountants to push this right. The best ERP for accounting firms. They give accountants suggestions for who is a good fit. Operating multiple US based entities, generating $3 million in annual revenue needs multi-dimensional reporting, right. They're trying to tell firms the existing accountants, right. Retain long term clients and attract new, valuable clients along the way. Continue to scale. They're really pushing that. Obviously you just brought up the spiff. They're paying that. But you and I have both now attended the last 5 or 6 years in tax conference and net suites. Right. Mhm. And we hardly have seen any virtual CFOs or cast practices there. But there's thousands of in-house accountants controllers possibly CFOs IT people. Right. And why is that. It's because once those companies grow to that size, they bring all the accounting in-house. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:12] When you go multi-location, you often bring it in-house. Although I think there's an argument to be made at the very like lower mid-market, there are still a lot of top 400 accounting firms that are doing the books. So. So this product is really best for those regional accounting firms or midsize accounting firms. The top 400. Now that's still like the very like 1% of accounting firms, because there is something like 40,000 CPA firms in this country. So the top 400 is what you'd be going after with this kind of product. This actually the way they're positioning. This is how Sage Intacct positions itself as a product for accountants to use with clients. So this is more of a competitor to Sage Intacct than NetSuite, if you ask me.

David Leary: [00:09:59] I'd agree on that. And that's probably the next space in the pricing. Yep.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:04] And Intacct we know is lower priced than NetSuite. I believe it is in general. And they have an accountant partner program that NetSuite has sort of I don't know if they've gotten rid of it or what, but they don't advertise it.

David Leary: [00:10:15] And what's interesting is like that marketing feels like it's targeting these controllers and in-house accountants yet. And maybe that's just the way the website is. But anyway, like NetSuite and Intacct attack things is have you outgrown QuickBooks? Yeah, I think Intuit's going to have to sell against QuickBooks to sell this product. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:34] Well, they're going to have to get people to migrate, right? Move from QuickBooks to this product. And that's we see that NetSuite, just like every single webinar they do that I see seems to be like, have you outgrown QuickBooks? It's time to move to NetSuite. They are super on that. So, you know, if Intuit can just retain a bunch of those customers and keep them on this product, they'll win. And NetSuite is really expensive. And really, you know, old at this point, you know, the code base is like 20 or 30 years old. This could be I don't I'm not really sure. Like, what is this built on? Is this all new?

David Leary: [00:11:07] This is just QuickBooks blue and white. It's very clear.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:11] So you think it's the same code base?

David Leary: [00:11:12] It's QuickBooks. All the apps still work.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:15] It's all QuickBooks is not designed like the GL is not set up for multi entity. They must have done something. And this is what I want to find out when we go to Intuit Connect David you and I need to make it our mission to understand the back end and front end technology of this. Because that's going to make a huge difference as to like whether this thing can grow and scale, because QuickBooks, the code base is not you cannot. It doesn't work unless.

David Leary: [00:11:40] It doesn't.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:41] Work for enterprise.

David Leary: [00:11:42] To market it. No, it's.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:43] So QuickBooks doesn't work because you can't convert from cash to accrual properly. The code base is not designed to do that. And in a big business, you need to be able to have proper cruel and cash conversions. And QuickBooks can't do it. So I want to find out how this is all how they did this.

David Leary: [00:11:59] How did you how did you make this happen? I sure hope that.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:02] They didn't just repackage QuickBooks. I hope that they, you know, redesigned the GL or you know.

David Leary: [00:12:09] I possibly some there's some engineering stuff on the covers, but on the surface it just looks like a repackaged QuickBooks. Honestly, Tyler.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:16] In the live stream says can it just be the same thing but new dimensions that you can segment access and usage by users? Doesn't that just solve the multi entity issue? Uh, I from a from a tech standpoint, uh, there's some like really challenging aspects of having more than a couple of dimensions. It creates a huge amount of complexity when you're creating reports that they have to address. So I don't see how they could have done this with just like the old QuickBooks and just added more dimensions because they could do that. They would have done that already in QuickBooks. Yeah.

David Leary: [00:12:54] You know, and Intacct was built from that way day one. Right. They've been multi dimensional since the first day. They were the way they were engineered.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:02] So my hope is that it's a new code base. Um yeah. So go ahead David I want to wrap this up and then let's move on to W-2.

David Leary: [00:13:10] So one thing I don't like is the secretive part of this. I don't like the pricing. Pricing.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:14] God, you know, that's the worst part about enterprise software is you can't get pricing. You don't know what pricing you're getting is fair. You have to go hire an analyst and pay them money to tell you what you should pay. Like, it's just not friendly to customers. And I would think that like Intuit would be better about that.

David Leary: [00:13:30] They had a chance to be different and they chose not to be. And even the FAQs. A simple question how does Intuit Enterprise Suite differ from QuickBooks Online Advanced? You'd expect to see some chart with all the check marks of the features. No, you must book a call. It's scheduled consultation. It's all this enterprise. Secretive. Like you want to see a feature chart, right? Yeah. It would be very helpful to you and I right now if.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:51] Anyone from Intuit is listening, if you want to come on the show and answer these questions for us in advance of the conference, because that's not until next month. I would love.

