The Accounting Technology Lab

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:00
Welcome to the Accounting Technology Lab, brought to you by CPA Practice Advisor, with your hosts Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley.

Randy Johnston 00:09
Welcome to the Accounting Technology Lab. I'm Randy Johnston with co-host Brian Tankersley. We have seen each other more this past month than I can even count, Brian. And you know, you and I don't get to spend a lot of time together, but you know this is our second session speaking about scaling new heights. Where both Brian and I were guest speakers, and we ran an AI track for Joe Woodard and his team there, and we wanted to just talk about some of the things that we observed there, as well as how the current state of the market and how we look at all these things. Again, we've had a month plus of travel as we've done that. So the show this year was on june 14 through the 17th, and the opening keynote days I had anticipated heavily. Now there were guests of David Barrett from Expensify and Sasha Orloff from Puzzle, and we have another county technology lab with Sasha featured, so you could look for that if you'd like to hear more about what he might say. But the key thing that I was watching for was Daniel Susskind, and he and his dad have been kind of futurist forecasters for a while. The Futures of the Profession book I actually recommended a reread, and it's been out for some time. But I wanted to hear what he said about the various, you know, conditions of the market and where the trends were heading, and so forth. And his insights were, you know, quite valuable. You know, some of the things that he was talking about was the impact of AI and how we might change our service deliverables. Now, again, each of these keynote speakers spoke for about an hour that we're going to talk about today. So we're not going to try to recap the content. That might be a fool's errand on our part. But I would suggest that each of these people that we're mentioning, and Brian will have those in the show notes for you, that we want you to know the speaker's name and be able to acquire some of the books that they might have. I think that might be the quickest way to get the charts and other illustrations that they used. But it was a really good start to that day, and then from there, the Monday morning sessions were also, you know, quite good. As it turns out, guests there included a number of people that we've had in other accounting technology labs. Jeff Sebert from Digits, the CEO there, and also Peter Jacobson of Microsoft spoke during that session. I know Brian and I were kind of sitting side by side watching that all unfold, and Andrea Faria from Microsoft was also there. Of course, Minaj Shah, who is with FinSmart, and Prashant from Zoho, Prashant Ganti from Zoho, also spoke. And then you know there were other guests that did panels and whatnot, including Matt Tate from Decimal and Liz Scott and Deborah Kilsauer, and then Emily Cheshire as well. So when everything was said and done, it was really the event to see all of this sold on Monday morning. Now, Brian, I've been going not really letting you speak in, but you know what would you observe about the first couple of sessions, and we'll go on to maybe the Tuesday afternoon.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 03:34
I think that it was. It really struck me how you know how queer people were on the adoption curve of AI. In I felt like there were about 10% that were messing with agents and running it all the time and everything, and there were like another 10% that had tried some prompts, and it felt like there was another 80% that wasn't doing anything with it. It really it felt like we had you know it felt like one of those things where the tools ready to be used. I don't think anybody doubts that either the tools are ready, but the challenge is pulling along those laggards that are out there, and it's clear that people are doing interesting things. But it's you know the adoption curve on this is following more of a traditional software adoption curve. It seems like to me, and so what's happening is they're not moving fast enough. People aren't moving fast enough to adopt. It's what I'm seeing. Yeah,

