The Accounting Podcast

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Blake Oliver: Elon Musk and Donald Trump have torched their bromance. From bros to foes. That was my favorite headline from Reuters. And it happened so fast.

David Leary : Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.

Blake Oliver: Hello and welcome back to the Accounting Podcast, your roundup, your [00:00:30] weekly roundup of news in the accounting profession. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary : And I'm David Leary.

Blake Oliver: And David. We are back from Atlanta from Sage future 2025. What a great time in the future. We're back from the future. Yes, we interviewed Aaron Harris, CTO of Sage. We got to hear all about the latest updates from Sage for Sage Intacct, Sage X3, everything they're doing with AI, their collaboration with the AICPA. Really neat stuff going [00:01:00] on there. I also want to talk about real world examples of AI. We've got some great examples from the Journal of Accountancy. We've got examples of apps like Field Guide putting AI into action. We're going to see exactly what they're capable of doing. Kpmg has some examples of how they're using AI in audit. Lots of stats about AI adoption. Lots of app updates in general from ignition, from [00:01:30] Xero, from Microsoft. There's a report from spotlight I want to talk about. What about you, David? What is new with you?

David Leary : I mean, I have a lot of AI related stuff as well. Stories that tie into AI is going to disrupt the Big Four's revenue. Pwc is now going to offer AI assurance services. Um, there's a private equity strategy that deals with AI and accounting firms. Uh, that And then I have some just other [00:02:00] ones that are, you know, arguably ethics related. So apparently deal has been spying on other companies as well. And Danny Werfel is going to join a client group, which we've covered in the past, who is possibly. So Danny Werfel is the former IRS commissioner. He might be joining an arguably irk mill Post-It career at the IRS.

Blake Oliver: Whistleblowers are pleading to save the PCAOB. Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a big fallout. [00:02:30]

David Leary : Oh yeah, that happened.

Blake Oliver: That might doom the big, beautiful bill in the Senate. We'll see. Uh, and that would actually save the PCAOB. Got some stats here about the fastest growing accounting firms. They're spending two times on marketing versus other firms. A Microsoft backed AI startup was revealed to be actual Indians, not AI. That was a big one. They were valued at something like over $1 billion, and it turned out to be a total fraud. Um, and [00:03:00] a Deloitte ad that highlights the lack of work life balance at Deloitte as a plus for their clients. So all this and more on the accounting podcast this week. David, let's thank our sponsors.

David Leary : Yeah. So this episode sponsors we have Onpay keeper team up and pay Hawk.

Blake Oliver: David, let's talk about Sage future 2025. And I like the way they laid out their approach to I. Aaron Harris described [00:03:30] three waves of AI. The first wave is the automation they've already been doing. The rules based automation that doesn't use generative AI.

David Leary : Or like a scan of a bill, that type of stuff that's already in product and has been in product.

Blake Oliver: Wave two is generative AI, and that includes their Sage Copilot product, which is now available to 400,000 plus customers worldwide. It's embedded into Sage Intacct. It's now also embedded into Sage X3, which [00:04:00] is their big manufacturing ERP system. Wave three is a gigantic AI, and that includes, uh, agentic applications, AI orchestrating complex workflows, and autonomous agents, which they now have in testing. These are fully autonomous systems that they are hoping to release within the next few years. Similar to what Intuit has been working on, Intuit is releasing AI agents into QuickBooks this month. Sage is going to take a little longer to do [00:04:30] that. It's going to be really fascinating to see what is possible when you have AI agents embedded in your accounting system.

David Leary : I mean, they're not there yet, because in my QuickBooks, I went to the Ask My expert and I clicked on it, and the only thing listed still is my accountant. There's nobody else listed there. I guess I'm hoping I'd have a team of agents listed there once one day.

Blake Oliver: Welcome to our live stream, viewers. Hey, Jerilyn. Great to see you. Hey, Dre. Uh, it's Saturday as we record this because we took Friday off since we were traveling. So, uh, [00:05:00] maybe a little bit lighter than usual. I hope that you're enjoying your summer. It's already June here. Hard to believe it. So what's on the Sage Intacct roadmap? We learned at Sage future that Sage aims. Aaron Harris said that his goal as CTO is to eliminate the financial close. So not speed it up. Eliminate it completely. Uh, and he brought up some interesting stats about like how long it takes companies to close [00:05:30] the books these days. It went from weeks. Now the top performers are down to a few days, and they want to eliminate it completely. And one thing that they're releasing for Sage Intacct is a closed workspace, a centralized hub for managing closed tasks with AI suggestions. So it will help you figure out what you need to do in the books where the bottlenecks are in order to close those books and get them done faster.

David Leary : And not just get rid of the clothes. Like his point of view is that this whole date driven everything [00:06:00] is a little crazy. Why do we have to wait till a certain day to depend on our numbers? Like the numbers should just be dependable all the time. At any one time.

Blake Oliver: And if you have AI agents that are entering transactions that are risk scoring different transactions, maybe it's possible to. Not even need to do work papers at the end of the period. I'm a little skeptical about that, because all of accounting and auditing is rooted in the idea of like, closing the books. [00:06:30] But as Aaron said in our interview, that is an antiquated notion, literally. We used to have books for each time period, and we would close them and not open them again, and that was how we ensured accuracy. Um, I guess if you have continuous AI agents just entering transactions, validating them at all times, maybe you could do away with that. But then you have this idea now of continuous assurance, you need to somehow provide audits on every transaction instead of over [00:07:00] a period of time. And I'm just trying to wrap my head around how that would work. But that's where they're going. I mean, it's an ambitious vision, right?

David Leary : And that seems similar to if I go back to when you were at Avalara conference a few months back, I want to say summer, but we're just now starting summer. Maybe it was last fall where Avalara crush conference and they were talking about how sales tax they're going to get rid of the concept of a quarterly or monthly sales tax report, because the government agencies, they want [00:07:30] instantly to know about the sale and instantly collect the sales tax. And so it's kind of that same concept, like we might be marching in this future where there is no more deadlines, final forms to fill out. It's just everything's going to happen in real time. Maybe that's the way to think about it. It's more real time.