David Leary: [00:14:01] To wait that long.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:02] But I want to know, what's the code base? You know, how is this structured for multi entity like like what did you do. And accountants want to know too. We want to know how it works under under the covers you know and.

David Leary: [00:14:15] I have like four more bullets and then we'll move on okay. They will do the migration from your old ERP to get you all the way through your months. First your first months close, you can use your existing Qbo Qbo dashboard so the accountants can access the QuickBooks Enterprise Suite clients through the existing Qbo, which that tells me it's probably just QuickBooks. Um, they have an innovation showcased on October 10th and another event, Enterprise Suite Training on October 16th. So these are marketed to accountants, these two events? Um, none of the feature pages really talk about the MailChimp features like in depth. So it's like now you got to go to MailChimp site to see all the 20 things MailChimp does, which I thought was kind of strange. And they may have caused themselves an enterprise SEO problem, because if you search for Intuit Enterprise Suite on YouTube, there's thousands of QuickBooks enterprise videos you're going to get, like people are going to probably get driven to QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise just because it's such a strong brand. And that's the problem of dropping the QuickBooks brand. It's just too strong.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:16] Yeah, my biggest concern is that they just are like giving you a suite where you can create multiple QuickBooks online files, and then the reporting that's consolidated is not like the GL. It's not a single GL with multiple dimensions for the entities that it's like multiple GLS where it's all rolling up in some reporting and that doesn't work because you need to have like elimination accounts. And if they're not all in the same GL, it gets really complicated. And and it's not true consolidation. And I may not be explaining it well but like that's why Intact and NetSuite are powerful.

David Leary: [00:15:52] And this is really your question is this really a new product code under the covers or is it just a bundle marketing product?

Blake Oliver: [00:16:00] If it's a bundle of marketing product, I don't think it'll work. That's what my gut says, because it won't be able to do the advanced stuff that accountants need, and that's why they go to Intacct or NetSuite.

David Leary: [00:16:11] So stay tuned everybody.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:13] All right, let's talk about a giant screw up.

David Leary: [00:16:18] Uh oh. We should do an ad before we do. Oh, yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:20] Do an ad. Okay. Uh, do you want me to read this one?

David Leary: [00:16:23] If you want to read it, I'll put the link in. Yep.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:25] All right, so this is live Flow. Thank you so much. Live flow for sponsoring the, uh, podcast. Oh, and by the way, if you need to do Consolidations of multiple QuickBooks files. You don't have to wait or upgrade to enterprise resource suite. You can just do it with Live Flow. Are you a QuickBooks fan or do you prefer Xero? Well, I've got some exciting news for you. Live flow now syncs QuickBooks and Xero to Google Sheets and Excel. You might already know that Live Flow has been a game changer for thousands of accountants and their clients, automating financial reporting from QuickBooks Online to Google Sheets. But if you were an Excel user or on Xero, you were kind of left out until now. Now you can use Live Flow to connect Google Sheets to QuickBooks online link, Microsoft Excel to QuickBooks online sync, Google Sheets with Xero, and even connect Microsoft Excel to zero. And here's something that'll blow your mind. You can create consolidated reports for clients who have only, oh, for clients who have one entity on QuickBooks online and another on Xero, so you can consolidate across Gl's. Live flow can speak both at the same time, and your reports and custom dashboards automatically sync in real time. Whether your team, Google Sheets, Team Excel, teams, QuickBooks, or Team Zero or any combo of these, and you're ready to take your financial reporting to the next level and get 25% off your first three months. Head over to The Accounting Podcast dot promo slash live flow that is The Accounting Podcast dot promo forward slash live flow. Okay, let's talk about PwC in China and what is arguably one of the largest audit failures of all time. And isn't it appropriate that we were just talking about the misaligned incentives of auditors on the show a couple of weeks ago? Here's what happened this month. Chinese regulators imposed a six month suspension on PwC's China unit and levied a record fine of ¥441 million. That's about 62 million USD, and that's due to its audit failures related to China Evergrande Group, it is the largest penalty ever imposed on a Big four accounting firm in China.

David Leary: [00:18:39] Can you pause and just quickly recap Evergrande again? I always forget is that the city that buildings they built. And is that.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:45] Evergrande is one of the largest property developers in China and grew rapidly in China's urbanization boom. It also became one of the world's most indebted property property developers, and its liabilities exceeded 335 billion by two 2023. So Evergrande is buying all this money, or borrowing all this money and building a giant high rises all through China. And you may have seen these videos of these high rises that are just empty, entire cities that could have.

David Leary: [00:19:21] Abandoned cities.

