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Entry Level Auditor Jobs Fall 43% & the AI Workslop Heading Downstream · The Accounting Podcast

• Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding! Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] A new survey found 32% of accountants admit they can't recognize AI generated fake receipts if they saw one. 30% are already seeing more fraudulent receipts than last since last year, and 42% suspect that colleagues have submitted fake or altered receipts. So a good chunk of accountants can't recognize them, are already seeing more fake ones, and suspect that colleagues have submitted fake or altered receipts. David Leary: [00:00:32] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio. Blake Oliver: [00:00:39] Hello and welcome to the Accounting Podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the profession. I'm Blake Oliver. David Leary: [00:00:46] I'm David Leary Blake. Travel. You traveled last week. You're traveling again this week. I'm traveling the week after that. How was last week? Where'd you go? Blake Oliver: [00:00:55] I was in Seattle and Los Angeles for the advisory amplified tour being put on by Madeline Reeves and Fearless Foundry, and it was a lot of fun. It's, it's it's a road show going around the country. Six cities this week. I will be in Chicago and Austin. So this episode probably won't come out in time for the Chicago folks to hear about it. But if you're going to be in Austin on Thursday, come to the road show. Check it out. Go to advisory amplifier. Com the following week I will be in Atlanta and then Boston. So come out, say hi. You'll get to hear a live podcast recording, and I'm presenting a session at each stop on standardizing your tech stack. And that leads me to my first story, my headline of this week, which I will tease for you, David, which is only 37% of accounting firms actually require clients to use their technology stack. Shockingly low. And we'll talk about that. But first let's thank our sponsors, our sponsors. David Leary: [00:02:01] This week we have Cloud accountants staffing rippling Bill and Blue Book Cloud Accountants staffing. In case you've missed the last 100 or so episodes, Blake and I have been discussing almost weekly that there's an accountant's labor shortage. Regardless of the root cause, the problem is real. My social media feeds are full of firms attempting to fill open positions on their teams, but how can anyone increase their staff size if everyone is attempting to hire during a labor shortage? That's where cloud accountants staffing comes in. They will help you hire full time team members for your firm that reside in the Philippines. How much should your firm change, for that matter, your life? If you could add 40, 80, 100 hours of capacity to your firm in 2025 or 2026? Even Cloud Accountant Staffing was founded by a firm owner who grew his firm by using offshore talent, and now he's applying everything he learned to help you grow your firm. If your firm is in need of expert bookkeepers, accountants, CPAs or virtual assistants, head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast promo CD. Thank you. Cloud accounting. Staffing. Blake Oliver: [00:03:03] Let's talk about this survey. Data point 37% of firms require their clients to use their tech stack. I take that to mean that the other 63%, is that right? Yes, 63% do not. That's according to a survey by CPA comm and Bill, one of the sponsors of this episode. The survey also revealed that 97% of accounting firms admit they're not using technology efficiently, and 71% of firms say that seamless tech interactions are essential for client retention. So vast majority of firms believe that seamless tech is essential for client retention, but they're not requiring clients to use their technology stack. Like I said, 37% require it. The others don't. And I've had this in my queue for a while to talk about. And because my session is all about requiring clients to use your tech stack and how to identify one. I figured I'd bring it up. Um, it's I think it's one of the things that we did in my firm that was a differentiator and allowed us to scale quickly, and it reduced training time. It increased the speed at which we worked. It definitely limited how many clients we could take on. There were there were a lot of clients that didn't want to do it that wouldn't switch from QuickBooks to zero, and we were requiring zero. But I found that we got better clients because the ones that were willing to make that shift ended up listening to us about other things, too. So you might want to consider requiring certain tech and requiring clients to switch as, like a testing mechanism to see if they're actually going to be a good fit for working with you. Because if they want to choose the tools, then they really just want like somebody to do a job for them. It's not that they want somebody to partner with them or be an advisor to them. That's one of my points as well. David Leary: [00:05:01] I mean, how did you enforce this at your firm when you had a firm, or did you let people wiggle room around this? Blake Oliver: [00:05:06] Yeah. No, I mean, you had to use zero. Uh, at the time we were using Bill for accounts payable, you had to use bill to pay your bills. We're not going to use some other system. We're not going to go into your bank's bill, pay bill, pay and pay your bills for you that way because it's not secure. Um, we're not going to use your payroll. We're going to use our payroll, and you'll have to migrate over. And a lot of firms, I think, are afraid to do that because they're afraid clients will say no and won't want to work with them. David Leary: [00:05:34] But it's the only way you could scale. Do you know, uh, Deborah Kilsheimer offhand out of Florida. So she she really built $1 million accounting firm $172 a month or whatever. She's charging landscapers, but she made them standardize on everything, including even banks. She would move them all to Chase, because Chase was one of the first banks that had like an accountant workflow or a secondary login. So not only the tech stack should become change banks or she wouldn't take them on as clients, but that's the only way she could scale doing her bookkeeping project or bookkeeping business at 170 bucks a month was because she had to have standards across the board for every client, and she would only take clients if they moved their bank account, because then the bank feeds work to do with QuickBooks. And she could do everything else. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:06:18] And so like that's also part of my presentation. I mean it's it's on behalf of relay. So there's like. David Leary: [00:06:25] Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:06:26] So basically the idea is that your inputs into the accounting system need to be fast. They need to be accurate. And so owning that bank relationship, like requiring a certain bank that you know, works well is super critical. And so I'm saying expand the tech stack to include banking and then also go out and expand the tech stack to include reporting and forecasting and dashboarding. And so that's how you get the expanded tech stack. It's all about the data in and the data out, not just the accounting. David Leary: [00:07:00] Because I think everybody's too focused on getting people to use their portal. And you really got to get them to just manage their data properly. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:07:08] Yep. So, um, let's talk about another stat here, David. And then I'll hand it over to you to talk about AI work slop. Entry level auditor jobs fell 43%. It's happening. David, this fear that we've had, that artificial intelligence is going to reduce entry level jobs and disrupt the pipeline. It's happening. David Leary: [00:07:34] Like, is this a reduction in hiring or a reduction in available jobs in the market? What does this mean? This this decrease. Blake Oliver: [00:07:40] This is according to a study of job postings, 126 million job postings and entry level auditor job postings have plummeted 43%, so almost in half since January. The financial services sector overall saw a 24% decrease in job postings, and it is attributed to AI automation, that is, eliminating routine tasks traditionally handled by junior staff. Interestingly, senior positions those with ten or more years of experience increased by 6%. So firms want more experienced professionals. They're willing to pay them more. They don't want the entry level people as much. David Leary: [00:08:27] So this is a interesting because we've seen stories where firms are not adopting as much AI successfully as they say they're going to, or they want to. So is this a like a forcing factor? Like we're just going to hire less auditors, internal auditors, which is going to force us to automate? Or is this because they've already solved it and now they need less people? I'm thinking my guess is the forcing factor. Blake Oliver: [00:08:49] The forcing factor. What is forcing about it? David Leary: [00:08:52] Well, if you don't hire these entry level people, the rest of your staff and the rest of your company has to figure out how to automate it. Ultimately, because you don't have the bodies now, you're not going to hire those positions. You have to solve it with AI. Blake Oliver: [00:09:04] Well, so so they're using AI to sorry. You cut out for a second. So I might have missed that. Like my view is that these firms are extremely shortsighted. They are just trying to juice profits and revenue in the short term. And the easiest way to do that is to replace your entry level people with AI. David Leary: [00:09:25] What they're not do it yet. That's my question. Are they actually successfully doing it or is this a lay them off first type thing or don't know. Blake Oliver: [00:09:31] I think they're I mean, like, it'd be crazy to lay them off and then do it. I think it's happening. I mean, we're seeing it with, um, accounts payable. David Leary: [00:09:41] So yeah, I think jobs like that. But is it happening for audit is the question. Blake Oliver: [00:09:46] Yeah, yeah. But think about it. What the stuff that an entry level auditor does is so basic cash confirmations. You can have an AI agent doing cash confirmations all day long. It's not complicated. Checking the box kind of activities that entry level auditors do is being automated by workflow software, automation, AI, and it was already getting automated before and it was getting offshored before. Right now it's just accelerating that trend. Right. Ashley in the live stream says also outsourcing. Yes. Thank you Ashley. So. So that's been happening. And I think the AI stuff is just making it easier and easier to do more of it. And firms are. David Leary: [00:10:28] Also confident as. Blake Oliver: [00:10:29] As Ashley says, firms are cutting back on hiring because of economic uncertainty as well. So we've got the economic uncertainty. We've got new AI tools accelerating this trend. And here's here's here's another related story, right. This is Accounts payable professionals. So AP clerks, um, nearly half of accounts payable pros now fear layoffs in 2025. And that's up from 27% last year. So it's like 27% last year. Were afraid of layoffs. Now it's 45%. So they're the ones in the company seeing this automation being applied. And if I think about what is AI good at tasks, individual tasks like matching an invoice to a purchase order, paying a bill, getting approval on a bill, this is something that you could build a bunch of AI agents to do, and you're not going to eliminate all the people in that department, but you're going to eliminate a significant percentage of them and have the people left running the bots. David Leary: [00:11:34] Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:11:34] And that was a story in CPA Practice Advisor. Yeah. These AP professionals are not using their PTO. They're worried about the economy. Some are optimistic about AI. But, you know, if you're just in there processing bills, paying bills, approving expense reports, you know, we've seen we've seen there are now AI agents that can approve expense reports that are being. David Leary: [00:12:00] Built, all the AI stuff. I never when I said on my own in 2018, I refused to ever type a bill into QuickBooks. I will type an invoice that's worth my time, but I will not type a bill or receipt. It has to go in through. And I used auto enter and I use Dex and I'm using QuickBooks built in quote unquote throw the words around AI. But it's just like the bill scanning feature, right? Maybe it's AI, maybe it's not. Maybe it's human. I don't know, I don't care, but like, the point is, yeah, like the job of typing bills into my accounting system that's gone away. There's no there's no point in doing it. Blake Oliver: [00:12:34] Let's thank our next sponsor. And then after that, David, I'll have you talk about AI. Work slop. David Leary: [00:12:39] Work slop. Blake Oliver: [00:12:40] My new favorite word. Thanks to rippling for this episode. For sponsoring this episode. Rippling is the all in one platform that unifies your clients HR, finance, and IT in a single system. Accountants. If your team is stuck juggling payroll, benefits, time tracking and it margins slip away fast. What if all those systems actually work together? That's what rippling does one platform where adding a new hire automatically updates payroll benefits and compliance, as well as laptop access? No more chasing tickets or wrestling with spreadsheets. Just more time to focus on higher value work. With rippling, firms can turn workforce advisory into a recurring revenue stream. You'll give clients live visibility into labor costs, overtime trends, and compliance risks while offering insights that shape business decisions. It's how firms move from reactive admin work to trusted and strategic advisors. You protect margins and build stickier client relationships along the way. And to sweeten the deal, when you book and complete a qualified demo, you will receive a $100 gift card. If you're ready to elevate your firm's advisory practice and get a $100 gift card, head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast I l I. David Leary: [00:13:53] So yeah. Let's talk work slot this. I feel like this bubble, this kind of hit the mainstream. I heard it on multiple news outlets and multiple places, but a new Harvard Business Review study warns that low quality AI generated work dubbed quote unquote work slop, is frustrating employees and creating hidden costs for businesses. So 40% of workers are reporting to have received work slop in the past month. Blake Oliver: [00:14:16] Work slop. David Leary: [00:14:17] The what is works is about an average. The average cost is about an hour and 5056 almost two hours wasted per incident. So it's about $186 a month, almost $200 a month per worker. So every time one coworker gives another coworker slop, it's costing your company 200 bucks. Blake Oliver: [00:14:35] What is work slop? I'm picturing like like the stuff you feed pigs. Slop. Is that what. David Leary: [00:14:42] That what is Worksop is not fully defined. It's almost like that