Randy Johnston 04:41
you know, as you're saying it, Brian, I'm actually thinking of it like quote the K-shaped economy, if you will. You got the really early adopters, and you got the other people that aren't moving, and there's a big gap in the middle. So this is not a bell curve. It's absolutely upside down, as I would see it. So you got the. Leading bleeding edge people, and then not very many people behind, and the others that are just saying, "Yeah, I'm not going to use it at all. It's almost those extremes, and not saying that's wrong. It's just a great observation there. So you know the other things that happen. I think I might have said Tuesday, but Monday afternoon we had another general session where Tyler Otto from Specialized Accounting spoke, and then Jeremy Van Grolley from Nonprofit Bookkeeping, and Don Brolin actually was up for a bit, as well as Tony Proctor from Proctor and Associates, and Randy Crabtree from Trimerit, and Jason Statt spoke for a bit, as well as Andrew Cancer from zero. So you know, again, a nice group of people talking about different things and what they were seeing. Again, I took notes. I think I did pick up something from pretty much everybody. But you and I both know attending these sessions. If you can get one or two or three things per hour, you're doing pretty well, and I usually do at all of these conferences that I attended. But the next day, Dan Hood from Accounting Today and Ashley Roden from High Rock and Heather for a bit. In fact, the Woodard team actually talked about their service offering and had each one of them speak for a bit, it was a very effective presentation with tightly scripted things. So just calling out the various Woodard people, you know, Joe Woodard spoke, and Deb Deffer, and Kim Petro, and Lamont Nesbit, and Patricia Hendricks all spoke. And then, of course, we had Tiffany Capanegro from Wright Works as well. But a very interesting way to start that day before they turned us off onto the floor. Now I'll talk about the floor with everybody here in just a minute because I had the privilege of leading a i Ledger walking tour, which I thought was very interesting to do as well. But on Tuesday afternoon again, the sessions of that were closing up the conference were stunningly good. I thought, but you had Ariyajargi from Bill that spoke for a bit. Then April Ryan had such beautiful insights, and you know I was just enthralled with what April was saying, and she was really almost the perfect setup. I thought for the presentation in the Wednesday morning general session, and it was clear that when the Wednesday speakers took off, it was clear that they had really been watching each other, if you would, and Kate O'Neill in specific just did a stunningly beautiful job, and referenced what was said by April the prior day. But you know, Kate has new books coming out in November. She has other books, and I have actually acquired a few of those as well, but Conrad Wadowski from Kick also spoke that day, and Brian and I will have another accounting technology lab where you can hear from Conrad directly. So you know, I guess I feel fortunate, Brian, that you know possibly through scaling new heights we got to you know talk with these CEOs for our listeners and attendees, and then of course you had Brad Gustafson from Ramp as well. So again, when you think about keynotes, the Woodard team I think did a fine job of putting together the you know strategies trying to get people to move off into this new future. Now, just like you observe the AI, I'm just going to call out something that I think I've seen at this event and others, and you know many of the scaling new heights folks have run what I'd call VAR practices or bookkeeping practices, and of course some are you know CPA firms as well, and this whole thinking about transitioning from compliance to advisory, Joe and his team have been pushing that concept for a while.

Randy Johnston 09:09
They've been heavy into client accounting services, and then you know I think see the positioning of advisory. But it is also quite clear that the transition to advisory is moving slowly. That compliance still reigns, and even the discussions around billing, which you know are very common and have been common at these events for a long time. And I know, for example, you know, you kind of sat in the King of Billings session, right? Listening,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 09:43
the Pope of pricing.

Randy Johnston 09:44
That's it. That's who.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 09:45
Ron is the Pope of pricing, and I was glad to have my audience with the Pope this year. We're talking, of course, about the inimitable Ron Baker. He's. I always enjoy him. You know, he actually talked about a book that I sent to Randy. A bunch of other people called accrual intentions that we're gonna, yeah, that we're going to we're gonna try to get. I think we're gonna try to do something on it in the near future that actually discusses the what agentic AI looks like in an accounting firm and and how it changes the workflow and how it really makes the human the bottleneck in the whole process, but but I will say that it was it was nice to nice to see that I I felt like we had a lot of people that were very interested in you know that were interested in things you know one observation that that you haven't done yet that I wanted to share is that it felt like there were a lot of people that were in the middle of a divorce with Intuit right now, you know, and it felt like it felt like there hadn't been a. It felt like there you know it felt very much like when the days when Microsoft Office accounting was out there, and it was giving QuickBooks a run for its money. Felt like those days 20 years ago in many ways to me when we were there because it just it I don't know it just it felt like Microsoft is engaged again with the profession and they had a booth for Business Central, but I think that generally, you know, it people have come to the realization that Intuit is not as much of a partner as they wanted. You know, doesn't want to be as much of a partner as they have been in the past. And you know, it was clear that a lot of people are ready to move on, but they just don't know what they're where they're going to go.