Blake Oliver: [00:19:21] A million people that are just completely empty and unfinished. Well, a lot of that is Evergrande. And um, Basically, in 2021, Evergrande defaulted on its debts and in August of 2023, it filed for bankruptcy. Uh, and PwC was the auditor of Evergrande for years, and the Chinese regulator found that the firm, quote, turned a blind eye and even tolerated Evergrande's fraudulent activities during audits conducted in 2019 and 2020. So what was happening here is that, uh, Evergrande overstated its revenues by about $78 billion between 2018 and 2020. The regulator found that the auditors did not maintain professional skepticism or perform adequate due diligence. Pwc issued false audit reports that inaccurately portrayed Evergrande's financial health. Many audit records were unreliable, and some properties were reported as completed when they were still vacant land during inspections, so the auditors went out to home sites. The land was vacant and on their audit reports, they they they took it. They wrote it down as completed properties.

David Leary: [00:20:51] I'm just imagining this because. And I don't know what, uh, part of audit that's considered when you go do the physical inventory counts, but you have to physically verify things. So yeah, they went there. Is the building there yes or no? And they checked. Yes. Even though.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:07] It was. Yeah.

David Leary: [00:21:08] Wow. So.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:13] It's pretty it's pretty spectacular actually. Just how how bad this is like for PwC. Um, I want to find the detail. There was a number here, something like 88% of the work papers. I got to find this. Yeah. The Csrc, the Chinese regulator. They highlighted that 88% of PwC's observations, that's what they're called. Observations regarding Evergrande's real estate projects were either fabricated or inaccurate. 88%. Pwc also excluded certain properties designated by Evergrande as off limits from its audit samples. So Evergrande told PwC on their spreadsheet, you know, don't go look at this one. Don't go look at this one. Don't go look at this one. So like this is a super basic fraud. And the auditors were completely in on it. Like that's what makes this truly atrocious. This is worse than Enron, right? Because in Enron, we saw Arthur Andersen turn a blind eye to a lot of the complex, you know, financial engineering that, Enron was doing, but it's not clear that the auditors were actually complicit in the fraud. This is like aiding and abetting.

David Leary: [00:22:38] Somebody says, don't look at this. And then you say, okay, I won't look at it. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. You're you're aiding and abetting.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:44] So Evergrande is reporting billions and billions of dollars of property as completed in order to recognize revenue. And it wasn't done there either incomplete or, you know, not built at all. And meanwhile they're stacking on debt. They're taking on more and more debt to pay the bills. And it's just getting out of control. And the auditors help them do this. Pwc help them do this. So what's the fine for PwC? You would think people would be going to jail, right? No, of course not. No individuals are ever held accountable for this. So it's like a $68 million fine. Is that what I said? Or a million? 62 million? 60. Something like that. And then PwC is, I guess, suspended from doing work for six months, which I don't know how you do audits with your existing clients if you can't do any work for six months. So basically PwC China might be finished, but still, like the only thing that's happened so far to the partners is I think like six partners were fired and five staff members were fired. So think of how many like hundreds of people must have been complicit in this. And that's it. You get fired.

David Leary: [00:24:04] Like the the fine. Yes, it's 62 million. But from a brand perspective, like these stories just don't stop. No. At what point does this just flat out kill these companies, or does it matter? Because people are. It's the monopoly. You have to get an audit. You got to buy an audit from one of these companies.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:20] Well, yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter. You have to buy an audit and then like look at the fine. So the fine is 60 something million US, right. What was PwC's PwC China's, you know, annual revenue. Let's see if perplexity I can help find this information. So they made 1.1 billion in 2022. That's just the China unit. So 60 something million versus 1.1 billion. How is that going to change behavior. That's not even 10% of their revenue for a single year. That's a cost of doing business fine.

David Leary: [00:25:00] So until it's probably not even as much as they charged Evergrande. Yeah. No they had Evergrande for years. They were getting 5 to 10 million a year from them.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:09] Oh they had way more than that I bet. Right. So so I mean now to be fair, the suspension the bad PR might kill the firm in China. It's possible. But like, shouldn't we be holding the partners accountable and putting them in jail? This is fraud. There they are helping Evergrande defraud investors. And investors have lost a ton of money and individuals in China. Families in China who invested in the real estate boom are totally screwed and have lost their life savings. This is affecting millions and millions and millions of people in China and foreign investors who put in money as well. You know it as space turkey and the chat says it's just cogs. It's just the cost of goods sold. And guess what? You can buy insurance for that. And will PwC global be held accountable for this? You can bet they won't be, because they set everything up so that each firm is independent and just licenses the brand from the global organization.

David Leary: [00:26:18] That's what Trump does. That Trump his Trump University is Trump this Trump. Yeah. It's they just licensed the brand Trump and then they're on their own entity. And if they screw up he's separate from it. Yeah that's a good business model. Like good enough for the big four to follow.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:34] So this is you know, this is just like I mean, this is worse than just what we were talking about in past episodes when it comes to, like, bad audio quality. Like, this is just total fraud. Um, and it's shameful and it's embarrassing. And I would be embarrassed to have PwC on my resume, but apparently it doesn't matter, you know? So I wonder, like, our listener got angry who wrote that letter to us from E! That manager at E said, you know, it's totally unprofessional to compare all firms to BF Borgers, the firm that faked 1500 sec public company audits. Well, this is the same thing. Pwc faked 88% of its work papers for Evergrande, one of the largest companies in the world. So if the little guys can do it, so can the big boys. And I am saying, I bet you there's more of this out there. This cannot be an isolated incident.