Blake Oliver: Real time. Yeah, I, I mean, maybe we'll get there someday. Um, in the meantime, what what can we actually expect from I think it's going to take us a long time to get to that, eliminating the clothes completely. We're just [00:08:00] going to speed it up. We'll have I doing the work papers. One thing that Aaron mentioned in our interview with him was this idea of completely autonomous agents doing accounts payable. That was the example that he highlighted the most and I think is really possible. The idea there is that from like procure to payment, you could have AI agents pushing the transactions through. So as soon as a purchase order is approved, you know, you have an AI agent that then goes and gets the payment information, validates that schedules, [00:08:30] sets up a payment for approval, gets the approvals, follows up to make sure that the necessary people approve it, or maybe it just approves it itself. If the transaction is below a certain threshold and then schedules the payment and monitors cash flow, I really think that if you had the right AI agents set up, um, you could have them embedded in your workflows. If Sage can build that, that would be extremely powerful. And I can see that philosophy applying to a lot of other clerk type activities. Those [00:09:00] jobs could be completely automated the way a lot of bookkeeping jobs have been automated over the last dozens of years.

David Leary : I think data entry related, for sure. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Um, so they also highlighted that Sage copilot is now available in Sage X3 globally. Um, that's their chat bot. They've got supply chain intelligence. They acquired a company called anvil that does [00:09:30] small and medium business supply chain management. And they have integrated this into their solution. They're saying that it reduces delays by 35% by giving more visibility into companies as to their supply chain. And they've also got this I trust label initiative where they're they're providing on all their AI. They're providing information about how it works, how the data is being used, the safeguards in place. And and they believe that's really important in order [00:10:00] to get adoption of users across Sage products. That's going to be rolling out later in 2025, in the UK and the US markets. Anything I missed there, David? About Sage.

David Leary : Um.

Blake Oliver: Oh, they're.

David Leary : Partnered to pick up in the.

Blake Oliver: Keynote.

David Leary : But yes, they are building their own, um. Large language model. And there's a couple of reasons for it. One is the existing large language models are very inefficient. They almost know too much and [00:10:30] they're not specialized enough. So they're working with CPAacademy, and they're using Aicpa's standards and uploading those standards in literature into Sage copilot. So that way they're going to have. And arguably I guess it's a more efficient model, right? You want an AI model that only knows accounting. I don't want an AI model that also knows about a movie.

Blake Oliver: And so I think you're actually confusing two things, David. Okay, so they're creating their own [00:11:00] llms that are trained specifically on certain types of accounting tasks. So that would be classifying transactions or approving payments. And you can do that much more efficiently by designing an LLM. That's only for that task. So can't translate between languages. Isn't trained on the entire internet. It's just trained on, say, accounting transactions like receipts or invoices or something like that. Then there's this partnership with CPAacademy where they're going to license AICPA resources to train [00:11:30] Sage Copilot. So the CPAs documentation processes standards, all of that will be used to train Sage copilot so that it can, uh, it can, you know, I don't know exactly what CPA do.

David Leary : Ultimately.

Blake Oliver: It could. It could act like a CPA, I suppose. Yeah. Um, or make make determinations that a CPA might make. And that's an interesting, uh, you know, thought experiment is, is the AICPA now helping Sage to train an [00:12:00] AI that could replace accountants?

David Leary : And so this is one of the big issues I had with this conference is there's so much I chat and talk happening. You don't know what's what. So it's very easy to confuse. So you're saying their efforts with AICPA that's going to be its own kind of element. And then they have their own to do. The little task there's going to be multiple are being created, not just one. They're creating a set two at the same time. Yeah. And then we had clarity because it was confusing what copilot [00:12:30] was versus Sage AI, because CGI has its own logo and branding and everything else. But CGI is like all the AI initiatives, and Copilot is like the UI to interact with those eyes. If you think about it that way.

Blake Oliver: So stay tuned to The Accounting Podcast for our interview with Aaron Harris that we recorded live at Sage future. If you are interested in AI and if you're interested in Sage products, either one of those, I think you will enjoy it very much. So look [00:13:00] forward to that coming later this week. And now let's thank our first sponsor David. Who is that.

David Leary : On?

Blake Oliver: All right. Forbes and CNBC rank on pay number one for small business payroll. Onpay really knows how to get payroll done right for every client you serve, no matter how complex their software is, easy to use and backed by outstanding service levels, they handle new client onboarding for free and have experts on call to keep [00:13:30] you and your clients on track. The system includes multi-state payroll, local tax filings, integrated HR tools, and more with no hidden fees. When you join Onpay Partner program, you get a custom dashboard to easily manage all clients in one place. Plus, you can gain exclusive perks like revenue sharing or discounts, free payroll for your firm, co-branding opportunities, premium swag, and more. Onpay helps you run your practice efficiently while providing exceptional payroll that your clients can count on. To learn more about using Onpay for your firm and clients, that could be [00:14:00] startups, farms, restaurants, bars, doctors, nonprofits, gyms, franchises or dentists or more. Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast. All right. Let's talk about examples of AI in use. Journal of accountancy did a great roundup of real accountants using [00:14:30] AI today in their practices. And I want to go through these examples. Maybe they'll give you some ideas for how to use AI in your firm. Karl Spanbauer at Capital Area Food Bank, created an automated mail processing system that scans physical mail, extracts text using image analysis, generates AI summaries of each document, and then creates workflow tickets automatically.

Blake Oliver: He says that it's reduced the time to process [00:15:00] the meal process the mail every week by four hours over four hours, and now he can do it in just 20 minutes every Monday. Glenn Hopper at Eventus Advisory Group built a specialized bot that uses the firm's historical accounting memos as training data and then generates new technical accounting memos, for example, goodwill impairment analysis, and has reduced the time it takes to write a [00:15:30] technical accounting memo from 4 hours to 30 minutes, including the human review. And it only took him. Well, only it's a lot. It took him 60 hours of development time and some deep eye expertise. But if you save four hours per memo and you're writing a lot of those, I mean, that could be well worth it, right? Uh, here's an example for marketing. Um, Barrett Young at CPA created a custom ChatGPT for [00:16:00] succession planning advice. It can now answer basic questions about ownership transitions. He made it free for his email subscribers, and the result is that it's generated 50 new email subscribers in three months. What are some other applications here? Uh, Don Thomas is saving $150 an hour by using ChatGPT to generate VBA code and data analysis scripts. So this is what you and I have done, David recently is just [00:16:30] describe your problem in natural language and you get code that works. So he no longer has to outsource coding work for creating Visual Basic applications in Excel.

