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Is ESG Accounting a Scam? · The Accounting Podcast

• [00:00:00] Thank you to our sponsor, Canopy David: What is accounting practice management software? Is it the operating system for your accounting practice? Is it an all-in-one software solution for accountants? Is it the crucial tech standing between your practice and utter chaos? Accounting practice management software should bring together all of your practice’s mission-critical functions in one place to make your life and your practice easier. Stay tuned to hear more from our sponsor, Canopy, later in the episode. [00:00:23] Preview Blake: Well, you know that- here's my feeling on this. Nothing is going to change at the Big Four until the business model changes. As long as what you are selling is time- which is what they sell in most cases, they're still selling time- firm leaders, practice owners or leaders of practices are going to have every incentive just to get their staff to work as many hours as possible. And that's not healthy. It doesn't matter. You can do all of this stuff on the fringes. You can make it all sound nice and have lots of mental health resources. But if people are working 60 to 80 hours a week, they're not going to be healthy. David Leary: Coming to you weekly from the OnPay recording studio, this is The Cloud Accounting Podcast. [00:01:14] Introduction Blake: Welcome to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver. David: I’m David Leary. Blake, you are not in your normal office. Blake: No, I'm at my in-law’s- I'm in my father-in-law's studio. David: Music studio, that's right? Blake: Yes. David: I guess another week. I personally felt it very distracting, with like, the shooting and just- I went on a whole rabbit hole yesterday, really digging in about like, taxes and guns and the IRS’s relationship and I don't know. It's kind of deep. And then not all my things I was reading got saved properly in my newsreader. So- and I don't even know if we should talk about it, but like, to act like it didn't exist though, either, to distract from preparing for this week's show, I think is also a little naive, but you know? Blake: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if there's a tie-in to what we cover on our show. I've been doing a little investing and so, you know, in that respect, one of the topics when it comes to guns and investing is, you know, do you actually own shares in gun manufacturers? And most people do. If you own Target retirement funds, Vanguard's index funds, all of these funds that mirror the market, then you own a piece of this. So then, people are deciding, “Do I switch out of those into ESG funds?” And we were talking about ESG last week, and there's the pros and cons of that kind of investing strategy because so many ESG funds seem to be greenwashed. And that's how you end up with like oil and gas companies in an ESG fund, because maybe that fund says, “Well, even if you aren't environmentally friendly now, if you have good social and governance, you know, and you're on the track to being more environmentally friendly, we'll let you in.” [00:03:04] Adam Neumann's new ESG and blockchain company David: Yeah. So, it's funny that you bring up ESG. That's like a- did you see Adam Newman? Blake: Yeah. So, Adam Newman- David: Founder of WeWork. Blake: Founder of WeWork, WeWork guy, is back with a- this is the best. It's covering- it’s combining two of our favorite topics now, cryptocurrency and ESG. What's the deal with that? David: And if it- this is like any way to give validation to both possibly being a complete scam, he's now joining in on this, for real. So, essentially, he raised funds, $70 million- 32 million came from VC firms, including Andreessen Horowitz's a16z and then another 38 million from the sale of- so, his new company is called Flowcarbon. Blake: Flowcarbon? David: And he’s selling Flowcarbon goddess nature tokens. Blake: Goddess? David: So, he's creating his own tokens and essentially, the- long story short, it goes right to what you were saying. Companies can buy these tokens and then those tokens will be used to offset their credits. And it's crazy. Like, if you've watched WeCrashed on Apple. If everybody hasn't watched it yet, queue it up. Blake: Yeah. I haven’t seen that yet, no. David: It's a little scary ‘cause people just invested blindly into him. And now, is it happening again? Blake: So, what this thing is- help me understand what this thing is. So, there's been this concept of carbon credits that you could buy and sell, companies could exchange them. For a long time, that has existed for a while. So, the idea is that, let's say I am in a polluting industry and I have a factory that pollutes. Instead of reducing the emissions of my factory, I could go out onto one of these carbon exchanges and I could buy credits from a company that is cleaning up or doing something to reduce carbon emissions. So then, I get to claim credit. That's the idea, right? I get to claim credit for reducing carbon, even though I didn't actually do it. David: That’s interesting, right? Yes. So, a company plants a bunch of trees, they have carbon credits. They sell them to you as a corporation. And then you're like, “Look, I'm carbon zero or neutral.” That's the gist of it. Now, how this is getting involved, I can't explain it to you. Blake: Well, and so now, you can trade them on a blockchain is the idea, right? So, it's a blockchain-based carbon credit exchange. But then yeah, you know, I mean, there's the question is too, don't blockchains produce a lot of emissions? I mean, Bitcoin does, right? Bitcoin, last time I checked, creates a carbon footprint bigger than Iceland. David: I think it's like the eighth biggest energy- like, if it was a country, like eighth biggest in the world or some crazy thing amount of energy, just the blockchain creates. Blake: I wonder if that's- I wonder if they've solved that problem for this, but- yeah. David: And then it's really crazy. So, this is- the underlying carbon credits are pre-certified by industry groups, including Verra, Gold Standard, Climate Action Reserve and the American Carbon Registry. Like, you know all these things are scams. There are all these groups are just set up. Like, this is crazy. Blake: They’re all private companies that create their own standards for credits and companies- yeah. Again, it's all part of this- David: And then they bundle them up and sell them into other companies. This is like- I don't know. [00:06:26] The AICPA holds ESG summit in NY David: But so then, so not only did this happen, did you see the AICPA themselves had a symposium on ESG? Blake: Yes. They tweeted it out. I saw Casey Johnson tweeted that they had this ESG summit in New York and all these people came in. David: Well, they- specifically, she tweeted a picture of a mixer, right? It was obviously the end of the day, they were up on the roof. And I was just thinking- I think I had a beer or two in me- and I was just asking these questions, right? Makes you wonder, like, what's the ESG score of that event, right? Like, don't you think that would- should be provided? ‘Cause people traveled in for this event. And then I was just thinking, how do you even calculate it? And then I'm like, if you can't calculate it for an event like this, like, how are accountants supposed to calculate this? And then the reply I got was, you can calculate it. And the reply I got from Casey Johnson was, “Check out sustain.life. Their solution does that.” So, if you go to sustain.life- Blake: It's one of the solutions that was at the symposium? David: -they are part of the AICPA’s incubator, and cpa.com’s incubator. So, in a way, like this was a commercial event for one of their apps, in a strange kind of way. Now, they said they are going to publish the results of this in the future. Blake: What does that include? The carbon- the ESG score of the event itself? I think that’s the fair question. David: Exactly. That, I would like to see. Right? Is that going to be included in this? They did have a little press release about this. Let me open that up. Blake: Because as we discussed in our show in the past, like one of the big questions about the environmental reporting, at least that the SEC is proposing to regulate, is direct and indirect environmental impact can be difficult to calculate. The indirect, especially. So, you know, how do you calculate- I guess you calculate all the travel that goes into putting on an event like this, all the people flying in, the cost of staying in the hotels from an environmental standpoint. The catering that comes in. David: What about the employees at the hotel who had to travel there, or the people who traveled- it's crazy. So, they're