David Leary: [00:27:28] And what I'm trying to comprehend here are to do these sham audits. There's so much profit in it that you don't even need to get a kickback. Like, there's no there's no accusations of, like, oh, they were sliding their money to the side. They were you know, there's none of that going on. Like side money, buying people off, transferring money to individuals at these firms. No, no. The profit margins are so big that it. It's kind of the same thing.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:56] Auditors get paid over the table. Yeah. For helping to perpetuate a fraud. Right. They don't even have to do it under the covers. And they're protected by law. That's what's crazy about it. So, David, I want to make sure that we have time for thanking our next sponsor. So do you think we should do an ad before we go on?

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Blake Oliver: [00:29:40] Thank you so much. Small Business Research Institute Heather Smith says Australian accountants have had lots of additional requirements dropped on them like for hours, ethics, CPE each year, each three years directly due to the PwC debacle in Australia. Generally, Aussie accountants are not happy. Yeah. Oh, so PwC screws up and does unethical stuff and now all accountants, you know have to pay for it. Meanwhile, the partners are not held accountable or put in jail. I say lock em up. Lock em up, lock em up.

David Leary: [00:30:16] The governing board of accountants in Australia, the leadership of that was also a little corrupt, too. I don't know. Heather can confirm with a yes or no on that in the chat.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:24] Payton says as long as PwC is still an acceptable audit, then nothing will happen. If anything, more companies will use PwC because they are known for hiding stuff. That becomes your brand, right? We're we'll help you. We'll help you hide your fraud.

David Leary: [00:30:38] They're fixers. We're fixers. Fixers.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:41] All right, so let's talk about what happened in India. Anna Sebastian Peril, a 26 year old chartered accountant from Kerala, passed away in July of 2024, reportedly due to work related stress while employed at EY in Pune. Her death has sparked significant public outrage and prompted a government investigation into working conditions at the company she worked. She joined EY in March For and was part of the audit team at the member firm of EY Global in India. Within four months, she succumbed to what her family describes as overwhelming work pressure. Her mother publicly accused EY of maintaining a toxic work environment that glorified overwork and neglected employee well-being, and she wrote a viral email to EY India CEO Rajiv Memani, and she described how her daughter faced excessive workloads, anxiety, sleeplessness and stress shortly after starting her job, and apparently nobody from EY attended her funeral. It was only after this letter that EY expressed deep sadness over her death, and stated that it is taking the family's concerns seriously. So it doesn't happen too often. But every now and then the big four kill people due to stress and overwork. And I know that, uh, in India. You know, we are exporting the Big Four model to India because we don't have enough people here in the US, and the conditions can be even far worse than they are here, right along the lines of JP Morgan Chase in the US, where they recently capped banker hours at 80 per week because apparently people were working more than 80 hours per week and it was causing people to have health issues. Oh, I'm getting corrected on my pronunciation. So it's Pune, right? Pune. Thank you. Space turkey and beat digging cougar. I love these usernames. Oh my god, these are the best YouTube usernames.

David Leary: [00:32:51] What was interesting about her letter? She went out of the way to call out. Apparently EA has an EA global Human Rights statement, and some parts of this statement are things like health and safety. The right of all people to enjoy a physically and In psychologically safe work environment, labor rights, the right of all people to just and favorable terms of employment. It's kind of interesting that she called out their own lip service policies, if you want to call it that, that they've published and signed.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:22] It's it's total hypocrisy. And I don't understand why, as a society, we consider it acceptable for a knowledge worker who works in front of a computer to work 60, 70, 80 or more hours a week. And if you asked factory workers to do that, you'd say, that's totally unacceptable. Just because somebody works in front of a computer or does work with their brain, doesn't mean that it's healthy to do that excessively. Like, there's a reason that we have overtime labor protections in the United States because for hundreds of years. People died from overwork and suffered health problems. And even if you don't die like you know, we know that just one person dying at a Big Four firm is a symptom of a much bigger disease across the entire employee base. Like how much how much mental health problems does it cause for people to be working excessively? Physical health problems. You know, we know that partners, when they retire, they don't actually live that long on average because they've been overworking for all those years. Yeah. Um, it's just so bad. Like, we have to acknowledge this as a profession, and it's going to take society leaders. It's going to take national accounting association leaders, and to put pressure on the big firms to change their behavior because they aren't going to do it because it will cost them money to do it. And and that might mean like lobbying for overtime wage protections or limits on hours. And I wish that our leaders had the courage to do this. You know, uh, I mean, that's.

David Leary: [00:35:11] Eli made a statement. Um, and I liked how, uh, going concern framed it. They basically they made a statement saying nothing's going to change without saying nothing's ever going to change, right? Right. I mean, it's.

Blake Oliver: [00:35:23] Words, right? Until you actually make a policy.

David Leary: [00:35:27] Like this person was a chartered accountant, right. Um, the AICPA is working with accounting training programs to produce CPAs in India by the 40,000 a year, whatever. They're maybe a month. I don't know, they're pumping them out like crazy, right? Yeah. But where's AICPA statement on this? Like, where's the leadership statement about like decrying this?

Blake Oliver: [00:35:50] Where's the AICPA statement on PwC's audit failure in China? Don't they have something to say about it? It's kind of big news. What are they doing to.

David Leary: [00:36:00] Arguably the biggest accounting story? It's very big right? Yeah. In years, it was humongous.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:04] I mean, it's all over the place and there's nothing. Silence. And I find that to be complicit. Right. If you don't say anything, you're basically saying it's okay. One of our listeners here says that, uh, eclipse says she joined EA after cracking one of the toughest exams in India. The Indian chartered accountant, just to have cleared the exam that has a less than 15% pass rate. She had a tough mind, but EA went beyond. So EA was able to kill somebody who had a was tough enough to pass an exam with a less than 15% pass rate. It's crazy how different the dangers are based on occupation. Cops and firefighters tend to die from occupational related issues health, safety, environmental and mental health. Yeah, we seem to prioritize like physical danger. But we fail to prioritize mental health in in occupational safety. But I would argue that, you know, mental health is just as important as physical health because it impacts your physical health. And that's what happened in this case. Um, there is a price that is not being recognized, right? Uh, and that's why I tell people, when you go work for a big firm, be fully aware of the price that you are paying or like what you are contributing that you're not getting compensated for, which is your mental health and your physical health. If you are working those hours, just be aware of that. And if you actually calculate that into what you're getting paid, I don't think it's worth it. So, David, do we have another ad to read?

David Leary: [00:37:54] Yeah, we have a new ad. Let's thank our.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:57] Is this our final sponsor?

David Leary: [00:37:58] Final sponsor for this episode.

Blake Oliver: [00:38:00] Thank you. Safe send. I'm happy to read this one. Okay. If you're like most of us in the industry. Tax season can feel like an uphill battle against paperwork, client follow ups, and endless administrative tasks. But what if I told you there's a tool that can revolutionize your entire tax process? Enter safe. Send one. A comprehensive solution that automates everything from engagement letters and file transfers to e-signatures and tax return assembly and delivery. They've recently introduced an AI driven gathering capability, taking efficiency to a whole new level. Safe send enhances client engagement during the information gathering phase and increases completion rates with digital organizers. You can even automate reminders and distribute K-1s electronically with Safe send one. Firms are seeing 94% of E-signatures completed within 15 days. Firms are able to assemble and deliver returns in an impressive 3 to 4 minutes, and for 1040 tax returns, there's a 97% Quba success rate. But here's what really catches my attention. Firms using safe spend are saving approximately $12,000 for every 1000 returns processed. That is a significant boost to your bottom line. Safe send one seamlessly works with industry standard software like CCH, Axcess, Ultra Text, CSS and Lessert. It's no wonder that 70% of the top 100 accounting firms have adopted this technology. Safe send one has already facilitated the delivery of 6.5 million tax returns. If you're ready to transform your tax workflow and reclaim valuable time, check out their live demos. Head over to The Accounting Podcast. Promote safe send that is The Accounting Podcast dot promo. Forward slash. Safe send.

David Leary: [00:39:46] Thank you. Safe. Send.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:48] Thank you.

David Leary: [00:39:49] Refreshed with a little drink there. Blake. Did you want to jump into your OpenAI store? Did you have some listener mail that may be related to the big four?

Blake Oliver: [00:39:56] So we have listener mail, but we also have two stories we have to get back to, which is or get to before we end, which is the OpenAI new model. And then one of our listeners, Tyler, pointed out the new draft of the competency based framework by Nasba, and I want to hit on that. So let's try to do both before we finish, and then maybe we'll do a listener episode or something. Okay. Uh, so OpenAI released a new model called I think it's called O1 or strawberry, and I've been playing around with it. It's available now in ChatGPT teams, so it's a little limited. You can't upload files to it, but you can prompt it with text. And it's built on the same, uh, model as GPT four, which is the previous model. But what it does that is really interesting is that it introduces chain of thought prompting automatically. So the old model, if you needed it to do something complex, you had to break down your prompts into small ones and do one prompt. Get a response. Do one prompt. Get a response. Do one prompt. Get a response. And that's actually like the tool that I built to help us at earmark doing CP courses. Well, this new model has built in chain of thought. So it will look at your prompt and then come up with a series of prompts and prompt itself so you don't have to come up with the chain. You know, you don't have to do that work. And apparently just that alone makes it way smarter than the previous model. And this has been quantified by researchers who put these models through IQ tests. Uh, and I want to share on the screen here for you this chart. So are you.

David Leary: [00:41:49] Bringing that up? Uh, I've used it once, and there's just something like a smoothness or a polish in the results you get that you didn't get from the previous. Yes, the generative tools that were out there, they're just you can't really put your finger on it. It just feels smoother or more polished. And I don't know, it's very subjective, but you can sense that there's something different.