Randy Johnston 11:40
Yeah, and that really leads to the next section that I just want to comment on for our listeners, and that is an important session. Of course, as part of the keynotes, they gave away a lot of the ProAdvisor awards, and one of the winners, certainly deservedly so, was Jeff Siegel of Siegel Solutions, was named Pro Advisor of the Year, and I'm happy for Jeff. We've known him a long time, and he and his organization has done a good job for into it and for Acumatica both. So that really leads then to on Tuesday I had the privilege of doing a walking tour for the AI-enabled general ledgers. Now, of course, Brian, you have written our first session for k2 on AI enabled ledgers and updated it for the year, and we know there's going to be more that we talk about. But I chose these ledgers in part because they were AI enabled, or in part because they were QuickBooks desktop replacement products, and you know with the imminent threat of desktop discontinuance in September of 27. We'll see how that comes out because Intuit may flinch and not do that, but they may proceed. It's hard to say. But I visited the campfire booth with a group. I had actually a quite nice booth with a group with headsets, and we visited Soft Ledger, which that product I've recommended frequently, Kick, the AI-powered ledger that was really backed by Google Ventures, Y Combinator, and others, Zero, a long-term player, and of course they have their Jax AI Puzzle again with Sasha and his team. That's been one of the products that we've recommended pretty routinely. You've just called out Microsoft and all their enablement, and we do have a separate accounting technology lab for you on Agentic 365 and the E7 platform introduced in May. But Microsoft again was all over. Of course, the Sage folks had their AI-powered capabilities. The Digits team was the next stop. Then we stopped with Zoho, and finally we closed up with Segal Solutions, who you know has AI integrations in the Acumatica platform. So those products I thought on the floor represented the event pretty well. As we mentioned in the first session on scaling new heights, by my count, 134 vendors on this floor. There were about 200 vendors on the AICPA engage floor, and I was able in both events to spend a fair bit of time on the floor with the exhibitors. Probably not quite as much at Scaling New Heights as I'd like, because we were just busy back. And of course, on Sunday night, we gathered with the winners of the, you know, AI education awards, which were, you know, given out on Monday, as I recall. So, in any case, I wanted you to hear the things that had happened here, and as I reflect back on our time on the road, Brian, you know you've observed kind of this AI frenzy going on. The other thing that is clear to me is the publishers and the salespeople from these various teams seem to be somewhat unsettled, almost frantic, and I. I don't know whether sales numbers are being missed. I know that layoffs are occurring across a number of the vendors. I don't know whether that is in part P motivation, P and L motivate motivation. I don't know the underpinnings, but you know I try to watch and read people and just understand where they're coming from and why, and I did have very good one-on-one personal conversations with many of the CEOs and the VP of marketing and VP of development from many of these companies who were on the floor at these various events. You know, one closing comment that I think I did not put in our AICPA engage episode was my rather lengthy conversation with Dave Weil, who of course originally did EPACE, which became CCH Engagement and Sure Prep, which was sold to Thomson Reuters, and you know what Dave's new venture and so forth. It was so fun to catch up with him, but also just talk about the insights that he had, and I had side meetings with various publishers.

Randy Johnston 16:07
And you know, one of the things on the Accounting Technology Lab we want you to know is we will always try to be factual, and you know, nobody pays us any money to appear in this program, and that's another thing that you should know. As this is really Brian, in my opinion, it is not you know CPA Practice Advisor's opinion or anybody else's. So when we talk with you in this context, we're trying to give you a spin-free zone. It was part of the reason Brian and I have launched the C2ACT platform, which will evolve over 2026 and beyond, we expect. But you know, in the bottom line, one call out since he's just back from canoeing, so I don't even have to say his name, do I, Brian? Since he's just back from canoeing, we want to send out greetings to long-term friend Ward Blatch, you know, who's just had his anniversary, so you know we get the privilege and pleasure of so many of you reaching out to us based on these podcasts or based on our long term relationship to ask questions. So you know as I look back over the conference season, the spring conference season, there are so many observations that we tried to summarize, but here's my quick list: accounting software is really different, and a lot of it's AI powered. The reporting has changed so much. The AI world has changed, and we'll talk to you in another session about how we think a reasonable AI strategy can now be done combining model context protocols, agents, AI built into platforms, and the large language models as we go through this next transition. As fable and mythos were, you know, released and withdrawn and released again. You know, there's going to be some disruption here for a bit, but AI is still a big deal. Third, a whole lot of products that are out there, the vendors will fail, just like we saw Botkeeper fail earlier this year, and I still feel bad for Enrico on that. But the bottom line is, there's too doggone many products trying to get to too small of a market. They're too poorly funded in general, so you're going to have to be a real cautious buyer, and we're going to try to help you exercise good professional judgment. The sales pitches are also not factual. Now we know that salespeople have always had a little. What do we want to say?

