The Accounting Technology Lab

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: Welcome
to the Accounting Technology

Lab, brought to you by CPA
Practice Advisor, with your host

Randy Johnston and Brian
Tankersley. Welcome, the

Accounting Technology Lab. This
is a sad day. We're here to

celebrate the dead pool that
products that have been deceased

and products that are on the end
hospice right now that are going

to be deceased, it's products
nearing the end of support, and

you know, Randy, you think about
it, and we have, you know, if

we're looking at all of this,
there are we all benefited from

those that went before us, and
you know, given that we're

hopefully releasing this around
Memorial Day, you know, we had,

we have so many people that are
their gold star families who had

a family member that made the
ultimate sacrifice for our

country, but let's remind
ourselves that these software

products and the people that
gave their lives to these

products to work 80 hours a week
to make them work. These people

made those sacrifices for our
firms, and so we need to

recognize those, you know, we
need to recognize that it's not

nearly as much of a sacrifice as
those Gold Star families or even

the Blue Star families make, but
it is a sacrifice, and it does

need to be acknowledged. So,
I'll turn it over to you now.

Randy Johnston: Well, actually,
let's have a moment of silence

for all these departed products.
If you're an audio listener,

we'll talk about them in a
moment,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: do
Amen.

Randy Johnston: So, that said,
you know, there were a lot of

great products historically. In
fact, I presented in Nashville

just the day before we're
recording this, and one of the

attendees said, "You may not
remember ATB, and I said, "Oh,

ATB for sure, Steve Blundell
miss him dearly, you know. So,

there's a lot of people that
created products that were

really great people, and so
things like.. and I am going to

read them from the slide, just
for the audio listeners, but

Creative Solutions Accounting,
Peachtree for DOS, which, by the

way, I deployed in 1981 on an
IBM PC, QuickBooks Pro and

Premier Pro system ethics
document on premises is now

gone. The old Thomson Reuters
CVS client bookkeeping system,

what an interesting way to
handle remote bookkeeping, and

of course personal accounting
with Quicken, which actually is

kind of still available, but no
longer an Intuit, and of course,

Mint went, you know, way Great
Plains, of course, the Doug

Burgum Company, and you know,
you see Doug Burgum in the

public eye now, but Great Plains
acquired by

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: Great
Plains to being the Secretary of

Interior, who saw that coming.

Randy Johnston: Yeah, you know,
he always wanted to be

president, so that's probably
his stepping stone, because he's

got his governor deal in. But
Cougar Mountain Denali, you

know, SAP are three boy. I did a
lot of work on that, of course,

Pro Series Basic, and Intuits
Lacerte tax analyzer, and

frankly, the whole advisory
platform that Intuit built was

really a good one, and I was
just so sad to see that die. One

that you know we spent a lot of
effort on, and it was

interesting to see how it went
was Microsoft Office County.

Look, think we're reading the
tombstone right now. It was

around from 2003 through 2009 It
was just getting market share

when Microsoft pulled the plug
on it. They were actually

effectively competing against
QuickBooks. The inscription on

the tombstone says, "Beloved
brother of Clippy, son of Excel

and Word, being right and
accurate isn't always enough.

What an interesting epitaph, if
you will, for that particular

product. And the guy that was
behind that, Bob Lewis, did a

lot of work, and the product was
really working beautifully, but

yet Dak Easy Accounting, and of
course, visual practice

management, which was, you know,
purchased by CCA, became their

practice management product, but
the visual plan, right up, and

you know, since we're talking
about a holiday here with

Memorial Day, you know, my
family goes to all of our local

cemeteries, and we put flags
properly on the graves. Many

people do not understand the
respect for the flag. Now we do,

and we're quite adamant about
doing things right. That

probably comes from my sister
being in the Navy, and you know

all of my uncles and father
serving World War Two, but we

get it, and in any case. When I
think about visual practice

management, so forth, the
founder of that company's

birthday is the fourth of July,
which I always send him a

message around that holiday, but
QuickBooks point of sale going

down Microsoft Office 2003 which
was such a solid version of the

product, and of course XP Vista
Seven, and you know the great

news, Brian, as we're thinking
about those departed, we can

look for the ones that are
coming, because I noticed today

that Microsoft is building a new
version of Windows called k2

which is pretty interesting,
they're after quality in their

next version of Windows, and
they named it k2 and of course,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: Why
wouldn't you name a quality

product k2

Randy Johnston: I think it's
hilarious. Many of you know that

I'm the owner of k2 Enterprises,
and that's how Brian and I met,

was through our k2 CPA courses,
but watch for Windows k2 the new

quality version of Windows, and
that was just announced the day

before we recorded this, but you
know, Brian came up with an idea

some time ago called the Dead
Pool, and really, these are

products that are in software
hospice, if you will, the

vendors have announced that
they're going to kill the

products, and we need to be
thoughtful about that, and you

know, I actually sent a message
to all of my team members about

Microsoft Publisher, whose death
date is projected to be october

13 of 2026 You know, in my mind,
when I see these, it's

unfortunately like going to the
oncologist and saying you got

six months to live, but in this
particular case it's not a

variable date, it is a pure drop
dead date, and you know in this

particular case the Microsoft
Publisher files will not be

readable by the surviving
products, you can convert them

now, but Microsoft says don't
plan on being able to convert

them at the dead day. Somebody
will come up with a way, I

suspect, but you know, just from
an operational perspective,

you've got to start thinking
about how you get this change.