argument about pornography. You know it when you see it, right? Speaker3: [00:14:49] Like, come on, give me an example, David. Blake Oliver: [00:14:52] What's Worksop? David Leary: [00:14:53] So when people, you know, they're there blindly it's really blind use of AI okay. You do it, you don't review it and you just hand it off. And to some extent you think about the waste of time. We have this dilemma where we constantly get, uh, guest pitches and a lot of them are written by AI. And then we have AI responding to AI guest pitches. That's all work slop going back. Speaker3: [00:15:14] So here's the work. Blake Oliver: [00:15:14] Slop, though. The work slop is when the email that pitches the guest references a different podcast that's not ours. And like, it's like it's like personalized to us, but in completely the wrong way. And then it just sounds it sounds fake. It's it's got errors. It it looks good. Like if you look at the email, it's nicely formatted and it looks good and, and then you actually read it and you realize that it's garbage. David Leary: [00:15:41] Which is crazy because in theory you're using AI because this is this dilemma that's so weird about AI. Computers used to be accurate, and now with AI they're kind of inaccurate. And so now you have to babysit them because it's like it's using made up minds here. It uses the wrong podcast name. There's it's just it's slop I think. This work slop is the right word for it. Now 40% are saying that it's from peers. Direct reports cause 18% and managers are 16% of the work slop. So managers are using. So they're not they're causing it as well. Blake Oliver: [00:16:14] And so basically this is me like like you you let's say David you focus on the earmark product now. Right? You're you're our head of product at earmark. And it's like if you sent me some sort of like detailed report asking me for my opinion on like this next product feature. And then I just pass that into AI and was like, respond to David. And then it gave me like this big long email and I just sent it to you. And so it looks like I did something right. But then it's all just. It's all. It doesn't make sense. It's all garbage. David Leary: [00:16:46] You've sent me work slot before. I've gotten some emails where I'm like, this is like Blakey's AI for this one. I know I've gotten some work slot from you before now. Here's my $0.02 on this I you ever hear that that saying about like, famous people that are jerks? Blake Oliver: [00:17:02] Yeah. David Leary: [00:17:02] Like celebrities and. Oh, that guy's an asshole. He's mean to everybody. Blake Oliver: [00:17:05] Yeah, sure. David Leary: [00:17:06] Fame didn't turn them that way. They were already that way before they became famous. Like, that's part of who they are. And arguably employees that are turning out work slot probably already did work slot before. They just did it at a much slower volume. This is doing is letting crappy employees do more crappy work faster like workshops work slot because the one of the stats is 53% said they felt annoyed and 42% saw the senders as less trustworthy. And if you think about go back to the world before AI, if somebody gave you crappy work work, you would be annoyed and think they're less trustworthy and you'd give them less work to do. So these are the people that are pumping out workshop are probably people that historically have pumped out workshop. They're just doing it at a huge volume now. Blake Oliver: [00:17:51] Right. And I imagine it's worse in organizations where the amount of time you put in or the amount of like, quantity of work you create is what is valued as opposed. David Leary: [00:18:03] To number of hours worked. Blake Oliver: [00:18:05] Yeah. As opposed to the quality of the work that you do. Yeah. Like what would be work slop in accounting. It would be like using AI to, like, automatically categorize all the transactions and close the books, but they're all categorized into the wrong accounts. They're all I mean, we've all seen this when we've hired people who to do tax returns or to do bookkeeping work, and they do it, but it's just really crappy. That's right. David Leary: [00:18:30] Anytime somebody, somebody, there's never an error. Everything's always perfect because they're the first one done. I didn't have any reconcile discrepancies. I didn't have all my tests passed. Like that's always. Those are scary. I'd much rather have somebody like, I found this, I found this, this is odd. This didn't match. That means they're being thorough. Blake Oliver: [00:18:48] Yeah. You know where I'm seeing the work slop? It's in the, like, hiring process. Because we're hiring a lot of people right now, and it's incredible. There are like, developers who are out there who are responding to the questions. I emailed them. I do like a prescreen and they respond to the questions, and sometimes I get it back and it's just like AI wrote this and they didn't even try to edit it or make it sound good. It's just that it looks like AI work slop. Sometimes we've had people get through to the actual like coding exercise, and then they'll submit work slop for that and that will catch that sometimes. But then even then, sometimes people will get through and will do the actual interview. And we had a situation where somebody was they were clearly feeding the audio into an AI. David Leary: [00:19:35] And then they were getting work slop Slot answers. Blake Oliver: [00:19:37] They were reading the answers that the AI was giving them. Like pausing. David Leary: [00:19:41] We can't prove it. Blake Oliver: [00:19:42] But I mean, why else would you pause? David Leary: [00:19:45] Four of us reconciled this in our own brain. Yeah, it didn't feel right. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:19:49] So. So it's going to be it's this is the problem with with generative AI is that it enables everyone to create so much that we're going to create a lot of crap. So filtering through it, sorting through it is the new challenge now. I guess it's not a new challenge because that challenge was born when the internet came about. Yeah, it used to be that to like put knowledge into the public domain, you had to publish a book, you had to get published a. David Leary: [00:20:21] Company, you were the CEO of, some company. You'd have to first dictate a memo to your secretary who'd take it to somebody that typed it to somebody else, would go to Xerox room to Xerox it. Somebody else would place that memo on everybody's desk. It's a lot of work. So you're basically doing one memo a week, not with with AI and technology. You can do hundreds of memos every 40s it's a different world. Blake Oliver: [00:20:44] Okay, so since we're talking about a lot of stats, statistics, I want to do another statistic that I've had here for a while, and that is another scary one. 32% a third of people admit they cannot recognize AI generated fake receipts. And it's not just people, it's accountants. A new survey found 32% of accountants admit they can't recognize AI generated fake receipts if they saw one. 30% are already seeing more fraudulent receipts than last since last year, and 42% suspect that colleagues have submitted fake or altered receipts. So a good chunk of accountants can't recognize them, are already seeing more fake ones, and suspect that colleagues have submitted fake or altered receipts. That's 42%. That's a lot. David Leary: [00:21:38] Yes. They're just not confident that they've stopped any of this themselves. Blake Oliver: [00:21:42] Yeah, because it's hard to recognize them. And, um, you know, if you want to see just how