Blake Oliver: [00:42:13] It's because it's reviewing its own work and correcting itself. So just like you might write a paragraph, email and then look at it and edit it and clean it up before you send it, that's what this model is capable of doing. Whereas previously it would just generate the first draft and then you'd have to prompt it to clean it up and tell it exactly what to do. Right. This model can figure out how to get to the end result that you want through a series of steps. That's the best way I can explain it. And so the result is shocking. This is a chart of IQ test results of different AI models.

David Leary: [00:42:54] Can you zoom in? Yeah, it's.

Blake Oliver: [00:42:56] By tracking AI. Org. And. So IQ is a bell curve and the average IQ is supposedly 100. So if you give an IQ test to 100 people, you know 80 of them will get like close to with close to 100 within like one standard deviation. I think actually don't quote me on that. But it's so a bell curve is we have a rule.

David Leary: [00:43:32] No math in the show. Definitely no statistics.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:34] On the show statistics. Right. So basically like, you know, the most people are at 100. And then as you go down the bell curve you get up to like the, the geniuses. And there's so few of those right. Like above 140 IQ like hardly anybody gets that. Right. And same thing on the other end. Right. Is it slopes down, you know. You get to like 60 IQ and you know hardly anybody is is has that low in IQ. Right. Um, that would probably be considered like, you know, difficult to hold a job. Right. So most of the models on this chart, you see there on the left hand side before 100, they're like going up the slope. Oh one has an IQ of 120. That's way smarter than the average person. Well not way smarter, but it's pretty darn smart. Um, and that's why you've seen guys like Jason Statts posting on Twitter and on LinkedIn about how they've, you know, he gave bookkeeping tasks and financial analysis tasks to GPT 001, and it's doing a really good job. And I've been playing around with this. It's doing a really good job like better than an average Person above average, and that is stage two of AI development. Like there's I think five stages that have been defined for AI. And we are already at stage two with ChatGPT one, where it can perform individual tasks better than your average human, such as answering, you know, questions on a test.

David Leary: [00:45:16] So the average it's not perfect, right? Just do some quick research. But the average jeopardy contestant is 115. Yeah. You want to think about this bell curve where people are landing? Oh, one is 121.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:27] And ChatGPT four. Let's see where is. Gpt four. Omni is 91. So that's the previous model. And sonnet cloud 3.5. Sonnet is 91. So the models that we've all been using, if you've signed up for these apps are like 91 intelligence, which is why you have to like multi-step prompt it, but with one you don't have to do that as much. So I cannot wait for this to become available via the API to us, because we're just going to like, go crazy with it. Like people are already using GPT four. Oh for financial statement analysis, variance analysis, and I can't even imagine how good it's going to be with oh one.

David Leary: [00:46:13] Yeah, I saw Microsoft was self bragging about Copilot, but their about their internal teams. So their finance department which is about 5000 people are the biggest users of Copilot kind of at Microsoft. And the biggest top use case is reconciling data in Excel. Right. But you're right. Like as more and more of this rolls out, it's just more of us using it and getting those, those benefits.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:37] So, you know, the question is, of course, well, is this going to eliminate accounting and accountants? And I mean, it's hard to predict far into the future when we get stage three, 4 or 5 eyes, but this model is going to be way more expensive when it's released through the API than GPT four. It's like three times as expensive, something like $15 per million tokens. So it's not cheap. And I was listening to Elon Musk on Lex Fridman's podcast. He was saying that the biggest constraint with AI is going to be energy production and storage, because it takes so much electricity. It's very inefficient still. And so, um, it's going to be cost. That's the constraint on running these things. So unless we somehow magically figure out how to like double or triple our energy capacity in the next few years, it's more likely we will be using these tools for very discrete tasks. So like I've always said, AI agents that handle accounts payable or accounts receivable, these are the jobs that we struggle to fill right now. Is these sort of like basic day to day bookkeeping, accounting, jobs, running payroll, updating HR systems like these are going to be agents that have access into our ERP systems, our accounting systems and can go and like, do that, work for us and report back to us and we review it and approve it. So it's going to actually be very familiar to the Big Four people here in the US who are used to working with offshore teams, because that's basically what they're doing anyway. And maybe it'll be more reliable, I don't know.

David Leary: [00:48:16] I heard an argument from Hector Garcia the other day on some podcast. It might have been his own podcast, not the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, but he was talking about like, AI is just going to get to the point where it's good enough and the business owners and the IRS are both going to be like, good enough. And then because us as accountants, we want everything precise and perfect. But if the the bookkeeping is done good enough by the bot and the IRS is like, yeah, you paid enough of your taxes, it feels good enough. Nobody's going to care that it's not perfect accounting. And that's the risk of the value accountants bring. Like, now people aren't going to value the perfect accounting. You don't need it, right?

Blake Oliver: [00:48:54] So if audits are so bad, then it'll be very easy to replace auditors with AI. Because I can do can pass that bar really easily. Right. Like an AI could probably have successfully observed evergrande's sites with a drone and reported to the investors and not, you know, lied. Uh, actually on that on that theme, David, we have a new report about Waymo, the driverless car company that's all over Phoenix. Now, uh, Waymo's driverless cars have a significantly lower rate of injury causing crashes compared to human drivers with fewer than one injury causing crash per million miles driven. Waymo is reporting that typical human drivers in San Francisco and Phoenix would have caused 64 crashes over the same 22 million miles that Waymo's driverless cars traveled. Highlighting the safety advantage of Waymo's technology. So Waymo had 22 crashes, about or 23 severe incidents. Human drivers would have caused three times as many, and 16 of the 23 severe incidents were caused by rear end collisions. So it's actually humans hitting the Waymo's. Waymo's aren't hitting anyone. Isn't that crazy? So even though they're not perfect and we see videos of them like going the wrong way into traffic every now and then, or going into a construction site, or like doing something stupid. We should roll these out immediately if we believe in data, because we will save lives.

David Leary: [00:50:28] Because usually when it's in one of those weird situations, it's going very slow. Exactly. It's confused. It's very slow. It makes the wrong turn, but it's doing it at like two miles an hour. Yeah, it doesn't make those mistakes. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:50:38] And human drivers are notorious for doing really dumb stuff. And the Waymo cars don't do that. They don't speed, you know, they don't. They don't weave in and out of traffic. They don't drive drunk like we would we I think current traffic fatality rates like or injuries, it's like tens of thousands of people die every year in traffic accidents. We could save thousands of lives every year just by enabling these cars everywhere.

David Leary: [00:51:08] And even some of the technology that auto braking technology. So you stop rerenting people, right? Even just rolling that out to cars, they don't have to be self-driving. But that technology would be huge, Hunter says.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:19] Why would you create driverless cars instead of just building public transit infrastructure? Well, that's a very specific to every, you know, metro kind of question. I'll tell you that in Phoenix, we are not dense enough to support public transit in any way. It doesn't make any sense financially to do it. And actually electric driverless cars, you know, if we build enough nuclear power plants, it's way more efficient than arguably.

David Leary: [00:51:43] Any city outside the tri state area. Yeah. In this country cannot use mass. Mass transit doesn't work. I mean.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:50] I really hope like that, that Phoenix continues to innovate in this area because we're going to have driverless cars traveling all over the city, taking us wherever we want to go. And hopefully we continue to build out our energy infrastructure here with nuclear so that it's affordable. And, you know, sure, it's hot here, but if we have enough AC cooling us down, it's good.

David Leary: [00:52:14] I saw somebody get dropped off at Ikea in Phoenix with a driver with a Waymo car. That was kind of thinking, well, how did they leave Ikea? Now is there going to be room for the stuff they buy?

Blake Oliver: [00:52:22] I live like 25 minutes from the airport, and I can take a Waymo now almost to my house. The cut off is like right at my neighborhood. Like, I can go to the gas station on the corner, but I can't go to my house. I cannot wait until I can order a Waymo to my house. It's going to really change, like car ownership. I would probably only have one car if I could just call a Waymo on demand. And there was one parked, like, you know, at the gas station nearby. Always. Um, okay, let's talk about this Nasbe AICPA thing, because we've got movement on the 150 hour rule. The AICPA and Nasba are proposing a new competency based experience model for CPA licensure to enhance flexibility for candidates while ensuring the profession standards are upheld. So the way this would work, according to the Journal of Accountancy, is that it would create a another pathway to CPA licensure where instead of having to go get a master's or go get the additional 30 credits, you could have a bachelor's degree with 100 and you could just have a bachelor's degree. I don't think the hours would be counted. You get one year of experience, you pass the CPA exam and then you have to do a bunch of paperwork. You have to, in your firm, get somebody to sign off on all of these competencies.

David Leary: [00:53:48] But did you see that? Did you open up the PDF and look at that?

Blake Oliver: [00:53:51] Uh oh. There's a PDF to open up. I just read the.

David Leary: [00:53:54] There's no it's basically a two page document where you just check off. David is ethical. David seriously has leadership. You just say yes or no.

Blake Oliver: [00:54:02] That's what all it's going to be.

David Leary: [00:54:04] That's what my impression was based on the PDF.

Blake Oliver: [00:54:08] Well, so where do they have is there like where where in the where in.

David Leary: [00:54:14] I'm trying to get back to the link because.

Blake Oliver: [00:54:16] I see here it is. There's a certification form. Oh this is funny. I didn't realize that they had actually released the certification form.

David Leary: [00:54:22] Okay. At the bottom of the PDF. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:54:24] Okay. So I'm going to share the screen here. And we'll do this in the time we have left.

David Leary: [00:54:29] You can do it for me. Let's see if I can qualify.

Blake Oliver: [00:54:32] So appendix B draft CPA competency based experience certification form. So you would have to like, get somebody to sign off on this in your firm. It would be a CPA. So you have to put in like your information. And then somebody's going to sign off on it. And you you have these professional competencies. Okay. Competency one ethical behavior CPAs must act ethically and behave with integrity at all times, consistently modeling and promoting ethical practices as an individual or part of an organization. Did the candidate exhibit ethical behavior competency? Yes or no? Okay, I'm going to say yes for David. Oh, I can't I can't fill this out. It's not a fillable PDF. Well, we'll just we'll just pretend I marked that off. Critical thinking and professional skepticism. Cpas must think critically when performing all tasks, blah blah blah. Did the candidate exhibit critical thinking and professional skepticism? Competency? Yes or no. Communication. Collaboration, teamwork. And this is such. This is such crap. David. Who the. Who the heck is going to say no, right?