David Leary : And these look like. It sounds like a lot of these are assistant type tasks. So let me open the mail telling you about it. It's or hey, go do this research about partnerships. It's just doing it and or issuing the memos. But are there any of these use cases like full [00:17:00] blown end to end replacing somebody's job?

Blake Oliver: No. And I don't think we're going to see that anytime soon until we get to those AI agents that can work across workflows to say, automate like AP processing. But I really think that what we're going to eliminate will be like payroll processing, accounts payable, processing, these bookkeeping type of tasks that have just not we haven't been able to automate yet. I really think that's where we're going to go with it. But I mean, even that it's [00:17:30] going to take time. Um, all the systems have to be able to talk to each other. We've got to figure out this computer use gap that we have right now where if the data is not available via API, you have to then go around and click in an interface, and the AI has to be able to do that, which can't always do reliably. It's going to take time. Right.

David Leary : And then there's this really it's that trust, right? Like at some level, are you going to start connecting this to your bank accounts to transfer funds to the payroll account to issue the paychecks? It's [00:18:00] a little it's a little scary still.

Blake Oliver: Other examples in this Jama article include research, brainstorming. We've talked about that before. Audit automation. Um. Tricia Kadambini. She uses Trillian's audit suite for automated document searching for audit evidence, financial statement footing disclosure, tie backs, board minutes, board minutes, and lease agreement summaries. So those are some great, like, real world examples of how [00:18:30] companies are using AI. I also saw. A story on accounting today about field guides. New I audit agent that gives us an idea of how startups are going to be helping to helping to automate audits. Field guide released field agents for financial audits, and it features an AI audit testing agent that automates the entire audit testing workflow from start to finish. So here's how the system purportedly [00:19:00] works. It automatically matches client evidence to samples so the clients provide audit evidence. This AI agent will match it to the samples that you've selected from the GL, for instance. Then it will extract and validate the key data from the evidence provided. It will annotate and document its test results. And then it supports, I guess, various different types of tests, including revenue cutoff, expense verification, unrecorded liability testing, and fixed asset additions. So [00:19:30] this is an example of a product, an AI product for auditors that is eliminating the manual work of sampling testing.

Blake Oliver: I guess you still have to sample, right? You have to you have to choose what you're going to test. And then you go and you load in the transactions that you want to test. And this this agent then matches up what the what the client has provided with what you want to test and does the testing. And [00:20:00] that to me makes a lot of sense as something that an audit, an agent could do in the audit. Uh, what else can it do? It surfaces the discrepancies, but then it will also suggest follow up questions to clients, draft communications, evaluate client responses, do quality checks on the new evidence, and then connect the findings back to the audit objectives. And it will pretest the evidence quality before any human review. So what does the human have to do now? You review [00:20:30] the work that the AI agent did, which is basically like what a what a senior auditor would do or a manager might do. So we're basically just skipping this whole first step. Of course, that then creates a lot of questions as to what exactly are auditors going to do when they're learning to be auditors, when they are in their first year or two? I mean, that work is what we're automating now, right? So how do they get experience? I [00:21:00] don't have an answer to that.

Blake Oliver: I guess the best answer that I've come up with, or that I've heard, is we're going to actually invert how accountants get trained instead of going to work for big public accounting firms where they get experience by doing testing and doing these manual tasks, they're just going to go straight into industry. And then once they've got experience, then they'll go work at the audit firms. That's the fundamental shift that's going to happen in our profession. But it's going to be kind of painful [00:21:30] because we're not set up for that at all. The educational institutions, the Institutions, the colleges, universities. They aren't set up to send people directly into industry. Those companies aren't used to hiring. They're used to they're not used to hiring from colleges. They're used to hiring from audit firms. Right. You you poach a good auditor from the firm. They come work for you if you're a controller. So I think though it would be like a better outcome, um, in the end because how can you review as an auditor what you've never done, [00:22:00] as Nakia points out, right?

David Leary : So Audit File also launched I agents recently, and it's similar to like what you described. Ai agents automatically autonomously plan, execute and follow up on tasks with real human approvals and feedback. So humans are still watching it. But what got me was the quote from the CEO, Stephen Bong, describe the AI agents as the most dependable team member who works around the clock and never complains. So and this is they've actually [00:22:30] launched this in their Pro Plus and enterprise plan subscribers. Um, and they, they insist that these are not going to replace auditors, but it's just going to empower them with smarter, faster tools. We have other articles that we'll see if we go to other articles today on how that's going to work.

Blake Oliver: There was a story in CFO about KPMG how they're transforming auditing with their AI powered Clara platform. Clara, that's what they're calling their audit [00:23:00] platform. And it sounds like it's working similar to what Field Guide Field Guide is building. Um, you know, the before situation is that auditors are having to manually select expenses, request documentation, compare everything, and create workpapers. Now KPMG is saying that their Clara AI is allowing them to give the AI the task of identifying which expenses need testing, taking the documentation, extracting the data, generating the workpapers [00:23:30] and then doing the testing Automatically sounds almost exactly the same as what a field guide has been doing. So it seems like there's some commonalities here in in the areas that we're going to see. I applied to audit.

David Leary : And there was an article about how I was going to disrupt Big Four revenue. Excuse me. And according to an PwC partner, up to 50% of the roles in audit, tax and advisory could be eliminated in the next 3 to 5 years. [00:24:00] They're saying that some AI tools can already perform 90% of the audit tasks. So they're saying already not coming. Um, and then obviously it's going to mess with the business model because how do you bill for hours if AI is just doing it quicker? Um, but I'm not sure I completely buy into that. Uh, because we covered this a while back last summer, KPMG actually in 2023, we covered it. Kpmg invested $2 billion in AI cloud. [00:24:30] Um, I'm expecting a return of $12 billion in 2028. So this I don't think it's actually going to disrupt the revenue, because they're going to make revenue selling AI services in the end.

Blake Oliver: And auditing, auditing AI.