going to release a special report later this year, that recaps key themes and takeaways from the event. Some of those include the confluence of proposed international and national ESG regulations that are creating momentum in the ESG space. How CPAs are well positioned to meet the marketplace demands, just because of their innate skills and experience with systems. Corporate finance leaders are beginning to lead internal efforts, accounting professionals need to expand their knowledge, today’s consumers, employees want to buy from or work for organizations whose values align with their own. And then employees want to work for companies that, you know, do this as well. I don't know. Is this what the AICPA should be focused on? I don’t know. Blake: Well, the thing that struck me when I went and read the proposed rules from the SEC on the E part of ESG that they're gonna try and start regulating, the emissions part, as we discussed last episode is, accounting firms, public accounting firms don't get the monopoly on these audits. Anyone is going to be able to do an audit of emissions, according to the proposed rule. So, I'm curious, is the AICPA going to try and change that to lobby, to say CPAs should be the ones doing these audits? Because if we aren't then- and this is the future of audit- then like the license, what does the license let you do now? What is the- what is guaranteed? David: Well, I imagine there's going to be some sort of like SOC-2 compliance, some badge, something like that, that you have to purchase. I'm using air quotes here, “purchase” from the AICPA, right? And it stamps on your- Blake: Well, no, because the CPAs don't get the monopoly on audits for ESG, according to the SEC’s proposed rules. Anyone. I could open a- David: Well, that's my point. So, it’ll be a branding thing. Blake: David, you and I could open a firm and do it. David: It’ll be a branding thing, right? Blake: Right. David: Yes. Okay. So, David and Blake's ESG certification will be out there, but people aren't going to pay our company to get their certification because they're going to want the AICPA branded one, ultimately. Blake: I doubt it because they're just going to want to get it done. Right? People are just going to want to go to the cheapest, fastest, easiest place, right? And a lot of times, the convenience is more important than anything, for these companies. [00:10:43] R&D tax credits by non-accounting firms Blake: And that actually brings me to another topic, which is R&D tax credits and companies- non-CPA firms- that are doing R&D tax credits. So, this was sent to me by a listener who will remain anonymous. And it is about one of those shops, Main Street. Have you heard of Main Street, David? David: Is this like a tuck shop or a? Blake: So, they do R&D studies for startups. That's their big focus. David: Okay. Okay. Got it. So, it's one of those apps where they help you get the credit or- Blake: Yeah. It's accounting firms with- it's an accounting firm with engineers, right? David: Okay, got it. Blake: So, a lot of accounting firms will help you calculate your R&D tax credit. They'll help you do a study that backs it up in case you get audited, and then you go and you claim this credit. And it's a big deal because it's a credit against your tax liability. So, it's like a dollar-for-dollar reduction, right? It's big money. So, you know, if you spend like a million dollars on research expenses, qualified research expenses, you could have a, you know, $10,000 federal credit, and a $75,000 California credit. And there's these firms out there- and Main Street is one of them- that they take a percentage of the credit or they'll work against a cap, and it's a cap of the credit. So, they- David: I think that's the model a lot of these are set up as. Blake: Yeah. Yeah. So, like, they could take, you know, $35,000 or something, say 25 to 35%. Right? And that's a lot of money. So, their interest is, you know, “Let's automate as much as possible. And then we get this huge margin when we take a percentage.” It's value priced, right? And so, one thing that's interesting about Main Street is that they just took 150 employees out to Hawaii for a week in January, ahead of their anticipated series B funding round. That was tweeted by Rob Price on Twitter. And then, they just laid off in May, a third of their staff, citing today's incredibly rough market. ‘Cause you know, we're headed toward a pullback or recession, or whatever you want to call it, right? David: Yeah. Blake: And you know, there's a lot of talk- there's talk. I'm hearing talk from our listeners, like, are these R&D studies going to hold up to an IRS audit? And that's the question. Like, that could be the crater if none of this stuff holds up and they get sued. David: Well, and a lot of these companies that are out there, they're wanting to partner with accountants and accounting firms. But they’ll pay you, as the accountant, if you use this app, whatever, Main Street, or whoever these other apps are, you, the firm owner, you get a piece of the action as well. You're getting a cut of this R&D thing. So, you're right. Like, how reliable are these? Will these companies even exist when it is time to defend these, pr are you just going to be left holding the bag? Right? [00:13:31] Bolt lays off employees David: Because we are- you’re right. In this time, I mean, we talked about Fast four weeks ago, who got shut down, right? That startup. And they had their base competitor, Bolt. Well guess who just laid off people this week? Bolt. Right? So, like, things are kind of getting very tight for these smaller companies. Blake: Wait, who laid off people? David: Bolt did. Yeah. They laid off people. Blake: Who’s Bolt? David: Bolt is a competitor to Fast. It's kind of this- the concept of these companies is this one-click checkout. So, you get in Amazon, you just hit the button and it’s a one-click buy. Blake: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. David: And then these buttons [INAUDIBLE] through live on a bunch of e-commerce sites all over the world, over the web. And then as you go site to site to site, “Hey, I'm going to buy a barbecue grill here. I'm going to buy this thing on this other, you know, side over here. And I'm going to be at Home Depot over here and I can just click the button, and it's one-click checkout on any site I go to.” Well, I think the reality of that service is harder than you think because you have to actually sign up for the service as a consumer. You know what you're doing when you get it with Amazon, like, “All right, I'm going to-” You know, who's going to invest the time to sign up for this? Because you really don't know what other websites it's on, right? Blake: Right. David: So anyways, it's turning out the environment with startups, et cetera. It's getting very tight right now. And then it is important to note this because we'll talk about Intuit earnings, and there's some things about the environment we're in, when it comes to startups and stuff in there and the economy. [00:14:48] Thank you to our sponsor, Synder David: This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Synder. Tax season is over, which means you can focus on growing your business, rather than hustling to handle the clients you've already got. But how do you add new clients when you're already so busy? That's easy, with Synder. With Synder, you can automate mundane tasks like reconciliation and categorization, and instead spend more time on strategy. Thanks to Synder’s new e-commerce insights, you become a trusted advisor to your clients, not just the data entry clerk, give them important tools to know their numbers and make the right decisions to grow their business. Over 2000 CPAs are already future-proofing their business with Synder as their secret solution. Ready to join them? To book your free demo, head over to cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/synder. That is cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/synder. [00:15:43] Alliantgroup got raided by the IRS Blake: So, there's one more of these R&D tax credit shops that I wanted to mention, in addition to Main Street. And this is the one actually that got me onto this topic. It's Alliantgroup got raided by the IRS. And you know, we were talking with- the other week at AccountingWEB, we interviewed the head of the criminal investigations unit. You know, the IRS agents that get to carry guns, they go get trained at- you know, with the FBI and all that stuff. So, they- you know, every now and then, they actually go in and they'll bring their guns and they'll raid a bank or they'll raid a firm. And so, they raided the Houston headquarters of Alliantgroup. David: And is Alliantgroup traditionally a CPA firm? Blake: No, I don't think so. David: No. Blake: Yeah, no, no, they aren't, but they do these credits. Right? And so, the question is, you know, it's more than- whenever this sort of thing gets going, these kinds of, you know, scams or these kinds of, you know- let's say it is, right? Let's say they're not doing- they’re doing a good job, and this is where, like- David: Maybe it's a scheme. Blake: Scheme. David: Scams vary. Like- Blake: Yeah. It's not a scam scheme- David: It’s a scheme scheme. Blake: But then the schemes get going. There's multiple companies that do them, right? There's a lot of money in it. And again, these guys are doing the same thing where it's like, you know, 25%, 35%, they are- this is according to coverage in Going Concern that I'm reading. They have a habit of suing their clients, because clients will get audited by the IRS, and then won't want to pay Alliantgroup for the work that they did. So, you know, there's a list of lawsuits against their clients, and they like to go after their employees, too, who leave. But yeah, yeah. So, check it out. Check out the coverage of Alliant group on Going Concern. They've got insiders, tweeting information, photos of the IRS raiding and videos of the IRS raiding the office. David: And it’s already here. Here’s what they do. They work on- I'm just on their website. Here's the three products they offer- employee retention credit, calculations, R&D tax credit. And then the section 179D tax credit, which is for like high efficiency, buildings, energy compliance, things like that. So, yeah. So, their business is set up just to help you make claims on your taxes. Blake: And so, this is the problem when the IRS is underfunded, when there aren't a lot of audits happening on this stuff, is that you get groups that pop up that might not be doing all the due diligence they should be doing. And then they're just churning out these R&D credits for companies, and these companies, aren't really aware that, you know- the startups that are taking advantage of this don't realize there's a big risk when you don't do a proper study. And it puts all the firms that do this the right way at a huge disadvantage, because it's a lot more expensive to do it the right way. It's a lot more expensive to do the individualized R&D study. And so, you know, we actually, as a profession, we want a strong regulator because we should want a strong regulator, because then the quality work means something. If there are no audits, if nobody's ever checking the work, then it's very easy for people who aren't doing a good job just to churn these out. David: And the IRS has been fighting with them. Is this correct? Over similar claims. Blake: There have been many audits now of their work that have come back and been- so, the entire tax credit has been denied. And that’s very expensive for the- client. David: So, all right. So, if you're doing work for clients and it's getting denied by the IRS, does that warrant you to be raided by the IRS? Or does the IRS suspect you are doing something else illegally? Blake: Oh, I mean, I think if they aren't doing- if there is a scheme- let's say a scheme going on at the company to do these not the right way, then yeah, the IRS will- the IRS will come at you for that. David: But if they're purposely doing them not the right way, that would constitute a raid. That's what I'm trying to understand. Blake: Yeah. So, like a small time tax prepare, if they're filing fraudulent returns, they'll- you go to jail for that. They'll come after you for that. So, same thing with this, just on a bigger scale, I think. David: So, somewhere, this is tipped from possibly misunderstanding, or they're purposely filing them and it’s, “Yes, here we go. We're gonna have to use a scam way.” ‘Cause why would they raid them? Blake: That's the question. David: Unless there’s truly a scam going on or something. Blake: Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, if any of our listeners have info on this, wanna give their input, if you do R&D credits, if you do employee retention credits, and you're up against competitors that don't seem to be doing this the right way, but are getting the business, let us know. [00:20:03] EY creates a Chief of Wellbeing Officer David: I've kind of a follow up from your story last week. I think you've mentioned how accounting giant, EY, right, they were going to offer more mental health. Blake: Yeah. Yeah. One of them anyway. Was it PWC? David: Oh, unless this is- maybe this is- maybe EY is doing a similar thing, but I have an article about basically, EY created a Chief of Wellbeing Officer position. Blake: A CWO, Chief of Wellbeing Officer. David: That's right. And it's part of their C-suite, right? And it's- the article- this is little bit of a press release, in a way, but the article just goes on and on about like, workers not only have to be concerned about their jobs, but bear the effects of geopolitical events, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, runaway inflation, increasing prices of everything, from food to gasoline, devastatingly heartbreaking school shootings, a politically toxic climate in the U.S., and it has people constantly bickering with each other. Like, the world is so bad that they need to have this position. But a couple things I thought was interesting. I mean, they're trying, right? They're offering lots of different things, but they've created some interesting programs. So, I don't know if you know, there's a thing called the EY WOW, which is the EY Way of Working. And basically, it's the new program they’re rolling out that gives people the flexibility of how and where they work. So, it's hybrid, right? It's a fancy word they're using for the hybrid thing. But part of this, they've created the EY WOW Transition Fund. And this allows leaders, when they do an offsite or team building activity, to have budget, you know? And the people can also use some of that budget if there's an offset on dependent pet care, commuting, things like that. And then not only that, they're building a wellbeing index. So, EY is testing out a wellbeing index by analyzing data from the new programs and policies, the company gain insights into what's working and determine if they are achieving their goals to improving the wellbeing of the employees. You know they're going to sell this to companies, right? And then on top of that, where does this tie back to? Right? ‘Cause isn't one of the ESG things, the social, your employee stuff, right? Blake: Yeah. How healthy are your employees mentally, physically? That's- well, it's the thing about ESG, David. It can include whatever the heck you want. David: Right. And so, how convenient EY has a wellbeing index you can use to measure this stuff internally. Eventually. Blake: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know that- here's my feeling on this. Nothing is going to change at the Big Four until the business model changes. As long as what you are selling is time- which is what they sell in most cases, they're still selling time- firm leaders, practice owners or leaders of practices are going to have every incentive just to get their staff to work as many hours as possible. And that's not healthy. It doesn't matter. You can do all of this stuff on the fringes. You can make it all sound nice and have lots of mental health resources. But if people are working 60 to 80 hours a week, they're not going to be healthy. It's like, you know, if you just feed- if you feed people too many calories, they're going to get fat, right? If you work people too much, they're going to be unhappy. It's pretty simple. You can have all the exercise equipment you want at the office, but if you're just like, force-feeding people calories, they're going to get fat. David: Yeah. If they can't actually find time to use the exercise equipment. Blake: It’s probably not a great analogy, but it's the best one I could come up with. Until the business model changes, where it's not based on leveraging people. [00:23:34] The UK regulator fines KPMG 3.4 million pounds Blake: Hey, so, let's keep talking about the Big Four. The UK regulator- it's always just UK regulator, whenever it's reported in the U.S. news. They never say what it is. The financial reporting council has fined KPMG, LLP, in the UK, 3.4 million pounds. That's equivalent to 4.2 million U.S. dollars for ignoring bribes that Rolls-Royce paid or failing to discover bribes that Rolls-Royce paid to India. Another example of the auditors looking the other way. And the crazy thing is that the partner, whoever saw the audit, he gets to keep working at the firm and plans to retire in September. So, they just pay the financial- they pay the financial fines, and then they keep on going. [00:24:24] EY wants to spinoff their audit division David: Did you see EY wants to spin off its audit division? Blake: Really? No, I’ve not. David: Yes. So, the partners are- so, the senior partners are still ironing out the final proposals, but they want to spin off the audit operations. Now in the article here, it doesn't actually say. But as soon as I saw this headline, I was like, “Oh, that's ‘cause they want to break out tax and advisory, and then maybe take capital differently, something like that.” But it looks like what the bigger problem they're having is that the headaches in the audits, the problems the audit department is having are starting to drag down the rest of the EY, right? In the UK, they want to break them up. And like, this is like almost a preemptive move to avoid being broken up, if they can decide how to do it themselves. And so, they're talking about it right now. Blake: Is this in the U.S., UK? Like, where's this? What- can you send me this? David: This is a UK article. Literally, the website is thisismoney.co.uk. Blake: Wow. Yeah, you're right. EY is about to embark on one of the biggest shake-ups of an accounting giant in decades, as it plans to hive off its audit operations. They're trying to get ahead of it. David: Yeah. And then the one thing it says in the article that, you know, if they do, they could create a domino, right? All the other players, you know, might do this as well. ‘Cause they all copy each other, I think, these firms that are up to this level. Blake: I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Right? It's kind of crazy that we had all of these non-attest services in audit firms, you know? I mean, this is what Sarbanes-Oxley was supposed to stop, but it didn't completely. Audit firms were still allowed to continue providing some services to audit clients. And it just creates this massive conflict of interest. I mean, it's a big enough conflict of interest that you're getting paid by the client that you're auditing. You don't need other conflicts in there. David: A top 100 accounting firm now accepts Shibu coin, or is it Shibu coin? What's the coin with the dog and the doge coin, whatever those two coins with the dogs? Blake: I don't know, David. I don't know. Do your own research. David: I thought you’re the crypto- you know, you handle this stuff. Blake: Doge. I know Doge. Dogecoin. David: Doge, Doge, Doge. Yeah, Doge, and then Shiba, Shiba, which is another like- Blake: Shiba Inu? David: Yeah, which is another dog-based coin or something. Blake: Who's accepting this? David: Wolf & Company, a Boston-based top 100 accounting firm. Blake: Oh, alright. David: But- so, this was in Cryptoglobe, and this is something I've noticed the crypto websites, you know, they're always trying to create things that make them look validated. Right? All they did is, Wolf & Company just starting to use- there's a product out there called BitPay. And it's like a PayPal shopping cart. And they probably are just letting- they just added it to their payment options on their website. Right? But the article makes it seem- really is like, you know, this is the- we’re on the cutting edge here of crypto services. And then it gives crypto more legitimacy than maybe it should have. Right? But of course, they're going to run an article like this, but essentially, it's like they added a PayPal button to their invoices, right? Pay by PayPal. That's just pay by [INAUDIBLE] pay. So, just a noted out there. [00:27:30] The market decline Blake: So, I don't think we've really talked much about the decline in the markets. So, all that stuff that's happened recently where some tech stocks have plunge 75%, 80%. The broader market is down what, like 20%. That's why people are talking about a bear market. And I saw this- we don't have to go into it in depth, but I just wanted to point out this article I saw in the Wall Street Journal. The headline is, the market is melting down and people are feeling it. My stomach is churning all day. Sub-headline says, many are watching investments they meant for down payments, tuition, or retirement shrink, day after day. And it's basically, stories of these investors who have loaded up on stocks. They've ridden the wave up through the pandemic, when everybody was putting all their stimulus money into the stock market. And now, it's crashed and they're freaking out and not sure what they're going to do. And I'm thinking to myself, “This is crazy.” Wasn't it like less than 15 years ago that we had the 2008 financial crisis? And the big lesson of that was, don't put all your money in stocks if you're going to need it anytime soon, because the market could crash 50%, like, at any point? David: Yeah. Blake: It's like nobody learnt the lesson there. David: But this is history. Nobody learns lessons. We don't learn lessons. And this is- like, I've been hearing this, and a lot of this. And this shakeup could be good because like, even like in the startup scene, the amount of money that's out there in these companies have gotten easy money. And what happens is you dilute the talent. So, instead of a small number of companies being solid, the talent gets spread out and it gets very thin, and then a bunch of companies have a bunch of money, but they don't execute very well. And so, this is kind of like a natural pull back that we kind of need to happen. This reset has to happen a little bit. And even the big ones now, it's starting- you're starting to see it catch up in the consumer side. So, all those buy now pay later players, a lot of the consumers have been using those, are in trouble and they're not paying these things back. But at the same time, I’m like, I saw some Instagrammer tweet in their- people are really bitching about these buy now, pay later companies. And there's a lady, she shows- she has a slide on her TikTok, her Instagram or the hell it is, right? And she's talking about how she's in the hole on this dress she bought. Blake, how much do you think this dress cost, Blake? Blake: $500. David: $2,000 dress. But if you do the buy now, pay later, you break it into five payments or four payments of $500, but I'm like, the problem isn't the buy now, pay later, it's because you bought a $2,000 dress. Blake: Wait, why is she in the hole? Did she like destroy the dress? David: Well, she didn't pay back. And then- ‘cause you know, probably has other buy now pay laters, and then they all start to come up due, and the only money in your bank account, so they can't withdraw it. So now, you're getting fined or penalties and now you owe- the whole- it's really a different variation on the credit card game. Blake: Yeah, yeah. I listened to a whole podcast episode on- it might've been Planet Money about buy now pay later and how all these people are getting caught in these cycles of debt. The same way it used to be a credit card, but now it's all these individual buy now pay laters. And the problem with it is that the buy now pay later companies or the after-pay companies, whatever you call them, they don't know what other buy now pay laters you have. So, you could end up- there's no limit, right? So, that's the problem. That's the bubble of that. Right? All these people will load up and then they won't be able to pay. David: And I think Klarna or- I think it was one of the leading ones- they just had to- they took a billion dollar or another round of financing or whatever, but they had to lower their valuation to take it. So, this is really starting to hit these companies where talents- and it's risky. Right? You think about all the apps and these companies you want to possibly use in your firm, if the funding dries up for that app, that app might not be around a year from now. [00:31:21] Thank you to our sponsor, Canopy David: This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Canopy. Accounting practice management software should bring together all of your firm's mission-critical functions in one place: client management, document management, workflow, time, and billing and payments to keep your team organized. Canopy knows that not all firms are on the same practice management journey or timeline. So, Canopy lets you build your practice management platform as you need it. You start with the client management is your foundation, then you can choose the modules that your firm needs. Since nobody likes paying for modules they don't use, they offer modular pricing as well. Canopy integrates with QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks, CRMs, form builders, spreadsheets, calendars, email, and Zapier. They have a mobile app, centralized file management, fillable PDFs, a client portal, task management, and the list goes on and on. Via their integration with the IRS, you can easily retrieve all your clients’ transcripts notices and childcare tax credit payments without leaving Canopy. To try Canopy free for 30 days, head over to cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/canopy. That is cloud accounting podcast.promo/canopy. It's time to streamline your firm with Canopy. [00:32:37] Intuit earnings report David: Right. And so, this is where we will eventually get into- if you want to, we can jump over there now, but the Intuit earnings, right? Blake: Yeah. David: Which are kind of amazing. And they also explain why Intuit raised prices on QuickBooks again. Like, when you like the earnings. Blake: Let's do it. Let’s get into app news. David: So, Intuit reported their third quarter results and then they raised all their guide-ins, et cetera, et cetera, like they usually do. But a couple of big notes in here. Their QuickBooks Online ecosystem revenue grew 67% to 1.2 billion. And if you pulled out MailChimp, it still grew 31%. Blake: Wow. David: It just continues to grow and grow and grow. Blake: So, is this the first time they've been over a billion with QuickBooks Online? I guess if they grew- David: For the ecosystem? Blake: If they grew 30%- David: Possibly, yes. The ecosystem could. Blake: Then it could be right. That's a huge milestone, and 67%, total, but they're including MailChimp in there. David: Yeah. Blake: Got it. David: QuickBooks Online accounting revenue grew 32% in the corner- or in the quarter, driven primarily by higher effective prices, consumer growth, right? Blake: Mm-hmm. David: QuickBooks Online payroll and QuickBooks Online payments, excluding MailChimp revenue grew 28%. International online revenue grew 221%, and then the real kicker number, which it was just amazing that I saw. And you kind of were projecting this out early on when we start talking about QuickBooks Live, that all of a sudden, Intuit's going to quickly be a top 10 accounting firm. I think you figured out maybe number 68 or something. Blake: Yeah, if they kept- David: But you were doing that only on QuickBooks Live numbers. Blake: Right. Right. David: Well, TurboTax Live revenue has grown another 30%, and it's now $1 billion. TurboTax Live. Blake: So, when they say that, though, they're talking about, you're paying for TurboTax plus Live, they're not separating out the live component. David: That’s correct. Blake: Right. But to be fair, if you're purchasing the personal handholding, yeah, you could argue that TurboTax Live is an accounting firm with engineers or a tax firm with engineers. And it's over a billion dollars, which makes it- I don't know what the top 100 threshold is for a billion dollars, but that's like, you know, top- in the top 20 something, right? David: Well, I think we just talked about two firms that merged to create a mega firm, and now, they have a billion in revenue and it moved them to top 10 or top 12, or something. So, yeah. So, this puts Intuit- Blake: Yeah. TurboTax Live should be in there. Like I think, you know, if Accounting Today really wanted to do accurate rankings, they'd include non-CPA firms like TurboTax Live because they've already allowed in other non-CPA firms. EisnerAmper has split off audit into its own firm. So now, the other part is- but the other part is still included in Accounting Today. And then we've got Your Part-Time Controller on the list. I don't know. It's time to update the rankings. David: Yeah. And then Intuit, just like a lot of these- the big, huge tech companies, right? The Apples, the Googles, the Microsofts, right? They have a lot of cash on the- you know, they got $3.9 billion cash just sitting aside on the balance sheet. Right? This is a very strong- from that point from- and then I jumped in and looked at the conference call. A couple of notes in the conference call. QuickBooks capital is like at record levels. It's just tripled year over year. Because it's just easy to get to, and because they're starting to dial in these algorithms, they're accurately loaning money to people when they need it. Right? So, they're seeing- Blake: And that is the loan you can get inside of QuickBooks for- David: Inside of QuickBooks for business loans. Blake: You have to have a QuickBooks cash account or can you just- David: Not for that. Blake: Not for that. David: You can get a QuickBooks capital to any bank account. It would be nice- I don't think that stuff's connected very well yet, but that's the next step, right? Blake: They’re all separate products, yeah. David: And they do talk a lot about their ecosystem plays with you know, credit- if you had TurboTax and you open a Credit card or Karma bank account, you get your refund five days sooner. Right? And so, they're really talking about that ecosystem play that's been going on and on and on. They talked about QuickBooks Desktop ecosystem revenue grew 3%, you know, ‘cause they raised the prices on the desktop enterprise. But they flat out say in the comments called, longer term, we do not expect the desktop business to be a growth driver for the small business and self-employed group. So, they’re kind of setting the table for Wall Street, like, “Don't expect desktop to be in the future per se.” Blake: Yeah. You would think the analysts would already be able to figure that out. David: Yeah. Blake: But they must not listen to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. David: Yeah. And then- so, there's a little out of order cause it gets into the questions. But- so, we just talked about how TurboTax Live is a billion dollars. Blake: Yeah. David: The Intuit is pretty sure that for consumer tax, it's 20 billion, and on the business tax sides, it's another 10 billion. So, Intuit thinks this is a $30 billion opportunity, and they think they're barely scratching the surface on this. Blake: So, they're at like 1.2 billion now. David: Of a 30 billion-dollar opportunity. Blake: Wow. David: And then they also think this is- the same is true for what they're doing with Credit Karma, what they're doing with MailChimp, what they're doing with QuickBooks Capital. They're like, “We're just now getting this dialed in and we're not even close to dominating the market on these fronts that we're currently in.” So, there's that. They talk about over 1.5 trillion of invoices are generated on the system- on the platform. And then they do get a little bit intimate. I talked about how much cash they have. So, they talk about- and I think Xero talked about this in their latest thing about their acquisitions. Blake: How much cash does Intuit have? David: 3.9 billion, as of April 30th. Blake: That’s a good chunk. Yeah. So, what are they going to do with it, is what- David: And remember, even Xero’s earning- Xero talked about, they plan on making acquisitions. This was directly asked, right? And it's interesting because they're very clear that they can do it. From a mind share standpoint and cash standpoint, they can do it. But I'll read this, quote unquote, “the biggest hindrance for future acquisitions is how good the management team is of the company they're acquiring. It's not our mind share or our resources,” and that's the way they think about it. So, when they're looking to- so, all you app developers that are listening, who are like, “Maybe Intuit will buy me one day,” they're looking at your management. Because obviously, if they bring you in, they can't just pull managers off of other Intuit products and slap you. Right? So, they're looking- which I thought it's interesting that it's not the engineers, it's not an- it's looking at the management team, which ultimately, leads to what kind of business are they running right at that thing? And then the last thing which I thought was a little cocky, but also very, very interesting, and it's at the very end, it's like, “By the way, we are the best projector of the economy because of the data we see in our small business platform.” Blake: I believe that. David: Like, they're not afraid. I mean, I've seen Intuit through four downturns or whatever, and it's never slowed them down. People still have to pay taxes and lots of people start businesses and downturn, but they have a lot of power here, and it's this flywheel's really starting to happen for Intuit. And then obviously, this leads right into Intuit raised prices again on QuickBooks. Blake: Well, that's how they keep increasing their revenue, even if they don't get as many files as they used to. Right? Because Intuit is plateaued a bit in terms of the online subscriber growth, which is why they stopped reporting that number, we think. They don’t report subscription numbers. David: Yeah, they used- because I mean, I think it's still growing, but when you used to be able to say, “We added 300,000 small businesses to QuickBooks Online every quarter,” it's hard to go out there and say, “We only added 50,000.” Blake: So, this is important to note, is that the growth is coming- the growth is coming just as much from the price increases as it is from the subscriber growth. David: Yes. But if you raise the prices and subscriber growth doesn't decrease, you're going to try to increase them again. Right? Blake: Yeah, yeah. David: And so, basically, Plus went up five bucks a month. So, instead of QuickBooks Online Plus being $80, now- it's now $85. So, I need to go adjust all my virtual credit card that pays for QuickBooks five more bucks. Blake: Gosh, that is a lot. I mean, sorry. As somebody who subscribes to Xero, you know, as a Xero user, $85 seems like a lot to pay for accounting software. David: But isn't some of this- like my understanding is in- down under in Australia, Xero's slowly been raising their prices and QuickBooks is the one that's kind of undercutting them. It's a much better price. And so, Xero’s still trying to get market share in the states here. Right? Blake: Yup. David: But I also still think- I mean, at some level I'm paying, what, about 80 bucks a month for QuickBooks Online and two years from now, it'll probably be $100, and there's not much I can do about it. Right? I'm not going to switch probably, which is probably the case for most people. Blake: That’s- switching costs are very high. David: It's kind of hard to do, but at some other level, if you add it all up, I look at like all the apps I use to run my business, and QuickBooks might be one of the most expensive and produces no revenue. Right? Like, we're paying- even for this podcast, we have Zencastr, we’re paying what, 40 bucks a month for that, Transistor, 40 bucks for that. Canva, which is like an unbelievable value is like 12 bucks a month per employee. Like it's crazy. Like, at all the pieces of the SaaS apps I use to run my business, QuickBooks is like the most expensive, right? And then you start going through this. They have- there’s a huge blog post they have on the firm of the future blog, they're changing prices. Even on QuickBooks Online Payroll, that's changing from $4 an employee to $5 an employee. Blake: There was something about Payroll. People were pretty upset and it was about- was it about desktop payroll recently? David: Let's see. Blake: I could be making something up. Are they phasing it out? We might've talked about this in a previous episode. David: Well, I think they- they're phasing out like Intuit Online Payroll, to QuickBooks. Yeah. So, that's been going on for the last 18 months to two years, I think. But they are going to start offering a discount on MailChimp for ProAdvisors. They're changing up revenue sharings, rolling out to all the US-based accountants. What's interesting about this, I mean the blogpost is huge, right? They also are pulling out, they're changing Fathom. So, Fathom’s built into QuickBooks Online Accountant- Fathom Reports. But you know how the- they just did that business deal for QuickBooks Online Advanced with- I forgot the other, is it Centage? The other- Blake: Centage? David: Centage, right? And now, apparently, Fathom Reports did have some ties in with QuickBooks Online Advanced, so that might be being taken out of QuickBooks Online Advance. So, some people are kind of upset about that. [00:43:11] The timing of this with Scaling New Heights coming up in a few weeks David: Now, what's most interesting about this is the timing, right? We are now Scaling New Heights is in what? Father's day. So, that's what, three weeks away? Four weeks away. Intuit pulls out of Scaling New Heights, right? Which is really, the convention outside of QuickBooks Connect for QuickBooks advisors. And so now, they're all going to be coming together, fresh off of this pricing increase, which again, on all the social media, they're all fired up on, everybody's bitching about. They're going to be all together at a conference. In the meantime, Xero and like eight other accounting platforms are now going to be at Joe Woodard's conference, Scaling New Heights. It's just that the fact- the timing is interesting because basically, you're just giving a bunch of fuel to all their competitors in your base. You’re better off doing this a month from now, after that conference. So, if people- they don't have a place to vent with each other over drinks, et cetera. Blake: Well, we'll get to see. David: Yeah. Blake: We’ll find out. Does $5 a month make a difference? David: And then that goes back to the bigger thing, the bigger bitch, and then we'll say this again. If $5 forces you to write letters to all your clients, to adjust your client- your pricing, you've got to think about how you're pricing your product. Like, assume it's going to go up $5 a month, every month for the next decade, build that ten-year price in today. Just build it in. Blake: Yeah. Or just have your clients pay directly, right? But don't make the margin on the software. The margin on the software shouldn't be a big part of your business. It shouldn’t materially impact it. David: Well, so, I think a lot of accounts aren't putting the margin on it. Theirs including as the cost, right? So, Blake, I'm going to do your bookkeeping- Blake: Passing it through. Yeah. Yeah. David: There’s passing it through, and it’s just really hard. Blake: I would just roll it into the services and just- your price increases on your services every year should more than make up for whatever Intuit’s going to increase your price to. [00:45:00] Thank you to our sponsor, A2X David Leary: This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by A2X. Since 2014, A2X has helped thousands of online merchants and their advisors save inordinate amounts of time reconciling the revenue for their online stores. A2X posts tidy summaries of sales, returns and fees from Shopify and Amazon directly into QuickBooks or Xero that exactly match the deposits that appear in the bank account, allowing you to accurately reconcile in just one click, giving you the confidence of knowing that your client's e-commerce financials are accurate. Cloud accounting podcast listener and e-commerce expert, Scott Scharf, said A2X is the gold standard e-commerce accounting. A2X has a partner program for accountants and bookkeepers that includes one-on-one onboarding, training for you and your team, and exclusive marketing opportunities. To learn more about using A2X and get 50% off your subscription for three months by using code CAP50, head over to cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/a2x. That is cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/a2x. [00:46:03] GoDaddy shuts down their online bookkeeping services Blake: We have to talk about the complete polar opposite of TurboTax Live and QuickBooks Live. And that is GoDaddy online bookkeeping. Do you remember Outright Bookkeeping? David: Yes. So, Outright was started by a former Intuit Payroll employee that I worked with 15 years ago, Ben Curren. So, he started that and then he wound up selling that to GoDaddy. It was like one of the first cloud accounting- Blake: So, GoDaddy bought- David: Like, this is before QuickBooks Online. Blake: And did they use their own software? David: It was all proprietary, yep. Blake: Right. So, GoDaddy bought Outright Bookkeeping, which had its own software, and then have decided now to shut it down. Thank you to @ShayCPA for tagging us, or for tweeting this, and then I saw that. They're going to discontinue online bookkeeping on June 23rd, 2022. And you'll have to go find some new software. They have partnered with Intuit to offer you a special discount on QuickBooks Online. I never ran into this in the wild, but I guess a bunch of eBay sellers used to use it. David: Yeah. And then he- it kind of evolved. I think now he's doing some sort of accounting system or point of sale for cannabis. A kind of- it's like a version of it branched off specifically for cannabis, I think, that’s out there. So, maybe it's not fully dead. [00:47:29] Listener feedback Blake: I have a listener message that I've got on my screen. So, I'm just going to read it right now. This is from Christopher. He said, “Hi Blake. I've been catching up on The Cloud Accounting Podcast, and it's fantastic. I started from the first episode and have only reached the beginning of 2020. I'm looking forward to digesting the rest of the content as I continue to develop as an accounting pro. Great work. Thank you.” So, he's going back to the very beginning and listening through to all of our episodes, David. Which- David: It’s a lot of old news. It'd be interesting to get his take on [CROSSTALK]. Blake: That's- I wonder what [CROSSTALK]. Yeah, thank you, Christopher. You'll have to tell us, you know, what are your takeaways from digesting 281- at this point- episodes? David: Actually, he'll probably stop listening because he’ll be like, “These guys are idiots.” ‘Cause we probably sound stupid. If he probably listened to something we predicted two years ago or said something that is completely off base now, I'm sure. So, I recommend you don't do that. It's interesting though, to go back four or five episodes, but to go through the whole library- Blake: Please don't. Please don't listen to my first episode. David: The very first one. Blake: So, are you done with Intuit news, David? David: I think we're done with Intuit news, but I mean, we’ve got some other- Blake: Okay. I got Xero. David: -two other news articles though, for- that are app-related. [00:48:35] Xero updates their quotes experience Blake: Okay. Well, I got some Xero stuff, so I'll just- here's a Xero update. So, Xero has updated their quotes experience so that you can send files as email attachments with your quotes. And actually, it's not available yet. The blog post says, “In the weeks ahead, we're rolling out a new feature that will allow you to send files as email attachments with your quotes. This means your customers can open attachments such as terms and conditions or a sales brochure, from the email itself, rather than via a web page.” And it's a longstanding community request that they have fulfilled. David: Finally. Blake: Finally. And I think there's one more Xero thing. Hold on a sec. So, this is actually both a Xero item and a Stripe item. Stripe has released their own app marketplace. The credit card processing company has its app marketplace in Xero. David: I think we talked about that ‘cause they also have a partner community as well. Like they'll list you in as a Stripe expert, as well as we talked about- Blake: Oh. So, accountants can get into that. Interesting. Well, so, Xero announced their own Stripe app in the marketplace. And one thing that's kind of cool about it, in the list of key benefits, they say that, “Inside of Stripe, customers can now view key Xero dashboard data, giving a 360 view of their business. When navigating the Stripe dashboard, you can see bank balances, invoices, and bills without switching between systems.” So, directly in Stripe. And this is something that I always wanted in Xero, is the ability to embed a widget on the dashboard, since the Xero dashboard is very widgetized. I don't know what the right word to describe it is, but every bank account or account watch list is a box on the screen. So, you could like allow other apps to put data onto that dashboard. So, Stripe’s figured out how to do that. David: Intuit as well has, you know, flirted with that idea a lot. It's just, it also comes to that and this may be the reason Xero's not doing it either, is because then, all of sudden this dashboard becomes a noisy place and you've lost control of your customer experience. But I think app developers want it, and I think- Blake: Yeah, yeah. And it’s a balance, right? David: -people kind of want stuff. It's annoying having to jump out all the time, to a different tab. Blake: Yeah, like let's say, you know, okay, here I am, I'm in Xero or QuickBooks or whatever, and I'm looking at my bills that I got to pay. Right? Okay. Well, why can't I just like, on the dashboard, see the- you know, if I want to pay in Relay for instance, or I want to pay bill.com or in Melio, why can't I just see that, you know, those bills on the dashboard and then click to go into that app and pay, right? Rather than having to like go navigate through a bookmark bar or something. It would just be so much easier. David: Agree. Blake: But I understand that. David: Beyond the API integrations, yes. These are accounting systems that have UI integrations. And that's kind of what [INAUDIBLE] does, right? And that suite, the integrations are like more in the UI and less just an API data level. Yeah. Blake: So, you can also see your overdue and unpaid invoice totals and bank account totals in the Stripe dashboard, stuff coming from Xero. And you can see customer contact information stored in Xero without leaving Stripe, giving you a complete view of your customer. David: Interesting. Blake: Yeah. So, have you checked out the new Stripe marketplace? It’s worth taking a look. David: Just when I looked at it that two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, whenever their press release came out, but I have not been back there. Blake: I'm going to go take a look right now because I want to see what's in there. So, they've got the Stripe partner ecosystem, and then you can click on find technology partners. Yes, it's stripe.com/partners/directory. But is that- David: The directory is for like an accountant who becomes an expert in Stripe can get listed on there. That's what we talked about in their press release. Blake: Oh, here we go. David: So, it was two things they did. They have the find a Stripe expert or a Stripe partner. Then you have the actual Stripe app store, if you can call it that. Blake: Okay. And the apps, the apps you find at marketplace.stripe.com. I'm looking at the page right now. I see featured is Intercom, DocuSign. Zero is featured as well. They've also got MailChimp, Dropbox, Bench is in there. Ramp is in there. I wonder what other financial and accounting tools are in here. Let's take a look. So, we've got Bench, Billit, Exemptax, Puzzle. That's Puzzle says, accounting software built native to Stripe designed for founders. That's new to me. Ramp, as I mentioned, SimplyVAT.com. Synder is in there, Taxually for digital services and Xero. Those are the accounting integrations. David: Financial companies. Blake: And then in terms of like financial services, Mercury, OnDeck, Fundbox, Capital One, Capchase, and OpenNode. Cool. [00:53:34] Qonto adds invoicing as a service David: Qonto- I mean, that's the way to say this. It's Q-O-N-T-O. They are a business finance solution in Europe. And so, they have a strong foothold in France and Germany and Spain and Italy. They- it's interesting ‘cause it looks like they- in some of these countries, like here, you can just- you can't get the bank account until you get your business license first. Blake: You can't get a bank account until you get your business license. Well, I had to go get an EIN letter for the most recent account. And then I- David: Yeah, because you can't open a business checking account in United States without EIN. Blake: Without an EIN letter from the IRS. And then- David: So, you kind of have to get your license first before you open bank. Well, apparently, it looks like- Blake: To do that, to get the EIN, you have to incorporate with the state, or you have to register with the state. David: Yeah. And it looks like in Europe, based on their website, it's kind of the opposite, where you have to deposit the money, and all the partners need to make their deposit first. And then you go get your license afterwards, and then you can start withdrawing and using the money, which is kind of an interesting- like, it's the opposite. But- so, they offer that as a service. And then on top of that, they've spun out into, you know, expense management for your team tracking, loans- they're a business bank account, right? capturing receipts and, you know, syncing it to all the accounting systems. But now, they've just- again, this march of banks becoming accounting GLs, they've just added in- they're going to add invoicing. It goes live on the 24th. And it’s just going to start in France, Germany, and Spain, but essentially, it's part of- their first part of “a series of solutions allowing Qonto clients to get paid.” Right? So, they're just on this march. Yes, they sync to the accounting system, but hey, if you just do it right directly in our app, you don't need the accounting system as much. Because if you're paying bills through the app, and now you're invoicing, it's a full stack. It’s getting there. Blake: I've got a piece of PPP fraud news that we can't miss. David: You can't miss, do you want to touch on- before you do the last app news quickly? Blake: What do you got? [00:55:26] ADP makes enhancements to Accountant Connect David: ADP has made enhancements to Accountant Connect. Blake: Okay. David: So, ADP has their Accountant Connect, right? Which is their portal for accountants to get knowledge on things, find out their products, et cetera. So now, they've added in analysis tools so you can get benchmarks directly from ADP for employee turnover, benefit enrollment, rates by industry. So, you're getting access to data that ADP has. They're going to give like a dashboard so you can get the full, transparent view of all your clients on all the ADP products they might use. And then you can also set up notifications. So, if your client hires a new employee or terminates an employee, or if the state jurisdiction changes on any of your client's employees, you get notified right away so you know you have to go take action. Service Connect, they're going to- and this is the one I found most interesting. They're allowing accountants to use their platform to send and receive documents, ask questions, right? And track the status of service requests. So, is this going to- are they [INAUDIBLE] practice management mark- marcher? ADP, it's kind of interesting. Then they have their cert- they have a certification program now. They partnered with Rootworks and that's eligible for three CPE credits. And then they've added two more integrations- well, or affiliations. So, Jirav now has an integration with them, and pulls data directly from Run, which is ADP’s small business startup payroll. And then Avalara is in there, but just offering a 25% off Avalara solutions to the Accountant Connect people. But it feels like they might be on a march to build practice management here. I don't know. It’s what it feels like. Blake: Well, perhaps we will be enlightened in a future episode. [00:57:13] Red Power Ranger charged with PPP fraud David: So, PPP news. Blake: Okay. So, the actor who played the red Power Ranger in the hit 90s TV series, Austin St. John, he has been charged for his alleged role in a fraud scheme that raked in 3.5 million meant for businesses struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic, the department of justice announced. Yes, the red Power Ranger committed PPP fraud, allegedly, and is being brought to justice. His legal name is Jason Lawrence Geiger. He's 47, and he was indicted last week in Texas. And by last week, I actually mean, I think it was like two weeks ago. He was one of 18 people indicted in the scheme, which allegedly defrauded lenders and the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program to receive loans they used for personal expenses, according to the Eastern district of Texas U.S. attorney's office. David: And what did he use it for? Do he do anything cool? Like buy a fancy car, a swimming pool? Blake: The group fraudulently obtained 16 loans, totaling at least 3.5 million. And it looks like Austin St. John was not one of the ringleaders in this. Let's see how he got involved. They basically just filed false paperwork. They disguised the true nature of the business, number of employees, amount of the payroll. David: What's the- whatever, it's the same. The same part everybody's done. Blake: Same story. Yeah. David: Same story. Blake: Anything good? David: That's why I'm looking at- it doesn't- it's the headline, right? Like the headline is the key here. Right? The red Power Ranger charged. It's almost insane. Blake: He had to- he canceled his appearance at the Des Moines Con. David: Comic book convention? Blake: The comic book and pop culture convention in Iowa. Poor kids don't get to see- well, I don’t think it's kids anymore. It's like people my age. David: Yeah. So, it's just really, they- you know, the group transferred it to their personal accounts and then spent it on personal purchases. Yeah, there's nothing insane that he purchased, or it doesn't look like it. Blake: He didn’t buy himself like a better Power Ranger costume, you know? David: And he did send his apology. I see when he canceled the appearance, he said that he sends his apologies and love to all of the folks that were looking forward to meeting him. Is there really like a list of people out there like, “I really want to meet the red Power Ranger.” I don't know. Blake: Yeah. I mean, you know, why not, right? Childhood heroes. David: If you're listening to The Cloud Accounting Podcast and you are- loved the red Power Ranger and you're disappointed in his behavior, please call and leave us a voicemail. Send us an email. Blake: Yes, you can email me Blake@BlakeOliver.com. You can connect with me on Twitter, @BlakeTOliver. How about you, David? David: I'm on all the socials, just @DavidLeary. Blake: And you can get CPE credit for listening to this episode. Download my app, EarmarkCPE.com. You'll see that episodes are released on the app a week after they come out on this feed. So, we release them as a chorus. You can go take the quiz, get your CPE credit. It's super easy. I know it's shocking that you can get CPE for listening to this show. David: So, just to clarify- Blake: We check all the boxes. David: So, somebody on LinkedIn tagged us in a post and said how when she's running errands or doing the laundry, she listens to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. So, it's like double productivity. You can do your laundry, listen to The Cloud Accounting Podcast, but still get CPE at the same time. This is how this works. Blake: Yeah. Yeah. and you can even listen to it, you know, 1.5X and still get an hour of CPE in less time. So, you could like, be even more efficient. David: Go for it, everybody. Blake: Yeah, it's amazing, right? David: And it’s a total win. Blake: It is. Well, David, I'll be back in my own studio next week. A little more comfortable than I am today. David: Enjoy your vacation. Blake: Thank You. David: Actually, what's the temperature? ‘Cause it's- you know, it's 102, 103 here in Arizona right now. Blake: Oh, in LA? I think it's going to hit in a high of 81. We're actually very fortunate today. David: Oh, suffering. Suffering. Blake: It’s June gloom. June gloom. David: June gloom. Alright. Blake: Yeah. Talk to you next week. David: Alright. Bye. [01:01:16] Classifieds David: Time for the classifieds. [01:01:20] Future Firm David: If you're looking to quickly grow a scalable, systematic, seven-figure accounting firm without having to work 50 plus hours per week, check out Ryan Lazanis’ online coaching membership, Future Firm Accelerate. Designed around Ryan's experience taking his cloud firm from scratch to sale, so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You'll get online learning in topics that help you automate and systemize all aspects of your firm. You'll get coaching when you need help with implementation, and you'll also join a collaborative community of hundreds of other forward-thinking firm owners. For more details, head over to www.futurefirmaccelerate.com. [01:01:56] Get W9 David: Tired of clients not remembering to get W-9s? getW9 automates and streamlines the collection and storage of W-9s. getW9 has a QBO integration and they have a partner program that pays 25% commissions. getW9 plans start at only $19 a year. Visit getW9.tax today to get started. That is getW9.tax. [01:02:20] Advisors for Change Are you looking for a dream job in cloud accounting? We have the job for you. Advisors for Change delivers cloud accounting systems to small and medium nonprofit organizations. Join our team of friendly and collaborative nonprofit accounting professionals while working from home. Our systems associate will join our experienced systems manager to implement and support cloud accounting systems such as QBO, bill.com, Divvy, [INAUDIBLE], and others. To learn more, head to our website at advisorsforchange.com/join-our-team. That's advisorsforchange.com/join-our-team, where you’ll find a link to the full position description on indeed. [01:02:56] The Ambitious Bookkeeper David: Are you ready to take your life and bookkeeping business to the next level? Are you aspiring to start your own bookkeeping business? Then hop on over to the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast where you'll find encouragement, support, tools, resources, practical strategies, and actual tips on starting, growing, and running a successful bookkeeping firm. Plus, listen to guest expert interviews that will help you elevate your business and enhance your life. Go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and subscribe now. That's ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast. [01:03:25] Royalwise David: Are your bookkeeping clients driving you crazy asking the same questions over and over? They need QuickBooks training and you have more important things to do with your time. Let Royalwise be your training partner. Create your own customized client training program and outsource your QuickBooks training department. Listeners of this podcast are invited to join our partner program and receive a 10% referral commission when you sign up. Join us at Royalwise.com/partner to learn more and get started today. Again, that's Royalwise.com/partner. [01:03:56] How to advertise in these classifieds David: Want to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Why not let the listeners of The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad? Hit the show notes for the link to get more info.