difficult it is or how easy it is to make one, just go and ask ChatGPT to make you a receipt. David Leary: [00:21:52] But to say it's been going on forever, people would just pick up receipt up off the ground at McDonald's and turn that in as an expense report. Not actually. Blake Oliver: [00:21:58] I've never heard of that happening. David, is that you you're talking about are you telling a personal story here? David Leary: [00:22:02] But I've seen where people will, you know, negotiate or buy other people's receipts, right, because they want to fill out the expense report. Blake Oliver: [00:22:11] I've heard that story before, but like, did people actually, I guess trading receipts. I've, I've, I've witnessed trading receipts before. Yes. Somebody who needed who had the expense account and somebody who didn't. David Leary: [00:22:23] So so what's what's the plan for these people then. So I'm an accountant. I have no confidence in recognizing receipts. That's just it. Like I have no belief in myself. Are there other tools? Is there a way to solve this? Blake Oliver: [00:22:34] Yeah. I mean, the way to solve it is for these expense management solutions to build AI fake receipt detection in. Because there's definitely ways to to identify fake images. Um, I actually watched a really cool YouTube video, a guy who specializes in, um, fake images and, and he's been specializing in them for years before AI was a thing, people doing it in Photoshop, and a lot of times it would be with ransoms. So like somebody gets somebody says, I've kidnaped somebody and I, you know, they, they, they send a photo and you want to know if it's real or you want to know if it's fake. And so he gets called in to do these, like high value, uh, image authentications. And one of the ways you can spot fake receipts or just fake images in general generated by AI, is that like he says, the the AI models do not have a model of physics. So when they when they generate these images, they do it like by building the image from like one pixel. And it builds out using the statistical model to look like other images, but it's not building it where the light sources are like defined by physics. And so the shadows will be wrong. Like the way the light casts on the image does not match a light source that is outside of the image. So like this is something that, um, the models can't do the image generation models at the moment. So that's how that's one way you spot them. And I wonder if you could do that. There's got to be something with fake receipts, like the way the papers crumpled or the way the light hits the receipt, the shadows. David Leary: [00:24:12] If it's missing the shadow of your phone when you take it because you always never can, like, line it up perfectly to not have your own shadow be in the way. Blake Oliver: [00:24:18] I mean the other the other way to solve this is simpler, which is what Mo says require use of company cards so that you can verify the expense from the receipt. You know, like there's, there's there's other simpler ways. Um, so I think, you know, in general, we've talked about this on the show before. In general, there's an issue we now have with like verification in a digital environment, like PDF bank statements so easy to fake have been easy to fake, but even easier to fake and like photographs. And when nothing is physical anymore, how do you, as an auditor or an accountant, rely on the document that has been scanned? It's going to be a big. David Leary: [00:24:56] Problem if it's just scanning provided to you. You're not downloading the source doc yourself. It's just, you know, an attachment. I agree. Blake Oliver: [00:25:04] All right. I have another stat. But I'm going to let you take the next story. David. David Leary: [00:25:08] Yeah. I mean, one way you could you could possibly deal with these AI generated, generated receipts is to have humans in the loop. You can have AI look at it, but then a human in the loop. So Zapier announced a new feature, um, called literally called human in the loop. So when you're automating something now in Zapier and you're using AI, you can create steps that will pause your zap and then send a message to maybe your team on slack, or an email that drives them back to review something or answer a question before the automation keeps going. And like, you've kind of hacked this up externally, but for it to be built into Zapier now and then, I think that next level is why do we not have this in other apps? This like pause workflow, everybody's trying to have AI just be magical and just pump out at the end. There's not enough chances for you to review the work that's right along the way. Blake Oliver: [00:26:01] I love this, I'm so excited to try this. And we use Zapier extensively at earmark for all of our automation. Sometimes people like when I say that the people who are, like, really sophisticated with automation and AI will, like, Pooh, Pooh me, you know, like, oh, you should be using make or you should be using N810. And then I say, well, I'd rather go with the simplest thing that works because I know that it's not going to break, and I know that my team can fix it and change it if I can't. David Leary: [00:26:29] Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:26:29] And it just, it works well enough. And they keep adding features like this which will allow us to not have to hack together approval workflows in other workflow software. So that's really, really nifty. And so the takeaway for everyone is when you are building AI enabled workflows, don't try to automate the whole workflow. Try to automate one task in the workflow. And so look for software that lets you build out a human plus AI workflow. And if you're a developer. David Leary: [00:27:02] Think about it. Blake Oliver: [00:27:03] If you're a developer, like especially if you're building practice management or tax workflow software for accountants, really think carefully about how you can integrate AI at the task level, not the workflow level. So what do I mean by that? I mean, if you're building like a tax workflow in your software, break out all the steps the way a human would do and then say mm for this task. An AI might be able to do it. And the example is extracting the W-2, uh, source document information and sticking it into, I don't know, the software or, or going through all the files in the folder and renaming them appropriately, like that's one step in the whole workflow. Just have AI do the stuff that the small stuff to start small. Yeah. Because like it can do tasks like that with very, very high confidence. David Leary: [00:27:59] And this is going to be included in all the pro plans or higher. And here's the how nice of Zapier. They aren't going to count this against your tasks your task quota. So so you don't have to pay extra when a human on your team does this, the step in that zap that won't count as one. Blake Oliver: [00:28:14] Because I'm doing that. I'm doing that stuff. Here's another stat uh, 54%. So just over half of tax practitioners, 54% are currently using AI for research. Yeah. You're shrugging your shoulders there, David. How do you how do you react to that? David Leary: [00:28:32] 54% of staff. Blake Oliver: [00:28:35] Of tax. David Leary: [00:28:36] Pros of tax pros. Blake Oliver: [00:28:38] Are currently using AI for research. David Leary: [00:28:42] It feels low. Blake Oliver: [00:28:43] It should be 100%. It should be. It should be 100% are trying it. And it's only 54%. Uh. It's funny because 86% believe that AI using firms have a competitive advantage. So like, everybody thinks that you have a competitive advantage if you do it, but only 54% are using it. I wonder of the portion that aren't, how many are just blocked by their IT at their firms from using it still. David Leary: [00:29:12] Yeah, it's probably policies. Some of it's probably old habits are hard to break. Yeah. Like if you're paying for some third party tool that you've been using or you maybe you still have the paper docs you research in, I don't know, maybe you go out to the IRS website if you have the old habits. Sometimes it's hard to break those. It's muscle memory, but my money is on there being blocked at their IT level. Blake Oliver: [00:29:34] Yeah, that's my guess. 81% are using search engines for tax research despite paying for professional tools. David Leary: [00:29:43] And even that feels low. Well, I. Blake Oliver: [00:29:45] Guess because the other ones are using the professional tools I suppose. David Leary: [00:29:49] The tools in-house. Blake Oliver: [00:29:50] So by the way, this survey was done by, uh, Blue Jay, which makes an AI, uh, tax research tool in cooperation with CPA. So since this is a CPA AICPA survey, we can assume that many of these firms are larger. Therefore, it is a blocker in many of those firms. That was actually like the biggest reason that I left public accounting. I was at a large firm and I could not get it to be my partner. They were my blocker and I hated it. I couldn't handle that. I might have stayed if it wasn't for that, if I had, like, if there was like a local. We didn't have it in our office either. They were all they were up in Northern California. If I'd had like somebody local that could embed in my team and help me, that would have been amazing. So there's a big, big opportunity for AI tax research. And that's what companies like Blue Jay are capitalizing on. Um, what's interesting about that, David, is there's not much of a competitive moat when it comes to that, meaning that it'd be pretty easy to build a competitor. We did this. We we thought about this on the show previously. You did like a question that Blue Jay had as an example on their website. You did it with ChatGPT and you got an amazing response. And, you know, I guess like the competitive advantage of something like Blue Jay is like they're supposedly training it on specific databases, but you can more and more do that just with ChatGPT by like instructing it to only use certain sources. David Leary: [00:31:28] You even have to instruct it. I literally you built a custom bot for our team all about Nasba CPE standards. Blake Oliver: [00:31:35] Write a custom. David Leary: [00:31:35] Gpt. I just use it off the shelf and it just works. I didn't tell it. I don't say please use these documents or these websites, I just asked. I say per nasba guidelines, does this qualify for CPE? Blake Oliver: [00:31:46] Oh, you're saying that you use the generic ChatGPT? You don't even use my. David Leary: [00:31:49] Exactly. Blake Oliver: [00:31:49] Not even use the. David Leary: [00:31:50] Special. Blake Oliver: [00:31:50] Training. How do you know that you're getting the right answer? David Leary: [00:31:53] Well, after about ten times, because our developers were still using it and we kept having the same loose answer conclusion. Blake Oliver: [00:32:00] Well, I think that I guess that's because, yeah, now the new, um, the new model GPT five knows to go to prioritize like Nasba itself and goes and finds the PDF and reads it without me having to tell it to. David Leary: [00:32:14] Or, uh, Sam Altman's a big liar, and he says he's not going to use what you train the models on to train the models, which is what I actually believe. Blake Oliver: [00:32:23] What you conspiracy theory. I, um, I mean, maybe who knows? By the way, since we're talking about CPE and Nasba. Nasba has released a draft along with the AICPA. They both together have released a proposed revisions to CPE standards. And normally, these revisions are not major. But in this case, I'm very excited because self-study is going to become more like nano learning. So nano learning is this CPE delivery method that was made that was separate from self-study and from live, and it was designed to enable short classes of as little as, I think 0.1 or 0.2 CPE, which is like, you know, a ten minute, 20 minute course. And nobody very few CPE providers ever started doing it because the states were slow to adopt it and like it wasn't on all the states, so we just didn't do it. We just chose to do self-study and we were blocked at half a credit. That's the lowest you could do. But now, thanks to the new standards, we're going to be able to do point two credit courses. David Leary: [00:33:39] So if the podcast is 15 minutes, we could still issue a CDs. Blake Oliver: [00:33:43] So it's really exciting because I think that a lot of shows are best when they're short. Like one short topic, 15 minutes, 20 minutes at most. Evidence shows that people's attention spans kind of drift away after 20 minutes. So I'm really I'm excited because I want to start. Once that passes, hopefully that'll. Pass soon. The comment period goes until December and then it'll take them a while. Maybe next year it'll get adopted. That would be great. And then we could start doing like technical, deeply technical content. That's really short. David Leary: [00:34:17] Yeah. The argument I heard for the for this nano learning concept was from a learning and development leader at one of the bigger firms, and what he said was, imagine you're a tax specialist and there's maybe it's electric. You have to fill out some paperwork for the electric tax vehicle credit, but you haven't done it before or you haven't done it in a long time. So right when you go to do that form, you can just pull up a ten minute video and watch it really quick and refresh your brain. Then you get credit for it and you go do the work. So it's almost like getting your education right when you need it instead of like, oh, I went to this webinar eight months ago about electric tax credit. And you don't remember anything? Yes. But you get those instant nano learnings. Blake Oliver: [00:34:55] That's where I want us to go with that. That would be amazing. Um, here's some app news. Drake software has launched cloud based tax. Yes. No, this is not a story from 20 years ago because we're talking about tax Drake tax online is the new browser based tax software that complements Drake's existing desktop solution. It was announced last week, and it's sort of in a hybrid phase at this point. Um, you can't do everything with it, so you can do ten 40s. Uh, you can do 709, 1065 and 1120 s fully in the browser, but for the 1120 C core, uh, 1041 fiduciary and nine 90s and, um, estate tax returns, I guess 706 you have to switch to the integrated desktop data entry mode, which is bundled with Drake tax online, but is uh, is still desktop, but it looks like I mean, based on where they're going, they're going to eventually have it all be, uh, browser based. So this is sort of like a bridge. David Leary: [00:36:14] It took them this long. I mean, Like you said, you're surprised. I don't think 2013, but. Blake Oliver: [00:36:21] Well, when you consider that all the legacy tax preparer companies still don't have cloud like, it's kind of amazing. I mean, it would make sense that Drake is the is the preferred choice for what small firms. So they were able to move faster on this. So yeah if you have mostly ten 40s uh s core uh, 1060 fives, and you want to do work on your Mac through a browser and you don't want to deal with desktop software, um, you can pretty much do it. You might