David Leary: [00:55:41] Well, that's what's kind of great about this. Like, this is truly another alternative pathway.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:46] But it's so dumb. Why even have this stupid form, right? Why not just go back to I mean, this is worse than. This is worse than before. So before we did the 150, it was 120 hours and two years of experience. So now they're saying that this form takes the place of a year of experience. Well, what the. What the heck is wrong with Nasba? Like, how how could anyone think that this is useful in any way at all? Because we all know that everyone who gets this form from a subordinate is just going to sign. They're just going to say yes. Who's going to say no?

David Leary: [00:56:23] Actually, they're going to say, fill it out for me and I'll just sign it. It's probably what they probably.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:27] Right. Like, this is this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

David Leary: [00:56:31] And there's a weird little note in here that this document will be integrated into the tracking app developed by Nasba, like our firm. The manager is going to install some app and. Oh, great.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:41] You know what this is? This is a bureaucratic power play. Nasba wants to get more funding from the states for managing a bunch of paperwork, which they suck at doing already. You know, like their customer service is atrocious. Like nobody likes working with Nasba to try to get try to get your CPA exam stuff done and all that. It's like it's awful. Like, why would why would the state boards of accountancy give Nasba more power? I think this is a don't do this. If you were on a state board and you were listening or you're in a state society, this is just nasba trying to get more money, more power, cut them out. You know, they're not adding, this is this is dumb.

David Leary: [00:57:25] But I think we've talked about this before. You start reading between the lines, it really feels like what's coming from AICPA and Nasba is this is going to happen. Alternative pathways are going to start popping up everywhere. It's more about control, like use our alternative pathway. It's the best one, right?

Blake Oliver: [00:57:41] This alternative pathway is worse. I was aiming for two years of experience. Two years of experience is is meaningful one year of experience. You can't learn anything in a year.

David Leary: [00:57:52] I mean, that's minimum.

Blake Oliver: [00:57:55] Naspa all the all the national leaders are like, we can't water down the requirements. So this waters it down more than what I was asking for. I don't know what they are thinking.

David Leary: [00:58:05] But but we're really I think I'm looking at this at a bigger level. You know, Minnesota has their plan. California's got a plan. Nasdaq and S&P have a plan. Like when we're done, are we just going to have 40 different pathways. And which might be okay because in the end everybody's going to study and take the same test.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:24] It won't matter. Here's why. It won't matter because the states are going to move to automatic mobility if you are licensed in another state. We're just going to say you can practice in our state and deal with exceptions as they happen. So rather than the other way around where it's like automatic, no you can't. And we have to approve you. It's automatic. Yes you can. And that will then open things up. Because all it takes is a state like California to move to a bachelor's degree, pass the CPA exam, get two years of experience, and then California CPAs can practice in any other state that accepts that accepts automatic mobility. So the solution is automatic mobility because that gives individual states flexibility to change their requirements. And that's where we need to go. And you know, if a state goes too far in one direction the other states can deal with that. Right. But that's not going to happen. These states, they don't do that. They don't operate that way. Like it. The current situation just creates a lot of paperwork, and bureaucrats love paperwork, and we need to take that away from them. You know, simplify this. This creates more complexity. Just certify on the work experience. Like you don't need to do this dumb competency based form, which we all know that nobody is actually going to do. Nobody's. Can you this is how this is how like I mean, I wonder if any of these bureaucrats have ever worked in a real business or in a public accounting firm, because you would look at this and you'd be like, what manager or partner is going to sit down and read through all these points and then, you know, like actually make sure that the person like the young staff accountant actually did all this stuff. Nobody has time for that.

David Leary: [01:00:16] The best parts are really set you off. Scroll the page 18.

Blake Oliver: [01:00:21] What's that?

David Leary: [01:00:22] And it says the candidate has completed blank hours of the required minimum 2000 hours. Like it's not even a year where they really want the hours.

Blake Oliver: [01:00:30] What page are we talking about? Page eight.

David Leary: [01:00:32] Oh, this is the last page of the doc, I think. Just sign off on it.

Blake Oliver: [01:00:36] The 2000 hours of competency based experience. Working hours.

David Leary: [01:00:40] It's completely out.

Blake Oliver: [01:00:41] So who's going to track this? But if you.

David Leary: [01:00:44] Work 60 hours, 80 hour weeks, could you get done with this in a couple of months?

Blake Oliver: [01:00:49] I don't know, man.

David Leary: [01:00:54] At least they're trying. We can give them a gold star for effort.

Blake Oliver: [01:00:58] Well, David, I got a hard stop. I got to jump to another meeting. Thank you. Everyone who joined us live. We, uh. We appreciate you. Don't forget, you can earn free CPE for listening to this episode. Go to the earmark app. Earmark app, sign up for free. Get your free CPE, David. I will see you around here next week.

David Leary: [01:01:17] Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.