So, Brian, you might speak to
some of the other products in

the list.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: Sure.
So, believe it or not, Office

2021 end of support is in
October, so if you bought the

on-premises version of it, there
will be no security updates

after October, which is, you
know, based on some of the

previous podcasts we've done, is
a pretty big deal. Um, I was

actually working on some
workstations for a small

business that I do some work
with, and they had somebody that

was on 24 h2 when is 1124 h2 and
that ends in October. Windows 11

Enterprise and Education 23 h2
ends in November of this year.

Windows 10 Home Extended Support
ends october 13, 2026 with no

extension. Windows Pro and
Enterprise Business Support is

available into the second, even
a second and a third year,

starting in October, but it'll
be 122 per seat in year two, and

244 a seat in year three, and
again it's the idea will be

Elvis dead on October the 14th
of 2028

Randy Johnston: and you know
that's hard to believe, that's

only two and a half years out,
friends, so for those of you

that said, oh, I'll just stay on
Windows 10, and you know, be a

real strong person. It's like,
yeah, no, that's not

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: the
way you work, and you're going

to be $400 lighter in the wallet
for Windows. I mean, you know, I

feel like that's, you know,
wouldn't you be better off just

buying a whole new computer?

Randy Johnston: Yeah,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: you
know, Dynamics 365 Business

Central on premises is going to
2024 release wave two is out as

of now and the.net nine as we
report as you know at the time

by the time this is released.net
nine will also have crossed the

rainbow bridge into the next
world

Randy Johnston: well now you
might be stay with us, friends,

because you might be saying,
well, what's your point, guys,

and the point is coming up
because there are products that

are broadly used in the
profession. An example here is

File Cabinet CS from Thompson
Reuters, which has an official

end of life of December 31 of
2027 and the day before we

recorded this, I was asked by a
managing partner who said, "Hey,

I'm on file cabinet CS. What's
my alternatives? So I had that

question in a live group of
managing partners just

yesterday, and that firm was not
the only firm on this product.

So, Brian, what can you tell our
listeners about file cabinets?

Yes,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: well,
you know, it's there's 12,000

firms on this platform, so it's
a, you know, it's a tool that is

very popular. It has been very
successful in the market,

however, there are some issues
with it, you know, so much of

the software that. We work with
today is stuff that was written

pre yk and this is no exception,
and the problem with that is

that we didn't store data in the
way we then in the format that

we need that we store it now.
Okay, and so the problem is now

that the ability, the tools, you
know, with 12,000 firms on the

platform, the tools are not, you
know, they're probably not going

to spend a whole lot of money
writing a lot of tools to do

this, and there's it, this is a
very laborious process, for some

reasons that we'll talk about
here in a second, you know, one

one consultant estimated that
500 client manual export, four

to eight weeks of staff time,
eight to $15,000 in loaded

labor. Part of the problem is
that the files are stored are

broken up to individual pages,
and so you have to basically

assemble the images of each of
the pages into a PDF file or

some other format, so that's
the, it's a restructuring of

data problem in there, and
there's not really a great tool

for that. Again, it consultants
are going to charge 10 to

$50,000 for this. Now, again,
this export does require

restructuring files. The files
are stored one page at a time as

images, and it's data stored,
and they have to be recombined.

And there's, of course, the
page, the number of pages is

variable, and this is not a
simple process. Now you can go

in and open up each individual
file, export it to PDF, and then

reload it, but then you've got
to get - you've also got to

gather all that indexing data
that you have that you use to

file this in here, and I've got
a couple of blog posts that were

written by Chris at Lycio, Chris
Farrell, who actually is their

founder and CEO. He actually has
spent quite a bit of time

converting stuff out of here,
but there's also a guy named

Kevin Anderson that's a CPA out
of Utah that has done this, but

it is a, it is act pro an
inexact process, and the problem

with this is that you know, if
you start thinking about

layering, I may need to take
five weeks of staff time or

something like that to make this
conversion. You know, you're

running out of daylight, is what
we would say in the farming

world. You know, I have bees,
and I didn't get my mite

treatments done last fall, and
there are a lot of reasons I

didn't get them done. I'm not
making any excuses, but we had a

lot of calamity last fall, and I
didn't get my mite treatments

done, and I lost half my bee
colonies this winter. Okay,

because I didn't get out and do
the chores that I should have

done. Now, the lesson for you is
that the thing here is that

there isn't as much time as you
think before 1231 2027 You know,

you have remaining in 2026
second busy season, and then you

have, you know, october 15 and
september 15, and then you have

first busy season next year, and
you have second busy season next

year, and notice how little, how
compressed the spots are in

between, and so I want you to
start thinking about that now.