have to install the desktop software for like, some, some other forms. But I mean, if you're already using desktop, then easy, right? David Leary: [00:37:00] Didn't grunt works. Just finally move to cloud now or what. Blake Oliver: [00:37:04] Did you. David Leary: [00:37:04] Say? Grunt works. Blake Oliver: [00:37:06] I don't know what that is. David Leary: [00:37:07] Works. I think they're, uh, in the tax form scanning type thing, but I thought they just moved to a cloud announcement recently as well, because I think they were one of those older tax automation organizer type companies that were always desktop based. Maybe it's finally here. Congratulations tax pros. You get to finally use the. Blake Oliver: [00:37:26] David could be hallucinating. He does. Not sure if this is accurate like. David Leary: [00:37:31] That could be I'm I'm agree. Blake Oliver: [00:37:33] We agree we wouldn't hallucinate on the program David. We're trying to be better than the. David Leary: [00:37:36] I'm trying not to. That's. I'm on. Blake Oliver: [00:37:38] You can look it up if you want. Why don't you look it up while I talk about keeper? Did you talk about. David Leary: [00:37:44] Our. Blake Oliver: [00:37:44] Features? Are a new. David Leary: [00:37:46] Ad for Bill first. Blake Oliver: [00:37:47] Okay. Uh, thank you, Bill, for sponsoring this episode. October is cybersecurity awareness Month, and this October, Bill is putting the spotlight on payment fraud prevention. As a listener of this podcast, I'm sure you know that cybersecurity isn't just a tech problem, it's a business risk. Considering that more than half of small businesses aren't confident in the security of their B2B payment systems, that means there's a huge opportunity for accountants to step in and lead. As an accountant, you're often the first line of defense when it comes to protecting client payments. Bill is the all in one financial operations platform built for accountants. From AP and AR automation to spend and expense management bill helps firms streamline the back office bill helps you protect every payment with customizable roles and approval policies to ensure true separation of duties. Through the month of October, Bill is offering real, practical advice to help you protect your clients and their money. Learn about protecting payments with automation and AI from industry experts, including Donnie Shimomoto and Laura Redmond. Register for Bill's free CPE webinar on October 8th. To register for that. Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast forward slash I l. David Leary: [00:39:04] I may be crazy. I just made the whole thing up then because I cannot find anything about. Blake Oliver: [00:39:07] You, you hallucinated. David Leary: [00:39:08] Isolated completely. Blake Oliver: [00:39:10] Which is totally fine. It's a great example and proof that like humans make up stuff to. David Leary: [00:39:17] Ai and sent that off, all it's going to do is be work slop. That would have came from me anyways. So it's the same work slop. That's this is this is what I mean. But the workshop, I would have sent that out to you from AI, and I wouldn't have known that it wasn't true. Blake Oliver: [00:39:32] Uh huh. Uh, well, let's talk about. Did we talk about keeper? I feel like you just mentioned keeper. Did you talk about. David Leary: [00:39:42] Starting to say something about keeper? Blake Oliver: [00:39:43] Did you mention it earlier in the episode, or am I hallucinating that. David Leary: [00:39:46] You hallucinated that? Blake Oliver: [00:39:47] Okay, I'm hallucinating too. David Leary: [00:39:48] Now everybody's going to think this is AI doing this episode. We're in trouble. Blake Oliver: [00:39:51] No, no, they won't, because it's such garbage. It's obviously humans. Okay, so, keeper, they just launched a new product called scale, and it uses AI to turn complex payroll reports and settlement statements into ready to post journal entries automatically. So this is AI that can convert your reports that you're pulling from client systems and turn them into journal entries. And it's one of my favorite use cases for AI. We saw Floqast doing this on the midmarket end of this type of software. David Leary: [00:40:29] So this is when your clients using a payroll system that doesn't talk to the GL. Blake Oliver: [00:40:33] Yeah. Or like, uh, e-commerce settlement report that doesn't integrate e-commerce system, that doesn't integrate into the GL. And you got to get it. You got to get a report from the system, and then you got to turn that into a journal entry. So this is something where how do we do this. In the past we had a workbook where we would pull in the report and we would paste it in. And then we had pivot tables or formulas that would then do all the calculations to create the journal entry that we would then export and import into the general ledger. And that's a huge pain in the butt. It's a lot of work. And AI is really good at taking those inputs. And once you've given it an example and you've given instructions on what to do. It can very, very reliably create the journal entry, and it doesn't hallucinate the numbers because these eyes can now utilize calculator tools so you can actually have it do the calculations using code and check its own work. And this is exactly the sort of task that you can get AI to do with like near 100% accuracy. So keeper now has this. It is for QuickBooks online. At this point it's available. It launched September 25th and it's $50 per client per month. Um what else can it do? It can automate accruals. So full automation of posting tie out and roll forward of all accruals generating audit ready schedules in minutes. I mentioned the journal entries and it's combined with their task management, client communications and reporting features they already have. So if you haven't heard about it, um, I think of keeper as actually like very much like focused. But a lot of people haven't heard about that either. I guess it's really financial close management. So all that checklist stuff, all that stuff that needs to get done to close the books, all the all the all the tasks and review and everything around that, closing the books. David Leary: [00:42:27] So yes, you could use it with tax clients. There's all this tax, little workflow software for tax clients, but there's not a lot for client accounting services. Right. That's what this sweet spot is. Blake Oliver: [00:42:37] Right? Right. Yeah. So think about this. Yeah. This is the client accounting services of all version of all that software that's designed to like get the data from the client and tie it out and, you know, do the adjustments and all that. Like this is this is that for client accounting services. And it's honestly there aren't that many solutions that do it for an accounting firm could use. So um check that out. Not a sponsor. We love keeper though. David Leary: [00:43:03] Let's see what a sponsor this week. Blake Oliver: [00:43:04] Not a sponsor. David Leary: [00:43:05] Yet. Sometimes. Blake Oliver: [00:43:06] Okay. Um, I talked about that. Uh, David, you had a story about the State Department using QuickBooks. How? Wait, how is this? Where did this come from? David Leary: [00:43:19] That's that's that's what caught my eye. So this was an article that was in gambling news.com. You know, this website I go to all the time. The reason it popped up is a former US State Department employee, Avita Ferrer, has been sentenced to 12 months in one day in prison for embezzling more than $650,000 to fund her gambling habit. She was a senior budget analyst and exploited her access to the State Department's QuickBooks. I don't know why they were using QuickBooks for something. Maybe a petty cash. It just it just seems crazy to me. And she issued fraudulent checks between March of 2022 and April of 2024. So what? You're probably wondering, what did she do? This is the oldest trick in the book. You print the check to yourself and then you change the name in QuickBooks. Blake Oliver: [00:44:04] Wow. David Leary: [00:44:05] Did that. So she did that 60 times to herself and three checks to an unnamed party that was apparently involved as well. So 63 total checks and there were $10,000 apiece checks because she took $650,000. There's no checks and balances happening at the State Department. Yeah. It's beyond me. Blake Oliver: [00:44:25] It doesn't surprise me. David Leary: [00:44:27] This was able to occur. Blake Oliver: [00:44:28] Oh. David Leary: [00:44:29] Yeah. But I don't know what. Like, apparently the State Department uses QuickBooks. I did not expect to see that. Blake Oliver: [00:44:36] Well, like you said, it's probably for, like, one particular account, and they roll it up or something. It's just stupid, though. Like, they shouldn't. David Leary: [00:44:45] This the kind of stuff was supposed to find. Blake Oliver: [00:44:47] Yeah. Oh, man. I haven't heard about Dodge in a while. David Leary: [00:44:51] Sorry sorry, sorry. Rewind. Delete that from the episode. I miss. Blake Oliver: [00:44:54] Dodge. Now it's just all news about like, tariffs. Tariffs, tariffs. What was the news today? Trump threatens fresh tariffs related to furniture and movies. Yeah. Trump announced that he'll impose substantial tariffs on any country that doesn't make furniture in the United States. I thought this, uh, this article that popped into Accounting Today was funny because, uh, the the the second sentence says it's unclear how that would work. Companies, not countries, manufacture furniture. And the duties are charged on specific imports, not governments. Details to follow. The president wrote. Trump said he would act in order to make North Carolina, which has completely lost its furniture business, to China and other countries, great again. I mean, that's not true because, like all the high end furniture is made in North Carolina. Like that's where Bassett is. You know, Bassett furniture, like all that. So unless. David Leary: [00:45:49] You want Italian furniture. Blake Oliver: [00:45:50] I mean, do we want to bring back, um, yeah, maybe. Maybe we should pass a tariff on, like Ikea, right? We could. We could have all that compressed wood stuff made here. David Leary: [00:46:01] When is it furniture? When I assemble it in my house. Can you define when it becomes a piece of furniture. Blake Oliver: [00:46:06] Right. Yeah. I'm sure it would get an exemption. He's also threatening 100% tariff on all movies made outside the US, claiming that Hollywood has been stolen from America like candy from a baby market shrugged. David Leary: [00:46:21] So Trump's trying to get in good graces with the Hollywood scene, who tends to all hate him. This is a smart, smart business play by Trump here again. Blake Oliver: [00:46:31] I mean, it's interesting, like, uh, all the film stuff that moved out of Hollywood, you know, went to like, uh, was it a lot of stuff got shot in Vancouver for a long time. David Leary: [00:46:42] Atlanta. Blake Oliver: [00:46:43] Atlanta. It's just so expensive to film anything in LA. David Leary: [00:46:49] Well, I think they have to film. Like if you want to show movies in China, you have to film some portion of the film now in China. Blake Oliver: [00:46:54] Yeah. I mean, you know, make America China again. That would be great. Let's do that. Um. David Leary: [00:47:00] I have other Trump news. If you're done with these. These new tariffs. Blake Oliver: [00:47:05] Well, there's also going to be 100% tariff on patented drugs starting October 1st. Unless you're building a manufacturing plant in the US, then you get a complete exemption. Uh, and that that that tanked. The European drug maker stocks Nordisk. Nordisk fell 3.1%. Astrazeneca dropped 1.6. This is actually one of those things that I think we probably should do more here is like like maybe not make all the prescription drugs overseas. Like given how dependent we are now on prescription drugs, like like furniture, maybe not so much. Right. Movies. That's not exactly a national security risk. Prescription drugs that we need to survive and live. Yeah. Okay, great. But like all of this, there's like. No, there's no there's no subtlety in any of this, right? Like like that is what's important anyway. Go ahead. David Leary: [00:47:56] I said this for a long time. Like when Trump discovers these South Korean K-pop boy bands that are taking jobs. That. Good looking white boys used to have in the teenagers used to have in this country. And now it's it's good looking, uh, South Korean boys, like, he's going to want to tax K-pop. You just know once he gets word that this exists, that'll be the next thing he wants to do it. Because it's still it's jobs, right? Ultimately. And money leaving the country. Blake Oliver: [00:48:22] Have you seen K-pop demon hunters? David? Is that what you brought this up you've been watching? David Leary: [00:48:25] No, I like I think my daughter's finally out of this K-pop phase. It was there for a long time. Blake Oliver: [00:48:30] Oh, but the demon hunters, I mean, like that, that is. She's gotta come back for that. That is. That show is. I've been watching that with my ten year old, and he just loves it. It's just it's insane. Um, it's like like a fever dream. David Leary: [00:48:46] A fever. Blake Oliver: [00:48:46] Dream. Yeah. It's. I feel like I'm on drugs watching that show when I'm completely sober. Okay. David Leary: [00:48:53] So we got to do another ad. If you do the last ad, I have another Trump story. If you get the ad ready. Blake Oliver: [00:49:00] Uh, can you do a different story? I'll let you decide. Thank you to Blue Book for sponsoring this episode. Most people in accounting know that AI is powerful, especially if you listen to the show. But very few know where to start or how to make AI actually useful. It doesn't have to be this way. Introducing Blue Book blue Book turns AI into practical accounting workflows that save time, reduce errors, and make accounting teams more effective. Blue book agents are changing how accounting teams work. 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David Leary: [00:50:28] All right, so I don't know if you heard because you were out last week, but Trump also wants to increase the fee for an H-1b visa. Blake Oliver: [00:50:35] Ooh. That would be a big deal for. David Leary: [00:50:37] Previously was a couple thousand maybe dollars. Now he wants to make it $100,000. Blake Oliver: [00:50:43] Wow. David Leary: [00:50:44] So most, uh, most of these H-1b visas are used for, like, Stem type jobs. A lot of computer engineering type roles, computer science type roles. And I understand some of the motivation here is because you bring people in and then, you know, the fear is you're going to train them and they go back to their country and start, um, industry and competitive offerings. So I understand where that fear is coming from. But this really like Trump courted these tech companies, right. That's that helped them win the election. You know, he courted media. He courted, uh, Google. He courted Apple. He courted Microsoft. Well, now this is probably going to bite bite him back. For example, Amazon has 10,000 applications for H-1b1 visas. Now that's $1 billion. Now this fee like these tech companies meta has 5000. So that's half $1 billion for meta, half $1 billion for Microsoft. So these companies are going to push back on this. He's not going to win on this. Blake Oliver: [00:51:44] But he used them to win the election. Now he doesn't need them anymore. David Leary: [00:51:47] Exactly. He used them to win the election. Blake Oliver: [00:51:49] Right. And you know, I mean this is going to be popular because well, let me play devil's advocate, David. Like, what's so great about having foreign workers come into the United States and take a really good IT and accounting jobs. And why should we support that? David Leary: [00:52:05] The issue is and this the argument is they're not taking the jobs like we don't have. Blake Oliver: [00:52:10] That's always the argument. Every employer. David Leary: [00:52:11] Is like. Blake Oliver: [00:52:12] Every employer is like, oh, we can't find the people to do the job. You know, meanwhile there's all these like graduates that are sitting around, like looking for jobs, like like here we go. Azriel says. Any advice on getting that first job out of college? The job market has been rough. So you flood the market with h-1b1. Whatever. What is what is it, H-1b visas? Yeah, yeah. And then these companies have no incentive to create training programs to upskill the recent college grads that need jobs. So that's that's that's the argument in favor of getting rid of these programs or. David Leary: [00:52:44] Reducing. Blake Oliver: [00:52:44] Them or making them more. David Leary: [00:52:45] Expensive as well as I feel like, and I've seen this, they can be used to abuse talent. So you can you bring somebody in on that visa, you pay them less and then you threaten to pull away. Blake Oliver: [00:52:56] Yeah. Do you think do you think that worker is going to stand up for their own rights, even though they're here in the US and they have worker's rights? Are they going to do it? No, they're going to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week. And they're not going to complain because they just want to keep their job and stay in the country. David Leary: [00:53:11] Yeah. And he wants to cap this to 65,000 regular visas and 20,000 for a US advanced degree holders. Mhm. Um, and right now it looks like uh 71% are from India and 11% are from China. So this is really very specific to India to some extent. Mhm. Um, now I did do some research about the accounting industry. So in general the accounting firms don't use this model to hire people. They do use it. Blake Oliver: [00:53:37] It's not like huge like in it though. David Leary: [00:53:40] Yeah. Now the big four does some. But in the grand scheme of how many people the big four employ in the grand scheme of how many, how many H-1b1 visas are done in tech, the big four barely does. Blake Oliver: [00:53:51] Well, how many are the big four doing? Like what? How many? David Leary: [00:53:53] I don't even have the exact number. But relative to their head count. It's like so small. It's not even. Blake Oliver: [00:53:58] I don't think it's immaterial. I think they definitely do it. I remember we talked about this a while ago, and it's like accounting is not at the top of the list. It's mostly IT roles. Yeah. But like accounting is on there and it's like a significant number of workers. Like what. But I guess, you know. David Leary: [00:54:14] Sorry I brought AI slop to the show. I should well. Blake Oliver: [00:54:16] You know, do your research, David. David Leary: [00:54:18] More numbers? Blake Oliver: [00:54:19] Yes. No, no, I think it's like tens of thousands of workers. David Leary: [00:54:22] You still think it's that many for accounting? Blake Oliver: [00:54:23] Well, but still, there's like a million accountants with a license in North America. So in the big scheme of things, it's not it's like, you know, maybe a few percent. David Leary: [00:54:36] Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:54:36] Well could that does that hurt American workers? I mean, not really. Probably not right now with the shortage, I don't know. I think it's a bigger problem in it. That's where you see on message boards people talking about how like like it hurts an American worker when there's just, like, so many H-1b applicants who can come in and take your job. It means that you lose power over your career. David Leary: [00:55:02] That's true. Blake Oliver: [00:55:02] Right? Because they're willing to work and not complain. David Leary: [00:55:06] Um, because there's this power that's over the employee that they don't have. Yeah. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:55:11] So if you're if you're kind of like a mid-level, you know, if, like, you're not at the top of the pack and you're just sort of like, you know, getting along, it doesn't help you. It hurts you. Yeah. Yeah. David Leary: [00:55:20] And this will take place in the next lottery cycle. And it's only going to be new applicants. Only they're not going to raise it on existing ones. So the hits a little bit less. But the fact that it just shows you how many they have, if applications out there from Amazon are still at 10,000 like like that's yeah, it is a pretty big hit. And like he's probably declaring war on tech that he they used he used tech to get elected. And now he's declaring war on tech. Blake Oliver: [00:55:47] Right. Because it's because what. Tech is not popular among the among the base. Right. David Leary: [00:55:51] Like but the base. That's true. Blake Oliver: [00:55:52] Right. You know big tech is the new like if this is the new Gilded Age, right? The, uh, the the tech. You know, Zuckerberg and Musk are like the new railroad barons, the robber barons. Bezos. They're the robber barons of our era. And so, yeah, he used he used Musk to get elected, and then he turned on him and the rest of us, his people. And now he's going to use he's going to beat them politically. And we'll see if it works. All right, David, that's all the time we have this week. Dear listeners, you can earn a free continuing professional education credit for sitting through this workshop of a podcast. Go to earmark app in your web browser, or download the free earmark app on the iOS or Android store. Create your free account and earn a free CPE. Yes, it is totally free, one per week for free. If you want to support the work we do, subscribe to the earmark app for one low annual price and you'll get unlimited CPE every week, unlimited courses, subscriber only content, our back catalog, all that good stuff. We really appreciate you, our subscribers. David Leary: [00:57:01] About 30 hours or so left to get earmark at the existing price of say. Blake Oliver: [00:57:06] That because it's gonna it's gonna. Well, people listening on the podcast won't be able to do it. They'll be disappointed. David Leary: [00:57:12] It's true. Just the live stream. Blake Oliver: [00:57:14] So if you're in the live stream. Yeah. If you're in the live stream, um, subscribe now because you can lock in the $150 price and it's going up to 170. Still a great. David Leary: [00:57:23] Deal. 69. 99. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:57:24] Still it's still still the best deal in CPE around. And we're going to use that money to create more awesome technical content and tell us what kind of content you think we need. Um, we love hearing from our subscribers and our listeners. All right. I gotta go to the airport to go to Chicago to do the tour. See everyone in Chicago and Atlanta this week. David Leary: [00:57:45] Enjoy. Blake Oliver: [00:57:45] Bye, everyone.