David Leary : Yes. Yeah. Consulting helping you roll out AI and auditing AI. And example this is PwC announced this week. They're formally going to offer AI assurance services. Yep. And that's going to verify that your [00:25:00] AI systems are responsibly designed, deployed and managed. They'll make sure organizations are meeting regulatory expectations. It will ensure the process includes evaluation of governance structures, data management practices, and fairness and robustness of AI models.

Blake Oliver: Stephanie in the livestream says that she's been using AI to analyze bank statements to quickly track down a Rob Peter to Pay Paul fraud scheme involving high interest short term [00:25:30] loans. It's fantastic, but imperative that I knew how to do the work the long way first.

David Leary : So do you actually have to know how to do it first the long way? Because could you just say, I want to track this. I've never done it before. Go ask the AI to go learn how to do it first. Then have it go do it.

Blake Oliver: I don't know, I just feel like if to review work when you've never done the work is you [00:26:00] don't know all the nuance, you don't know the details. I but I guess we've been training accountants to do that forever, right? Like most accountants, most CPAs don't learn how to actually do bookkeeping. I feel very lucky to have worked as a bookkeeper because I understand debits and credits really, really well. I know you can learn that in theory and be great at it without ever having done it before, but I just feel like when you've made journal entries, It's a lot easier to [00:26:30] look at them and understand what's going on. That's just my point of view. I feel like everybody should get some experience with that. Welcome to our number one live stream viewer. Boring accountant. By the way, if you're listening to us on the podcast feed and you haven't had a chance to join us live, subscribe on YouTube. Hit that notification button. You'll get notified when we go live, and you can join us and let us know what you think. I've been talking about external audit, but what about internal audit? A recent, recent Wolters [00:27:00] Kluwer's survey of 4214 internal audit professionals revealed that AI adoption among internal auditors is going to surge from the current 39% to 80% by 2026. So we're going to see AI adoption surge in internal audits. This was on a webinar that they did, and an additional 41% of respondents planned to plan to adopt AI within the next year.

Blake Oliver: You [00:27:30] mentioned that PwC is offering independent assurance on AI systems. Pwc also issued a report finding that AI is boosting jobs and wages, as opposed to eliminating jobs and cutting wages. This is their 2025 global AI Jobs Barometer report. They analyzed nearly a billion job postings across six continents, and they found [00:28:00] that job availability increased 38% in positions with higher AI exposure. So jobs increasing 38% when there's AI exposure and growth was actually slower, um, slower than less AI exposed jobs, but there was still significant expansion. So growth is slow slowing, but still expanding. Jobs requiring AI skills grew 7.5% year over year, while total job postings declined 11%. [00:28:30] Wages grew twice as fast in eye exposed industries compared to others, so there's a wage premium for workers who can use AI. So the the I guess what I'm what I'm understanding from these stats is that the number of jobs is going down, but because productivity is increasing, the wages are increasing. Companies most exposed to AI experienced three times higher revenue [00:29:00] per employee growth compared to less exposed businesses. So this is actually like really fascinating. It's interesting for accounting because we are accounting and tax is highly exposed to AI according to all these reports that you see you know, the list, the industries and the exposure. Um, but it's not necessarily a bad thing Because when productivity goes up, that means there's there's more [00:29:30] money available to pay employees more. It doesn't all go to the shareholders. It doesn't all go to the partners.

David Leary : But is are these companies that are growing at these rates? I think you said three x if they're using AI, is it because they're using AI, or is it because they have the type of culture they're already like a winners and they're already those people are naturally going to use technology or are naturally going to use AI. Is it I guess it's a chicken or egg type scenario?

Blake Oliver: I don't know, David, [00:30:00] but you can't.

David Leary : Just take people that are not great and say, here's AI, start using it. It's going to make your company go three x. You have to have great people to start with.

Blake Oliver: Well, it's going to, uh, increase wages for the high performers, the people who can learn how to use this stuff and increase their productivity. It's going to eliminate the jobs for folks who can't do that. So there's going to be a split. And I think that's what's going to happen in accounting.

David Leary : If you have a lot of B employees, it could turn them all into employees. And now you have this army of employees at your company, [00:30:30] which would be exactly.

Blake Oliver: They're more productive. They're doing two, three times the the work. Right. Their productivity goes up double three times. And then the folks that where you can automate their jobs like an accounts payable clerk. Right. That's going to go away.

David Leary : Okay.

Blake Oliver: So all right let's think our second sponsor keeper. You want to read this one David.

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Blake Oliver: Elon Musk and Donald Trump have torched their bromance. From bros to foes. That was my favorite headline from Reuters. Man, it happened so fast. And I want to say I don't know if I said it on the podcast, but I definitely called this. My dad will back me up. We were having a conversation months ago where I, I talked about this like [00:33:00] when they started partnering up, uh, and, and like, they were complementing each other. Like I said, you know, there's a historical parallel here. Uh, William Randolph Hearst and Theodore Roosevelt, they were allies until Roosevelt got into the presidency. And then they had a massive falling out. And for anyone interested in like, historical parallels to what's going on in politics right now, that one blew up and the headlines back then were a [00:33:30] lot like the tweets are now. It was not pretty. It was very personal and very ugly. And, uh, you know, I just I just want to take everyone through the timeline of this because it all happened in one day. On Thursday, Donald Trump was in the Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz, and it was supposed to be a 13 minute meeting, and it just blew up. Um, Trump expressed [00:34:00] frustration with Musk during that meeting, saying, I don't know if we will anymore have a great relationship. Within minutes, the fight moved online and it became a social media war, Musk said.

Blake Oliver: Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Trump posted. Musk posted a poll asking if it's time to create a new political party. Trump threatened to terminate government contracts with Musk's companies. Then Trump said Musk just went crazy and was wearing thin. And then by 3 p.m., Musk dropped what he called the really big bomb, alleging that Trump [00:34:30] appears in Jeffrey Epstein investigation files and suggesting that that's why they haven't been made public. And then Musk retweeted a post calling for Trump's impeachment and for JD Vance to become president. Tesla shares plummeted 14%. That's their worst day since 2020, and Musk threatened to decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft used for NASA missions, which would basically make it so that NASA can't fly astronauts to the space station. I [00:35:00] mean, this could derail the big, beautiful bill, and that's why I bring it up on the show, because the one big, beautiful bill got through the House with only one vote, a margin of one vote. And its future in the Senate is not certain. And if the Musk Trump alliance falls apart, will Senate Republicans support the bill? This has huge implications for the accounting profession because of all the tax provisions in the [00:35:30] bill. And also the PCAOB would be eliminated under the bill. And so that could of.

