Cloud Accounting Podcast

Mike Fleming, CEO of Sales Tax and More, joins Blake & David on the podcast to discuss in detail the ramifications of the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing states to collect sales taxes from online sellers who have no physical presence in the state. Questions in this episode: Does the decision affect sales of services online across state borders in addition to goods? Are there any strategies businesses can use to avoid sales or quantity thresholds for collecting sales tax? Will we see an increase in states taxing services? What process or technology should we look at for tracking sales by jurisdiction? Is it even worth it to comply? Will Amazon help out Amazon Marketplace sellers by doing more to track and collect sales tax? Are there any benefits to this decision for businesses?

Blake and David discuss the implications of Thursday's Supreme Court ruling that states can require out of state retailers to collect taxes on sales to residents, even if those retailers don't have a physical presence in the state.

David reports on IRS plans to spend $291 million on technology upgrades and why some lawyers are dropping the billable hour. Blake shares takeaways from FloQast's 2018 Cloud Accounting Survey and the recent Cloud Accounting Roundtable in Culver City.

David shares some exciting news that the firm that bought Blake's cloud bookkeeping startup (HPC) is itself getting acquired — by a Top 100 CPA firm (Aprio). HPC is a 100% online accounting firm.  Speaking of remote work, Blake shares news that Vermont is offering to reimburse up to $10,000 over two years to new residents who relocate to the state to work remotely for out of state employers. And finally, Blake & David discuss the flurry of new app updates and features that were released the past few weeks.

David shares how time tracking software has entered the world of "wage theft" lawsuits, Blake is impressed by Slack's new and improved third-party integrations, then we discuss the crazy fast growth of QuickBooks Online, the dismal trust Millennials place in banks, what the deal is with GDPR, and the fear and loathing of automation in Las Vegas.

Brendan Woods, Founder and CEO at AutoEntry, joins the podcast to chat about his OCR and document processing solution for accountants and bookkeepers. AutoEntry is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, and the company's first major market was the UK. This year it is expanding to the United States with an office in Tucson, Arizona. AutoEntry began life as OCREX, a tool for extracting transactions from paper bank statements. Not long after, the company expanded to extracting information from other types of documents, including receipts, purchase orders, and invoices. One thing that makes AutoEntry different than other document processing solutions is that it can extract full line item detail from documents, making it very powerful for businesses that need to get granularity out of their bills. The pricing is also different than other solutions — AutoEntry charges per document, not per client or company. 

Blake is skeptical about KPMG Australia's move to get into the ERP developer game with Microsoft, and David shares PayPal's acquisition of iZettle and what that means for point of sale options for small businesses.

It's the second episode of the podcast 2.0 with my new co-host, David Leary! We chat about Warren Buffet's "Accounting Nightmare." New accounting rules changes for 2018 require investments to be reported at fair value, resulting in an unusual net loss for Berkshire Hathaway. Buffet is a long term investor, so naturally he isn't a fan of including unrealized gains and losses in net income. Also, David shares a really cool chart from Financial Samurai showing the net worth composition of people by net worth tier. It's fascinating how much wealth at the top end comes from business interests. Want to get rich? Own a business! Or two. Or more.

David Leary joins the podcast for the first time as my new co-host. We discuss the IRS' ancient computer systems that caused the crash on tax day, a case study of a CPA who got hacked by a malicious "keylogger" program, news from Blake's visit to NetSuite's SuiteWorld 2018, and a robot that can assemble an IKEA chair. Now there's a great use of automation! We'll be uploading weekly (we hope), but not always on video, so be sure to subscribe.

Tom Gabbert joins the podcast to talk about the "m" in mAccounting (it stands for "mobile"), why he's looking to hire "people people" (not just number crunchers), his efforts to "turn accounting from a necessary evil to a strategic advantage," the benefits of his firm's shift to cloud accounting, where the profession is heading, the emergence of outsourced accounting services, what needs to change in accounting education, how Tom is creating the firm and life he wants, and more.

Chris Rose, VP of Business Development at Sage Intacct, joins the podcast to talk about why organizations need to move to the cloud for their ERP, the value of cloud APIs for enabling third party integrations, and the threats and opportunities automation is presenting to the accounting profession.

Dr. Sean Stein Smith, DBA and CPA, joins the Cloud Accounting Podcast to discuss five of the top accounting articles from the past few weeks, including stories about PwC, blockchain, KPMG's partnership with Watson, EY's use of RPA to automate internally and for clients, the evolution of the "one firm client" practice, and why artificial intelligence is the future of accounting.

In this episode of the Cloud Accounting Podcast, I'm joined by Jody Padar, CEO and Principal of the New Vision CPA Group, a public accounting firm based in the Chicago area. Jody is the author of "The Radical CPA," and has just published a follow-up called "From Success to Significance: The Radical CPA Guide."

On Episode 6 of the podcast, I'm joined by Jeff Phillips of Accountingfly, a site for accountants and finance professionals to apply easily to hundreds of great jobs. We discuss the latest cloud accounting news, including: The four drivers of workaholism, and how it doesn't make for more productive employees; why meetings are toxic; how Gusto hired more women engineers; and how to be part of a team, even when working remotely.

I'm joined by Amanda Aguillard, David Emmerman, Ryan Watson, and Jay Kimelman of Bluewire Strategy Group. We discuss how an accounting firm in Australia successfully moved to a 5-hour workday, a new survey that shows most Americans see automation is coming, but don't think it will affect them in their own lifetimes, Bitcoin traders who have no idea they owe a lot of tax, and how the IRS is making things difficult by not being clear, and new smart glasses that don't make you look like a dork (anymore than you already do).