You know, if you're on that
product, I would try to get

something. I would try to get
something selected and at least

piloted this year, so that next
year you can go at it really

hard. Honestly, I'd like to see
you convert to do that

conversion maybe before the end
of the year. Okay, because the

problem you're going to have is
that the talent to do the

conversion is you're gonna have
to throw lots and lots of staff

hours at it, if you don't have
an automation, if you do have an

automation, you know it's going
to cost big money, and you don't

have a whole lot of margin for
error there, and you're talking

about really your entire library
of working papers, which is your

practice, and so this is not an
asset that you want to gamble

with,

Randy Johnston: so you know
we're talking about file cabinet

CS, but in my mind this
represents a much bigger

picture, because there are many
products that you use where you

really need to do a migration,
and the timeframes that you have

to do it when you see an end of
life date is as compressed as

Brian is laying out. If you're
in public practice, you've

really only got a few flexible
months in any given year, and if

you have a culture of tax
extensions where you used to

have downtime in the summer, you
no longer have that, so you may

have very little time available.
So that's kind of point 1.2.

Thomson Reuters, of course,
would like to have you convert

file cabinet CST to go file
room, but I believe that

Thompson is likely to be
constrained in the resources.

Now, I'm not speaking for
Thompson, I don't know that. In

fact, I'm just saying, if you
have 12,000 firms and you're

trying to move them, even with
utility, that's just a group of

work, so kind of be thoughtful
about how that all plays out.

And in a separate accounting
technology lab, we're discussing

new generation document
management products, which we

certainly would like you to
listen in on that if you're

faced with a document.
Conversion issue. Now, all of

that said, note there's a few
other interesting facts that we

can talk about here, and we have
been watching vendors create

utilities to try to do some of
this work. So, Brian started

step in, but I'll hit it back to
you for a moment.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: Well,
I mean, there are two. There are

people that are coming up with
ways to do this. One thing that

Chris and Lisio are doing is
they have tool sets that will,

that will identify document
classifications, will

automatically classify and
automatically name documents.

There are tools like Paperless
Plus out there that will index

things, you know, I actually
installed a photo application

just the other day in a
container that did facial

recognition on all of my legacy
photos, and it was running on

premises, and it actually did a
remarkably good job. And so, you

know, the tools are getting
better, but the problem again

is, is that you don't know what
you don't know about the data

structures and the files in
these things, and I wanted to,

we, I wanted to call this to you
here, because this is an IED

that can blow up your entire,
you know, this can blow up your

season next year if you don't
address it sooner rather than

later, you know. We need to go
out and scout and find out what

the issues are, and what the
conversion issues are. If you

have one of these legacy
products, because you might be

walking into something like
this, where you have to

completely restructure every
doc, literally every document

that's in your, that's in your
client files that you want to

retain in the new format. Now,
again, I'll tell you that again.

If you think about the Randy's,
we're absolutely right about the

amount of time you have. My
normal rules, when I was an

accounting firm tech manager,
back when dinosaurs roamed the

earth, one of the things I would
always do is I was locked down

from about December the 15th to
April the 20th. Okay, and

nothing major could happen
during that four month period,

okay. And then we locked down
again, about, you know, about

august 15 until october 15,
okay. And so you're literally

knocking out six months of the
year there, okay. And then in

those six months, you also have
to do any summer audits that you

have to do, you have to do your
CPA, you have to do your

vacations, you have staff
turnover, and you have to train

new employees, and so what I'm
telling you here is, you know,

to use one of Randy's favorite
savings from the farm folks,

you're burning daylight if
you're not looking at this right

now. It's time to address this,
and you need to address it

sooner rather than later,
because this is one of the major

assets of your practice, is your
working papers.

Randy Johnston: So, that said,
friends, you can see that we've

got a lot of work ahead of us.
These conversion tools will help

us, but I'm going to caution you
on one other key item. The cost

of using AI to do these
conversions is high if you use

the general models, and many are
going to try to use ChatGPT or

Claude or whatever to get that
job done, and number one, they

don't have the best document
recognition, and number two,

they're quite expensive to do
the job on a per page or per

token basis, so we're going to
try to identify tools that will

help you with these types of
conversions. We suspect many of

you will wind up in Teams and
SharePoint, or in other

platforms. Again, we have
another lab on new generation

document management. We'd invite
you there, but you know we

wanted to remember those that
had gone before us, because we

have learned from many and stood
on the shoulders of giants. You

have a good day.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA: Thank
you for sharing your time with

us. We'll be back next Saturday
with a new episode of the

Technology Lab from CPA Practice
Advisor. Have a great week.