David Leary : You know, I'm putting money to get you a to compete against you in your local election at the midterm is gone. Now, if you're a Republican and we've.

Blake Oliver: We've talked about I've talked about how the tariffs that Trump keeps extending, if he actually goes through with the threat, would have a really negative effect on the economy and would probably put the Republicans at a big disadvantage [00:36:00] in the midterm elections. So imagine you've got increased prices due to tariffs, and you've got Musk now putting his money against the Republican Party or not contributing. And that's, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars there. If the Tech Alliance and the MAGA alliance fall apart, that could lead to just a total loss in the midterms. And then the rest of the Trump presidency is just nothing [00:36:30] happens because nothing can get done. Because you now have a split system, right? Congress, maybe even the Senate in the hands of the Democrats, which has happened in the past, that happened, uh, to McKinley with his tariffs, the ones that Trump loves to talk about. So history could be repeating itself right here.

David Leary : So that big Twitter battle that was occurring or it was on Twitter, and two social between Musk and Trump might have [00:37:00] been good for a company. So deal. You know, we've talked about deal before. They were the company that had a spy working at rippling allegedly sales data. Allegedly. Yeah. Allegedly. Um, well, there are photos of the phone and a bunch of stuff now have popped up. But on June 5th, Parker Conrad, he's the rippling founder. He, uh, tweeted that they've amended their original complaint, and now they're alleging that deals founder operated a criminal syndicate that [00:37:30] stole trade secrets from at least three other companies besides rippling. And one of the reports says one of those companies actually contacted US law enforcement about this. So this was all getting tweeted and happening at the same time the Trump Musk battle was going on. So nobody actually saw this story. So so for deal, it probably is. They should be thankful for this. Um, as of this time, it's not clear who these three other companies are yet. Um, but they did say that [00:38:00] in this in this legal documentation that the deal founder openly bragged about maintaining spies at other companies. For example, at all hands, when they would hire, let's say they would hire somebody for a competitor, a new hire if that employee brought in sensitive documents and company intelligence. They would be celebrated at the all hands.

Blake Oliver: Oh, no, that's not good.

David Leary : This culture of spying that's bad. And along with this other new stuff that Parker Conrad released, is they're talking about how a customer was talking to rippling about a purchase, [00:38:30] and they just blindly got called by deal to be to be offered services the same day after they just had a meeting with rippling, and the customer never spoke to deal at all. They just called them out of the blue. So they gave a real example of how this really was operating. Um, now what's interesting on the same day deal, also the same day deal broke news and they were bragging about how they hit $1 billion in IRR and that they were the fastest company ever to do this. Now, I don't know if you remember [00:39:00] years ago, the fastest company to ever hit a billion IRR was Zenefits, which is rippling founder's old company, Parker Conrad. So there's all these ties, but the best best part. And I tweeted about this because deal did. And did not play the video deal was so giddy about all these tweets about their billion dollars in revenue. They're actually going to launch a video series on YouTube called debunked with deal to quote unquote, debunk business myths. And you wouldn't get this. Their very first [00:39:30] episode, Blake, is about sales processes, which I just find very ironic. You can't even make this up. So I'm going to play a little quick tweet video for you just so you can see this.

Blake Oliver: Okay. So this is a video by deal about sales.

David Leary : Correct.

Debunked with Deel Clip: Six salespeople have a solid process. They stick to their process and the results just follow.

Debunked with Deel Clip: What's up everybody. Welcome to debunk with deal where we bring in real industry experts to break down the biggest myths in the working world. I'm des and today we're diving to the world of sales. First misconception salesmen overpromise [00:40:00] and under-deliver.

Debunked with Deel Clip: On the account management side, they're my client. I sell them, and then they still stay as my client. So if I oversold them, I'm essentially screwing myself over in the long run there. So that's my worst fear to do so. It's a lot of really transparent conversations up front.

David Leary : And we have to stop it right there. I just find it really funny that they talk about how important processes are for sales and trust and transparency, like, you can't make this up. This is almost like a Saturday Night Live skit, this video that the company accused [00:40:30] of spying and other companies, possibly for other companies competitors, is making videos about sales processes and transparency and trust. I don't know, you can't make this up, Blake.

Blake Oliver: Is that it for the video?

David Leary : Yeah. We don't have to watch the rest of you get the.

Blake Oliver: Okay, well, I have a video for you, David. And this is by Deloitte. This was posted on Deloitte's Instagram account. Um, it was shared by Gerber [00:41:00] on uh on X. And the message here is I shit you not. This is Deloitte's new Instagram marketing message. We make our employees work insane hours over the weekend. So you don't have to. And then I watched the video and I thought, oh my God, this is their sales pitch. And the account that tweeted it is something like like life at Deloitte. So I mean, I just got to play the video.

David Leary : For your account.

Blake Oliver: It's like this is [00:41:30] like, uh 30s. Oh, and thank you to Going Concern for pointing me to this like they Adrian over going concern wrote a great article about it.

Deloitte Ad: Your daughter is turning nine today and your company's merger is turning on you. Time isn't on your side, but the team is specialists who know data, strategy and finance.

Deloitte Ad: Ben, what do you got for me?

Deloitte Ad: Not what. It's who.

Deloitte Ad: Hi, everyone. The dream team. [00:42:00]

Deloitte Ad: A team that knows you can't enjoy your daughter's big day. Worried about your company's reputation? Deloitte together makes progress.

Blake Oliver: So there you go. Deloitte's ad is promoting how, as a client, you can spend Saturday at your daughter's birthday party because a team of half a dozen Deloitte people will be working on the weekend. We'll show up on a zoom call for you, make sure that all the work gets done. I don't know if that's exactly. [00:42:30] I mean, I guess it's a good sales pitch for the client, but is that really the message you want to be sending about what it's like to work at Deloitte? I'm not totally sure about that.

David Leary : Well, how do we know those are people? And not just like AI agents? Maybe Deloitte has a team of AI agents that are the dream team. It's not people. But it is funny though, that that was put on arguably probably their careers channel. Instagram. You said Deloitte Life.

Blake Oliver: It was something like yeah, I forget I [00:43:00] lost track of it because I, I played the video on Twitter because it's easier to play. But yeah, it's like a anyway, it's something like Deloitte Life is the is the username. Um, so I wanted to bring this up because it's funny, but also because, you know, we have a retention problem in accounting, right? We have a talent crunch. And even though accounting degree enrollments have risen 12% over last year, that's great news. Um, we still have a [00:43:30] retention issue. And the work life balance at the big firms is the biggest problem. The average US organization currently has five open accounting roles. That's more than double compared to 2025. Um, and we have a pay disparity problem in accounting. Data scientists earn 28,000 more annually than accountants. Software developers earn 47,000 more on average. So that gets a lot of attention. But [00:44:00] it's actually not that the salaries at this point are are not the biggest issue, because salaries have gone up quite a bit. Um, what is the issue is work life balance? According to Deloitte's own 2024 survey, Gen Z and millennials prioritize work life balance and growth opportunities over pay. So, you know, as long as the pay of being an auditor is enough to live comfortably, right? It's that's not the big priority. Um, 25% [00:44:30] of Gen Z and 31% of millennials said good work life balance is their top reason for choosing their employer. And only 19% of Gen Z and 22% of millennials ranked high salary slash benefits as their main decision factor. So work life balance is the number one reason. So that's probably why this Deloitte ad, you know, doesn't help the profession is if we want to get more accountants, [00:45:00] you know, we need to we need to give them their weekends. They need to have Saturday.

David Leary : And if I was a competing accounting firm, I would be utilizing this as a tool to every new hire or potential new hire. Like, you know, this is what life will be like if you go work there. You're going to have to work Saturdays.

Blake Oliver: Uh, and to point out like that, we're actually doing okay as a profession. Um, you know, I did some research on salaries of auditors, and I compared that to [00:45:30] this report that I saw from Smartasset, which says in order to live comfortably in every state, you need to make at least $80,000 as a single adult. And then I compared that to what auditors are making, and we're actually doing okay. Um, like the average auditor, the average senior auditor is making over what you need to make, even in a state like, well, close to it, California, New York, you know, you need to make in California, [00:46:00] you need to make $120,000 as a single adult to live comfortably, according to this report in New York, it's 115,000. Um, the methodology is very simple. It's the MIT Living Wage calculator. So the rule is that you should spend 50% of your salary on necessities, 30% on discretionary spending, and 20% on savings slash debt slash investments. So that's your comfortable living thresholds. So we're actually doing okay as a profession. Like salaries have gone up enough. [00:46:30] But the work life balance part, that's where we that's where we need to work on.

David Leary : I guess I'll tie this up to Big Four a little bit. Um, even though it's not truly Big Four, but this is a follow up story. Sue Coffey, who is the CEO of Public accounting at the AICPA, she says that the removal of CPA from public profiles is a mistake. So she. Yeah, she. Yeah. Duh. No kidding. She penned an article for the Journal of Accountancy defending the use of [00:47:00] CPA. And I'll quote unquote, we've heard reports that some accounting firms. Mostly. Recently, those with private equity backing are recommending that partners and employees remove CPA from their public profiles. I think this is a mistake. And not only that, she's trying to gather data about this, and she's created a two question poll, and I'll put the link in the chat here for everybody to do. And it's you can just give her your opinion. She's gathering data on why it's not okay for firms to ask you to remove the [00:47:30] CPA. And I forgot what the second question was, but it's just two questions. You can go in there and give your opinion on this. Right.

Blake Oliver: But like why are firms doing this? The reason that firms are doing this is because state boards of accountancy are giving them a hard time. If if you operate across state lines, if you have CPAs licensed in various states and you serve clients all over the country, and especially if you operate with this alternative practice structure [00:48:00] where you have part of the firm that's a CPA firm and part of the firm that's not a CPA firm. It's really hard to be compliant with all the state boards of accountancy, and you're almost guaranteed to run into trouble if your people are using CPA. So a lot of these firms have just decided to tell all their CPAs not to put CPA on their business card, not to put it on the website, even not to put it on LinkedIn. So because of the.

David Leary : Hassle of dealing with each state is just annoying. So just why deal with 50 organizations? You just.

Blake Oliver: So so we [00:48:30] have the CPA telling firms they shouldn't be telling their people to do this, but not addressing the root cause of the problem, which is the regulation. And the AICPA is the best positioned organization to get the state boards of accountancy in line to, to fix this problem. So I want to know what are they doing to fix it. And we asked Mark Kozel that question when we had him on the show about this issue. And other than like talking to stakeholders, I [00:49:00] haven't heard any concrete answer for what they're going to do to, like, change the situation so that the lawyers at these firms and the managing partners feel comfortable letting everyone use the CPA. That's what we need, is we need a solution from the nationwide body that represents CPAs to make this safe for the firms and for the CPAs. You know, since we're talking about AICPA and we're talking about the future of our profession, I might as well bring up a story [00:49:30] related to the 150 hour rule. My favorite topic, you know, the 150 hour rule often required people to go get a master's degree.

Blake Oliver: Something like 30 states have either moved in that direction or are going to very soon, getting rid of the requirement for an extra year of education. And here's a here's a survey that proves that might have been a good decision. Master's degrees don't improve job performance. This [00:50:00] is according to an article in CPA Practice Advisor, based on a resume genius survey of 1000 hiring managers. Over half, 62% of these hiring managers said that master's degrees offer no performance advantage over a bachelor's plus two years of experience, 52% half of them see identical performance levels, and 10% even say that master's holders actually perform worse. But here's the crazy part [00:50:30] 72% of these hiring managers would still pay master's holders more money. So these hiring managers are saying, like the majority of them say, that that having a master's degree is no guarantee of performance advantage. And yet the vast majority of them, 72% would pay more money. So this is an interesting disconnect here that [00:51:00] you go get a master's degree and you probably will make more money, but it won't necessarily improve your performance.

David Leary : I'm going to disconnect it a little bit more for you. I have an article that was a survey done by Resume Templates. The results of the survey is 1 in 4. Employees say they plan to eliminate bachelor's degree requirements for some roles by the end of 2025. So the pendulum is swinging to experience not even having a degree. So because like you just [00:51:30] illustrated, just because you have your master's, I mean, you're a better employee, somebody who's experienced and doesn't have that MBA or master's is probably just as valuable, if not more valuable.

Blake Oliver: I think we need to thank our next sponsor, David. Who is that?

David Leary : This is team up. I can read it if you'd like.

Blake Oliver: Go for.

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Blake Oliver: All right. I want to go back to the Trump Musk fallout, because [00:53:00] this has been building for a while, apparently. And it has a lot to do with the one big, beautiful bill, which is at odds with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency efforts. So Elon allied with Trump. He went in to the federal government in a special office of the president, called the Department of Government Efficiency to cut government spending. And he didn't quite get to his goal of $2 trillion, [00:53:30] but maybe 10% of the way there, something like that cut over $150 billion of spending. But then the bill to update the budget actually doesn't, doesn't ensure that these cuts will remain permanent. And I think that's a big part of the frustration that Musk was feeling. The bill would actually increase yearly budget deficits by $2.4 trillion over ten years. That's according to the Congressional Budget Office. And only [00:54:00] 9 billion of government efficiency cuts would be codified. So basically, if you don't actually cut the budget of these agencies, as soon as Doge goes away, the agencies can just rehire, expand again, spend more. Right. So it was all just for show. That's what it feels like. Musk called the legislation a disgusting abomination and outrageous and pork filled. Apparently, [00:54:30] the final straw was. Well before I mention that, I should mention that the bill also eliminates the electric vehicle tax credit, which really hurts Trump's or which really hurts Musk's company, Tesla and.

David Leary : Its solar stuff as well. Like energy stuff. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: Oh yeah. Yeah, the solar industry is going to be decimated by this bill. Um, the The EV tax credit. It's a $7,500 EV buyer credit, and it would have cost Tesla [00:55:00] approximately $1.2 billion in annual profits. And that goes away under this bill. So that's really bad news for Tesla. Separate legislation targeting California's EV mandates threatens another $2 billion in Tesla's regulatory credit sales. Together, the measures could eliminate roughly half of Tesla's expected $6 billion in earnings before interest and taxes this year, which would be really, really bad for Tesla and [00:55:30] sucks for Musk because he invested over 250 million to help Trump win the election.

David Leary : Yeah, if you take a time machine and think about this, if, you know, let's go back to October before the election. Oh, Musk is spending all this money to help Trump get elected. Guess what? Come June, the big beautiful bill is going to eliminate a bunch of subsidies for him, you'd never you would have never jumped those two dots. Ever. No, it doesn't make any sense.

Blake Oliver: I mean, $6 [00:56:00] billion, it could cost him 6 billion. It could cost Tesla $6 billion. And he invested 250. Million to get the guy elected. It's not a good ROI. Very negative ROI there. So, I mean, that's got to be why he's pissed off. Oh, what was the last straw? I forgot to mention that. So that was, um. It was. Trump withdrew [00:56:30] Jared Isaacman from his nomination to be NASA administrator. And this was, like Musk's hand-picked guy to lead NASA, who has close ties to Musk and had purchased SpaceX flights. So, you know, you're Elon Musk. You have a big contract with NASA for SpaceX, your rocket company. You want your guy in as the NASA head of NASA and Trump? Trump withdrew him. So that was the last [00:57:00] straw. That's why this whole thing blew up. Blew up. So it doesn't seem like it worked out really good for Musk. It's not looking pretty. But it could also work out really bad for the Republicans in Congress, because if Musk wanted to, he could really screw up the election for them. The midterms. So it's just like the whole thing could fall apart, like the whole Trump presidency. Basically, the one big beautiful bill could could fall apart in the Senate [00:57:30] and they could lose in the midterms. And and that's it. Right. This is Trump's last, last shot. So why is this potentially a good news for accountants or auditors? I mean, I guess it depends on your point of view, but it's the fact that the PCAOB would be eliminated by the one big beautiful bill, the auditor of the auditors, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board would go away.

Blake Oliver: And I guess that might be good news. If you're an audit [00:58:00] partner who doesn't like dealing with the pcob, but could be really bad news for the profession in general because like what led to the Pcaob's formation, it was Enron. It was Worldcom. These two giant corporate accounting scandals. Led to the formation of the Pcob and the whistleblowers, the Enron VP who blew the whistle on Enron, Sherron Watkins and the VP at Worldcom, Cynthia Cooper, who [00:58:30] blew the whistle. They have come out with a New York Times guest essay defending the Pcob against the proposal to eliminate it. And, uh, you know, like they point out that before the pcob, accounting firms basically policed themselves. And how well did that go? If you are interested in learning more about this topic, subscribe to the earmark podcast. I have an interview with three accounting [00:59:00] academics all about the pcob the proposal to eliminate it, whether or not it's effective. Is there $400 million a year worth it to the economy? Um, go listen to that. I think this is like a big issue, and I'm kind of surprised that there's not more discussion about it, because it would basically be the biggest change to accounting to our profession in 20 years. If this bill goes through.

David Leary : That would be the exact opposite, 100 degrees, 180 degrees opposite [00:59:30] of what it was when they implemented it. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: It just goes away.

David Leary : So I have a story going off the words. What did you say? It's good to have one of your people in the government agency.

Blake Oliver: I would love to hear that. But first we got to thank our sponsor this episode. Are you drowning in month end expense chaos? Imagine getting multiple days back each month that you're currently losing to manual accounting processes. This is why I'm excited to tell you about Pathok, [01:00:00] a leading spend management solution that can automate your financial processes while giving you total control and instant visibility over all your company spending. Pathok unifies your corporate cards, expense management, accounts payable, and procurement into a single platform. The best part? It works with your existing credit cards and tracks transactions as they happen, giving you real time insights into your spend. No more chasing receipts. Pay hacks. Automation handles that. No more end of month surprises. See exactly where your money is going, the moment it's spent, [01:00:30] and with real time integrations to systems like NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Sage Intacct, reconciling expenses is faster than ever. Finance teams using Pathok are saving days of work each month while gaining better cost control, real time visibility, and the ability to focus on strategic priorities instead of expense reports. Ready to transform how your company manages spending and see how PR can work for your business? Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast. Ohmydollar.com/support. W-2. [01:01:00] And now, David, what were you going to tell me about?

David Leary : So, you know, we talked about this last week, the Federal Tax Updates podcast, which had an interview with Danny Wuerffel, the former IRS commissioner. And I listened to it. It was great. And I haven't told my wife I was like, you got to listen to this because he comes off in the interview as one of the good guys in DC. You listen to it and you're like, this is great. I hope everybody in the IRS and everybody in [01:01:30] DC is like this. But maybe I was wrong. So yesterday, according to the Alliance Group CEO, so do you remember a giant group? We talked to them about them a while back.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. Weren't they like raided by the FBI or something?

David Leary : They were raided by the FBI and the IRS. And arguably there's a there are questionable irk mill there a little aggressive with irk and R&D credits type stuff. So they were being investigated. They also have been lit [01:02:00] up very bad. Their CEOs have been accused of sexually accused of sexual harassment type stuff. And the reviews from the employees are really, really bad and negative. So it's not the most stand up place. Well, according to the Alliantgroup CEO yesterday on LinkedIn, and it was confirmed by a reshare from former IRS Commissioner Charles Reddick on LinkedIn, Danny Werfel is joining the Alliance group. So. Right. So think so think about this. Basically we have [01:02:30] our old our current IRS commissioner nominee peddled for an Irk mill, and now the outgoing one possibly might be going to work for another IRC email. It's it's it's really disheartening in a way.

Blake Oliver: And, well, these guys got to make their money somehow, I guess.

David Leary : Well, it's like you.

Blake Oliver: Said, government salaries.

David Leary : Aren't the industrial complex. The people going in and out, in and out. So I went to the, uh, advisory board website for the Alliance Group. Here's what's on there. A former US [01:03:00] senator, state attorney general, state tax commissioner, US Secretary of Agriculture for US congressmen, counsel to Senate and Finance Committee, a governor, a governor and another Congressman, IRS senior manager, IRS, National Program manager, IRS Commissioner, IRS Commissioner, acting IRS Commissioner, Small Business Self-employed Division, IRS Director of Practice and Procedures, and 17 CPAs. That's the board of this company. And so they're all government [01:03:30] people. Most the vast majority going in and out. And it's just like it's like the biggest, biggest example of this industrial complex stuff going in and out because nothing really, from what I can tell, nothing happened from the raid.

Blake Oliver: Well, there haven't been any charges yet.

David Leary : Yes, this happened in June of 2022. So no charges yet?

Blake Oliver: May and June. Uh, reports indicate that federal federal grand jury subpoenas [01:04:00] were issued to CPA firms that referred clients to a client group. There have been rumors of a grand jury hearing to determine if evidence supports criminal charges, but no official charges have been announced. The investigation remains ongoing. So, I mean, it's been a while. Maybe. Maybe they're going to drop it. Maybe nothing will come of this.

David Leary : Well, of.

Blake Oliver: Course it's all. It's all alleged.

David Leary : Yeah. If you're promising people, you know, maybe your buddies work in the IRS, you're going to give them jobs and leave the IRS. And this is not [01:04:30] a good look. And it's it's just it's yucky. It's really yucky because we're supposed to be the industry that has ethics. And we're just we're no better than the pharmaceutical and food and drug and all these other government agencies where people go in and out and not. And you actually, I think brought this up with the pcob before, you know, people, the fines aren't very hard on firms because Pcob is staffed by partners from firms and they swing back and forth.

Blake Oliver: Right. You're a director at a big four firm. You go work for the Pcob, [01:05:00] then you go back and work for the firm as a partner. So you're not going to find you're not going to find a big four firm, a lot of money. You don't want to be that guy or gal. Um, David, I want to finish up with a wild story about a Microsoft backed AI startup exposed as an elaborate human fraud builder. I was a Microsoft backed startup that promised clients an AI powered app development [01:05:30] platform featuring an AI assistant named Natasha. In reality, the company was employing 700 human engineers in India to pose as the AI chatbot and manually code all the applications. So in this case, I was actually Indians. They generated only $50 million in actual revenue while claiming 220 million. A [01:06:00] lender seized 37 million after discovering the financial discrepancies. The company owes Amazon $85 million and Microsoft 30 million for unpaid cloud services. They have filed for bankruptcy in the UK, India and the US. And there are multiple lawsuits against the company by former employees. I guess we knew this was coming. There have been lots of AI frauds, and this was the joke for when ChatGPT came out.

David Leary : That Amazon Alexa. Right. [01:06:30] A lot of these tools are being used like that. They're just being thrown over the wall to a human.

Blake Oliver: So, um, funny story, I guess, uh, you know, buyer beware. I might be actually actually Indians.

David Leary : And I was following this as an accounting story for months now, but I never really pulled it into the show because they were they were having problems getting out their financial reports. And I was just like, why are they not using AI to knock out their financial reports? But now we know why [01:07:00] they didn't actually have any human accountants to, you know, on staff. They just had some engineers to to do the work.

Blake Oliver: All right, David, that's all the time we have for this week. If you want to send us a message, you can email us The Accounting Podcast at earmarks. Don't forget, you can earn free continuing professional education credit Nasba approved CPE credits for listening. Get the earmark app. Go to Earmark App in your web browser or download the app for iOS or Android. Create a free [01:07:30] account. Find our show. You can look up the channel, the accounting podcast and earn a free CPE credit every week for listening. Just take a quick five question quiz after you listen, and you'll get a CPE certificate delivered to you via email. I will be at AICPA engage this week. So if you're tuning in to the live stream and you're going to be there, let me know. Shoot me an email. We'd love to meet up with you. And [01:08:00] I think that's a wrap.

David Leary : You should bring your ICP AICPA engage. I think the IRS criminal division is always there recruiting to hire. Try to get some inside information about Alliantgroup. Find out what the status of that is.

Blake Oliver: All right.

David Leary : It'll be interesting to know.

Blake Oliver: I'll check it out. Thanks, everyone who tuned in to us on this Saturday. As always, you can usually catch us on Friday, Friday morning, afternoon, wherever you are in the world. Uh, hope to see you again [01:08:30] next week. Bye, everyone.