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 18:39
It brings up the old joke that I like to tell. What's the difference in a used car salesman and a software salesman? And the answer is the software say the the used car salesman knows he's lying, you know. And so I don't want to. I don't think we need to ascribe malicious intent to the misleading things. But you know, the fact is, when somebody's a salesperson for a product. You know, understanding the workflows and understanding accounting is hard, and it's one of those things that unless somebody's been in been selling to the industry for years, it's hard sometimes for them to understand the game that they're selling into.

Randy Johnston 19:18
Yeah, and you know, there's a lot of very ethical, very fine people that do sales and marketing, and I know many or most of them. And you know the really good ones, you can absolutely trust what they're saying. But sometimes just wrapping their head around what your problem is versus their mission of getting you to buy product and install it-it's a whole different game, and again, I'm not going to say them out loud on this one, Brian, because you know I'm following the grandma rule. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. But I can name in my head right now. I just went through a list seven of them that are well-known vendors whose sales tactics are very aggressive, and they sound very good. And frankly, when those products are getting installed, they're failing pretty frequently, and it's bothering me deeply. So again, when we talk about it on the accounting technology lab, we are trying to be super factual. So anyway, other observations, Brian. And again,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 20:20
I I don't want you to take my telling that joke as any kind of indictment of anybody's integrity. I just think that in general, it takes a while for a salesperson to really get into the groove and to understand their product and understand the workflows and understand how they really fit together, so that they don't make incorrect statements. Yeah, but I will say that it's an interesting. I I agree with you that there are too many teams, you know, too many teams out there, and not everybody's going to make Premier League. So I, you know, it's there are going to be changes in the space, and I think you know the you know we can go back and look at AV, the product, you know, and and we can look at BotKeeper and others, you know. I think you need to have a plan B in your workflow for what's going to happen if your product is discontinued. And by the way, that also that also applies to people that are using stuff from from the big providers like like Thomson Reuters and in and and Walters Cluer and Intuit because I mean Intuit's killing QuickBooks Desktop Thomson is killing is killing File Cabinet CS you know and and those are you know that you're basically having to put a new foundation on the house and so it's a it's an interesting. It's a very interesting time, but but I think also that it's critical that that people get that you know as you're picking the replacement tools. I think it's critical that you pick the tools that are going to enable not how you run the firm today, but how the firm's going to run in three years, five years, okay, you're really, you know, you're really getting a divorce, and you're getting married again, okay, and so you almost need to go in and say, okay, this is what I liked, this is what I didn't like, this is what worked, this is what didn't work, and this is what I want the rest of my career to look like, and so let's now, you know, based on how we're going to change our pricing and how we're going to change our our service offerings and how we're going to modify our, you know, how we're going to move into advisory or or other places like that. Based on that, then this is what I think the platform needs to look like, and that's the hard decision is that we have people in many cases picking platforms that haven't decided what they want to be when they grow up, and I don't. And I think we're have we're seeing an increasing rate of failures because they're trying to buy products that solve the old workflow, and then they find out that they have a whole new workflow in the new service offering. Yeah.

Randy Johnston 23:03
Well, beautiful observation. Thank you, Brian. So, our thanks to all who invited us to speak at conferences this year because we got a chance to see many of you face to face. So, you know, Joe Woodard and his team from Scaling New Heights and Heather, we appreciate the effort for us of the people from the AICPA engage team, and I can keep going on and on. Again, we're only here because you attend and you listen, and we hope you'll come back and listen to another Accounting Technology Lab very soon. We'll see you. Good day.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 23:35
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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai