Latest / The Accounting Podcast / SNH19: Right Networks Challenges QuickBooks Online
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- This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by TOA Global. As you know, most firms struggle with attracting, managing, and retaining staff, and finding staff is getting tougher every day. This is where TOA Global can help. TOA Global is the most professional outsourcing partner to help you build and manage a global accounting team. By building a global team, you'll be able to take away the time-consuming process-oriented work from your local team, while building a cost-effective team offshore. As people experts, TOA Global can help you select and develop your best team members easily using their expert ecosystem of people, security, technology, and professional-development tools. To learn how to build your world-class team today, head over to CloudAccountingPodcast.promo/toaglobal. That is Cloud Accounting Podcast dot promo slash T-O-A-G-L-O-B-A-L. Blake Oliver: Welcome [00:01:00] to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver- David Leary: And I'm David Leary. Blake Oliver: David, how is Salt Lake City? You are in Salt Lake City for Scaling New Heights. David Leary: Yes, I was ... I left on Father's Day morning. It was funny. I boarded the plane; I'm sitting on the plane in Tucson, Sunday morning, and other Intuit people - because Intuit has an office in Tucson - were boarding the flight. All I could think was ... Not a year later, nine months later, I've left Intuit. It's another Father's Day, I'm on a flight flying to Scaling New Heights. Things don't change. Blake Oliver: Yeah. Well, [00:01:30] I am here in San Diego. David Leary: You made it to San Diego now, okay. Blake Oliver: Yeah. We drove down to San Diego this afternoon. I'm here for Xerocon. We're doing the dueling conferences. David Leary: I'll be at Xerocon soon enough. Blake Oliver: Yes. David Leary: I fly out on Tuesday at 3:30. Blake Oliver: You're flying out on ... When are you getting here? David Leary: I fly out of San Diego ... I fly to Salt Lake City, Tuesday, at 5:20, and I think I land [00:02:00] at like 6:20 in San Diego. Blake Oliver: We miss you here, David, but Scaling New Heights needs you, because you're there on the ground. David Leary: Well, there's news about Scaling New Heights. Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: Sunday, there was some news, and there was some news on Monday, as well. Blake Oliver: What's going on? David Leary: Sunday, I got in, and I made it just in time to the Woodard breakfast. In my inbox, there was email that dropped. Woodard Network is being rebranded to Woodard Alliance. Blake Oliver: Okay. David Leary: I don't know if you saw that. I don't have a ton of details, but it looks like they're [00:02:30] now going to, instead of just having independent Woodard groups, they're going to actually offer savings on conferences, if you're a member of the Woodard Alliance. You're going to be able to get discounted software as part of the Woodard Alliance. Blake Oliver: Ah, okay ... David Leary: For anybody that wants more details on that, you go to Woodard.com/Alliance. It's just $35 a month. He's kind of changing the model of his Woodard groups to this Alliance, instead. That was an announcement that dropped. The other one that I found was interesting on Sunday was Right Networks. Right Networks [00:03:00] had a keynote, and they were talking about how they have QuickBooks Desktop Sync always on. I think six months ago, we talked about how Right Networks bought, if you remember, Propelware. They bought Propelware, and Propelware makes a product called Autofy. A couple months before that, they bought the desktop-import software Transaction Pro Importer. Right Networks is buying apps to help them integrate other desktop apps to QuickBooks Desktop. Blake Oliver: Yes, I [00:03:30] did hear about this. David Leary: What they've done is they've ... Previously, if you used QuickBooks Desktop, and you want to sync an app, you've got to turn on your computer; you have to have QuickBooks running, and have it sync. Now, if you're not in the cloud, and you have 100-percent desktop computer ... Sorry, if you're not using a hosted solution, you just leave your computer on, and apps can talk to your QuickBooks. Blake Oliver: Right. David Leary: If you used a hosted computer, if you're not logged in, apps can't talk to your QuickBooks. Blake Oliver: Okay. David Leary: What Right Networks has announced ... Even [00:04:00] when you're not logged in your hosted machine - it's turned off - apps can still send data to your QuickBooks through this new technology stack that they've built. Blake Oliver: Got it. David Leary: What I thought was really interesting was the stake they're putting in the ground. I'm going to read a quote from CEO of Right Networks, Joel Hughes: "With the deployment of Autofy, Right Networks has created an application ecosystem for QuickBooks Desktop which is in every way equivalent to, and as capable as, that of QuickBooks Online." Blake Oliver: Wait, I'm not so [00:04:30] sure this is a good thing, David. This is just enabling firms that want to stay desktop forever to stay desktop forever. They're not gonna go online. David Leary: There's definitely a stake in the ground. Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: Before, I've always felt like the desktop-hosting companies confused the message, like, "Hey, it's QuickBooks in the cloud!" They would say things like this. Now, they're basically saying, "We have an equivalent feature set of QuickBooks Online." Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: How do you feel? Do [00:05:00] you think that's a very gutsy thing to say? Blake Oliver: Yes, it is. I guess as long as it works, but it's sort of like ... If anything in this chain of applications breaks, the whole system falls apart. We are relying on hosting solutions - fundamentally insecure compared to a true SaaS application - with these add-ons that are causing data to sync ... I feel like it's inevitable that it'll break. I don't know. David Leary: The [00:05:30] good news is, on this, I ran into the Desktop Accounting Podcast while I was here at Scaling New Heights- Blake Oliver: Oh, yes. David Leary: -and I interviewed them this morning. When you get around to editing that episode, and publishing that, they'll have some takes on this, as well. Blake Oliver: Oh! Well, I'm very excited to hear from the Desktop Accounting Podcast as to what they think. David Leary: So, that's good. This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Halon Tax. As a new business owner, and first-time business tax filer, I needed the peace of mind knowing that my S-Corp return was done correctly. I signed up for Halon Tax, connected my QuickBooks Online, filled out about four fields in a wizard, clarified two small items with the Halon Tax team. A few days later, I got a text telling me my return was finished. I launched Halon Tax, and e-signed my return.The whole end-to-end process was painless, and frankly, kind of amazing. Now, Halon Tax is working with bookkeepers and accountants like yourself to offer the same amazing experience to your small-business clients. They even have a free offering for a one-year trial for all your clients. This even includes your own dedicated tax CPA.To learn more about this exciting offer from Halon Tax, head over to CloudAccountingPodcast.promo/halontax. That is Cloud Accounting Podcast dot promoforward slash H-A-L-O-N-T-A-X. Oh, yeah, and Halon Tax also works great with Xero and Wave, too. David Leary: So, then, Monday news ... There wasn't a lot of ... Scaling New Heights tends to have some inspirational keynotes, but then, they do have some product announcements. Just a couple of observations ... Botkeeper had a keynote. Enrico ... We've talked about Enrico, and Botkeeper before. Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: He [00:07:00] did something with the audience, which I thought was really interesting. He asked the audience how many of them had turned a client away in the last six months, because they were too busy. 85 percent of the people probably raised their hand. Then he asked how many people did it ... I wasn't sure if the second time was if he said last month, or recently, like within the last two weeks, and maybe 25 percent of people still left their hand up. He did that, and I kinda stopped listening to what else he started talking about, because I just digested that. I was like, "This [00:07:30] is why people like Botkeeper exist. QuickBooks Live exists; the ScaleFactors, Pilots, the Bench. There's a set of clients that are getting neglected that can't get a bookkeeper, because they're being- the bookkeepers are busy. There's not enough bookkeepers available to do all the work. Blake Oliver: Right. Maybe that just means they are underpriced for their services. If you're turning away business, that means you're not charging enough. Could that be part of it? I think we're notoriously bad at pricing in the accounting space, especially the bookkeeping [00:08:00] space. I was guilty of that, too. David Leary: If bookkeepers raise their prices, they're going to have less clients, which means more people are going to be turned away. Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: Which is going to reinforce even more reason for services like QuickBooks Live. Blake Oliver: Yeah, I suppose you're right. David Leary: I just thought that was a pretty interesting observation that I made of that interaction with the audience. Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: The other thing ... Oh, one note I thought that was interesting. I was eating breakfast with somebody Sunday morning, and this person obviously doesn't listen The Cloud Accounting Podcast. Blake Oliver: What?! How is this possible? David Leary: She's a niche accountant. She only does wineries. She's [00:08:30] super-super-hyper-focused, but she'd never heard of QuickBooks Live. That's when I kind of ... We've talked about this on the podcast sometimes: are we the only ones that know by QuickBooks Live? It's a small circle of our listeners. The grand scheme of 100,000 ProAdvisors - 300,000 bookkeepers, they don't know about QuickBooks Live. To be at the conference and talk to somebody who's never heard of QuickBooks Live, I thought was pretty eye-opening. Blake Oliver: Yeah, well, like you've said on the show many times before, it's [00:09:00] a pretty small group of people that are aware of this, at this time - on Facebook, in these groups. How many people? Few thousand people-. David Leary: Well, and the 10 million listeners of this podcast. Blake Oliver: They are aware of it, but we're talking ... How many ProAdvisors are there [cross talk] David Leary: 100,000 is a safe number. Blake Oliver: -a few hundred ... I think that they are finally hearing about this for the first time, and this is going to be big news to them. David Leary: So, that happened on Sunday. The last note is the QuickBooks Online Accountant keynote had [00:09:30] some interesting things - features in QuickBooks Online - that were in it. They have an alert, like Facebook alerts. There's an alert inside of QuickBooks Online Accountant. David Leary: If somebody is on the Find a ProAdvisor website looking for you, and they reach out to you, you get an alert in your QBOA. You could be in another client's file; you're not going to miss that lead as it comes in. You might be doing work in QuickBooks Online Accountant, not checking your email right then. Blake Oliver: Uh-huh. David Leary: You don't want to have a potential client reach out to you, and you don't respond to them for four hours, right? Blake Oliver: Right, yeah ... David Leary: You get an alert right [00:10:00] inside of the product that somebody's going to your website and wanting to hire you or engage you. Blake Oliver: That's great, because I have heard this, that if you respond within the first five minutes of a prospect filling out a contact form, that your odds of securing that prospect as a client go up multiple times, dramatically. That's great. David Leary: That's a big victory. Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: There was almost a standing ovation. This is something that was really cool, and it's very logical. It's just why hasn't it happened [00:10:30] before? Bank statements are now going to be part of the bank-feed process. When you connect your account through the bank feed, when it downloads on a regular basis, if there's a bank statement available, it'll fetch the bank statement. Blake Oliver: The PDF that I would normally have to go in and download manually ... We're talking that comes in? David Leary: That's what it looks like from the slides and the announcements, yep. Blake Oliver: All right. David Leary: Now it didn't say how many banks, which ones it's going to work with. I imagine it's going to be Chase, which Intuit's having a deep relationship with, so, I imagine that'll probably the first one, but people were clapping. People really loved the idea of those bank statements just being [00:11:00] there with the bank feed. Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: Why should I go through a whole separate process to get a bank statement? Blake Oliver: This is making me think of Hubdoc, and Xero pulling in those bank statements, those check images. Did they mention check images at all? Anything like that? David Leary: I don't remember check images being mentioned. I don't remember that. The third one, which I thought was pretty interesting, staying with the theme of the week, which I think we're going to hear about it at Xerocon ... I don't know if you will hear about that tomorrow at Xerocon ... Advising. We've mentioned before, this is the [00:11:30] Summer of Advising. That's all we're going to hear about. Well, QBOA is adding in KPIs, dashboards, industry comparisons. Remember we talked about what happened to industry comparisons? Blake Oliver: Yeah, yeah, yeah. David Leary: Well, they're coming back. All this is being added to your QBOA to look at your client's file, so you can do advisory work. Blake Oliver: That's great. It's the Summer of Advisory [cross talk]. David Leary: Advisory is the new cloud. Blake Oliver: Are you sick of it yet, David? It's only day one at Scaling New Heights. This episode of The Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by LivePlan. Did you know that millions of small businesses use LivePlan products to start their business? Did you know that these small businesses prefer a cloud-based accounting solution two times more versus a desktop solution? Did you know that 89 percent of these small business owners prefer virtual advisory services? Did you know that the number-one thing they want from an expert adviser is strategic planning and review? This is even more than general accounting and bookkeeping services. Did you know that LivePlan has an expert advisory directory that you can join to gain access to these millions of small businesses? To learn more about becoming a LivePlan expert advisor, head over to CloudAccountingPodcast.promo/liveplan. That is Cloud Accounting Podcast dot promo forward slash L-I-V-E-P-L-A-N and be sure to check out the LivePlan methods to learn how you can grow and scale your advisory business. David Leary: Remember when everybody was like, "You gotta go cloud! You gotta go cloud!" Blake Oliver: Yeah. David Leary: We are in the summer that's "You gotta go advisory! You gotta go advisory!" Blake Oliver: I wonder about that. We're [00:13:00] here on the cutting edge of cloud accounting, here on The Cloud Accounting Podcast. Many of our listeners have already adopted cloud, but there are still many, many firms that are not even ... They're still on desktop. How do they go to the advisory model? I feel like we're almost going too fast. David Leary: It's a very valid possibility. Blake Oliver: I don't know. David Leary: Maybe we should start The Cloud Advisory Podcast on the side. Blake Oliver: Yeah, I think so. David Leary: An additional property. That's all I really have from those two days. I do some interviews that I also did. I did the Desktop podcast in the morning Desktop Accounting Podcast. I [00:13:30] interviewed Jina Etienne. She is the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Grant Thornton. We have a very good interview coming out for that. I had an interview with, believe it or not, Rich Preece. Blake Oliver: Oh, all right. Looking forward to that! David Leary: All about QuickBooks Live. So, you have a lot of editing to do. I've just stacked you up with things to do. I actually have another interview scheduled tomorrow morning with Mayumi Young. She is the CEO and founder of CPA MOMS. That hopefully should be a good interview tomorrow. She had a good keynote the night before. Blake Oliver: Well, sounds [00:14:00] like you've been busy, David. You've got more to do tomorrow. I hope you can keep your voice, because it sounds like you're already starting to lose your voice. David Leary: I'm working the booth. I'm in the AutoEntry booth. You talk to a lot of bookkeepers; you start to lose your voice. Blake Oliver: I'm looking forward to seeing you in person, here in San Diego, because you're coming to Xerocon. David Leary: 24 hours from now, we'll be doing this together in person. Blake Oliver: I'm very excited about that, and we've got some great interviews lined up for Xerocon. Yeah, safe travels. David Leary: Then [00:14:30] tomorrow when we record together, that'll be the first time we've recorded together face-to-face since QuickBooks Connect. Blake Oliver: Yes. David Leary: Wow. 45-50 episodes ago. Blake Oliver: It's amazing, right? Here we are - episode 86, something like that, I think? Don't quote me on that. David Leary: I think that's a wrap, and then we'll do another episode tomorrow, everybody, with Xerocon highlights, and any Scaling New Heights highlights that happen. Blake Oliver: All right, see you soon, David. David Leary: All right, later, Blake. Bye, everybody.